Kevin Kelly/Key photo Bishop Robert W. Finn reads the decree establishing Our Lady of Good Counsel Church as the diocesan Shrine to the Divine Mercy as the pastor, Msgr. William J. Blacet, listens. Msgr. Blacet was appointed as the shrine's first rector.

Bishop Finn also appointed Msgr. William J. Blacet, the parish pastor, as "the founding rector" of the new shrine. The bishop had announced both the declaration and the appointment of the rector 11 months earlier at the end of a public Eucharistic procession on the Feast of Corpus Christi.

Quoting the May 23, 2000, Vatican decree that established the Sunday immediately following Easter as Divine Mercy Sunday, Bishop Finn said that the shrine would promote "a perennial invitation to the Christian world to face, with confidence in the divine benevolence, the difficulties and trials that humankind will face in the years to come."

The shrine, he said, will also "promote the veneration of St. Faustina Kowalksa, apostle of Divine Mercy."

St. Faustina, who was canonized in April 2000, was a 20th century Polish nun and visionary who died of tuberculosis in 1938 at the age of 33.

Five years earlier, she had received a vision of Jesus touching his sacred heart with a white ray and a red ray of light emanating from it. The white ray, Jesus told her, represented the saving waters of baptism. The red ray represented the blood Jesus shed to redeem humanity.

A portrait of Jesus in that vision has been placed above on the high altar at Our Lady of Good Counsel. A portrait of St. Faustina, a bouquet of red roses decorating it for the occasion, is on the church's north wall, near the sanctuary.

In his homily, Bishop Finn told the congregation that spilled outside the front doors of the small church at 39th Terrace and Washington that no sin is beyond the power of God to forgive.

"What have we done that is bigger than God?" Bishop Finn asked.

"It is true that we must not, may not trivialize the hurt our sins cause," he said. "Jesus died because of our sins. We cause hurt and destruction by our waywardness and selfishness. We have been hurt, perhaps very seriously, by others' destructive wishes and acts. We must never deny the reality of sin."

The power of God's mercy to heal and forgive also cannot be denied, Bishop Finn said.

"God is bigger than our sins," he said. "His love is greater than our denial and rejection of his love. Mercy is the last word, the lasting word. Mercy will resound in eternity."

Bishop Finn asked the congregation to consider the night of the first Easter when Jesus appeared to his apostles who were cowering in fear. Just two days earlier, "they ran away and disowned him," when he was arrested and agonizingly executed.

"Now they were seeing him again for the first time," the bishop said. "How disappointed and upset would he be with them? What would he say to them?" His words, the bishop said, were: "Peace be with you."

"Peace," Bishop Finn said. "This is his message and it slowly sinks into their hearts."

Jesus not only forgave the apostles, he made them "ministers of forgiveness."

"He completes their priesthood, bestowed upon them on Holy Thursday, and he makes them instruments for the forgiveness and mercy of God to his people - 'If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven.'

"Jesus' mercy and forgiveness is so real, so clearly his intention, that he establishes it here and now as a sacrament, as a saving and lasting sign of salvation, meant to be experienced and offered in his name to every heart that turns back to him," Bishop Finn said.

"Jesus' mission was to cancel the power and effects of sin in the world," he said. "By his resurrection, he made clear that death would no longer be the end. By this sacrament of mercy, he gives us the way to know that we are forgiven, even though we cannot deserve it."

At the beginning of the two-hour dedication liturgy, Bishop Finn read the diocesan statutes and decree establishing Our Lady of Good Counsel as a shrine. He then blessed the image of Jesus as the Divine Mercy with incense, and blessed the church and the people gathered with holy water.

Bishop Finn then knelt as Msgr. Blacet lead the entire congregation in the Chaplet of the Divine Mercy.

At the end of the liturgy, Msgr. Blacet told the congregation that they must now live their lives in ways that spread the Divine Mercy.

"We can't just keep God's mercy within ourselves," he said. "He says, 'Go out and let other people know the mercy of God.'"

Msgr. Blacet urged the congregation to mirror the Divine mercy in "conduct, behavior, speech and action."

"From this group, it will have a rippling effect," he said. "Our lives will give glory to God, and the world will know through us the mercy of God."

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