WINDHAM — For over an hour, the Rev. Lou Phillips, pastor of Our Lady of Perpetual Help, stood in the church driveway near a portable altar holding a monstrance containing the Blessed Sacrament. One by one, more than 100 cars drove up to be blessed before leaving.
“The weather could not have been better,” said Phillips of the Divine Mercy Sunday blessings on April 19. “I started 10 minutes early and ended over an hour later with a constant flow of traffic.”
Each blessing took about a minute, but every second engaging with his parishioners, even from a distance, was priceless. And Phillips had to earn it.
“I never got a chance to put the monstrance back down on the altar,” he said. “The weight of the monstrance is appropriate for one blessing, not repeated multiple ones.”
In 2000, Pope John Paul II decreed that the second Sunday of Easter, the Octave of Easter, would be known as Divine Mercy Sunday. The feast was established by the pope after he canonized Saint Faustina, a Polish nun to whom Jesus is said to have revealed his message of divine mercy. A member of the congregation of the Sisters of Our Lady of Mercy, Sister Faustina says the Lord appeared to her several times beginning in February 1931. During her visions, she says Jesus communicated to her the depth of his mercy and his desire that all be merciful to one another.
PHOTO: The Rev. Lou Phillips blesses parishioners of Our Lady of Perpetual Help, in Windham, from a distance, on Divine Mercy Sunday, April 19. Phillips said he blessed more than 100 people on the day that emphasizes the importance of being merciful to each other. (Diocese of Portland photo)
