His Mercy Is Divine

The Sunday immediately following Easter Sunday is referred to as the Feast of Divine Mercy. It is associated with the written recordings and a drawn image of a young nun’s encounters with Jesus approximately 100 years ago.

These recordings and image have led today to millions of Catholics religiously praying a chaplet, contemplating Jesus’s words from the nun’s diary, and celebrating a feast day. Jesus revealed all of these pious practices as ways to spread His message of mercy throughout the world.

Maria Faustina Kowalska was a nun in a Polish convent during the 1930s. She came forward to announce that she had received extraordinary revelations from Jesus. She said He appeared to her in a vision and conversed with her numerous times, asking her to write down His conversations. His talks mainly contained loving messages of the mercy He and His Father bestow on believers. We know her documenting today as the Diary of Saint Maria Faustina Kowalska.

According to the diaries kept by Faustina, Jesus wanted a Divine Mercy feast day to be established so that it could offer hope to all the souls who are drowning in sin and despair. The instructions Jesus gave Faustina to share with everyone included that we are to make a good Confession in preparation of this feast day, and then come to Him by receiving Holy Communion on the Sunday after Easter. By doing so, we will receive the complete renewal of baptismal grace that He wants to pour into our hearts.

Furthermore, Jesus revealed an image of Him to Faustina. It was of our Savior clothed in a white garment with His right hand raised in blessing. His left hand was touching His garment in the area of the heart, from where two large rays came forth, one red and the other white. Jesus told her to paint this image with the signature, “Jesus, I trust in You.”

This one picture perfectly explains our Lord’s mercy. The red ray depicts the sacrificial blood of His Passion, and the white ray depicts both our baptism and His glorious Resurrection. Moreover, the inscription at the bottom is the primary response that Jesus asks of each of us to His merciful love – to trust in Him.

In her diary, Faustina wrote what Jesus instructed her regarding the image:

” I promise that the soul that will venerate this image will not perish. …I am offering people a vessel with which they are to keep coming for graces to the fountain of mercy. That vessel is this image with the signature: Jesus, I trust in You. I desire that this image be venerated, first in your chapel, and [then] throughout the world. …I want the image to be solemnly blessed on the first Sunday after Easter, and I want it to be venerated publicly so that every soul may know about it.”

“To be venerated” refers to make some pious gesture or take some action of religious respect toward the sacred image or statue of the person whom it represents. Nowadays, many parishes have a large depiction of the Divine Mercy image placed on view in a position of prominence in the sanctuary. Some people’s personal prayer cards or small frames hung in their homes depict this image. 

The divine mercy revelations to Saint Faustina is considered a private revelation. The Church says Catholics are not obligated to believe in Faustina’s accounts but should consider them. Pope John Paul II certainly believed in her story and diary.  He made sure her writings were made public. Additionally, he instituted Divine Mercy Sunday as a Church feast in 2000, on the same day he canonized Sister Faustina as Saint Faustina. 

Saint Pope John Paul II said of Saint Faustina:

“Like St. Faustina, we wish to proclaim that apart from the mercy of God there is no other source of hope for mankind. We desire to repeat with faith: Jesus, I trust in you! …This proclamation, this confession of trust in the all-powerful love of God is especially needed in our own time, when mankind is experiencing bewilderment in the face of many manifestations of evil. The invocation of God’s mercy needs to rise up from the depth of hearts filled with suffering, apprehension, and uncertainty, and at the same time yearning for an infallible source of hope.”

In addition to all the above directives, Jesus made it clear to St. Faustina that in preparation for this feast we need to be merciful to others through our actions, words, and prayers. It is not enough that on Divine Mercy Sunday we contemplate and give thanks for God’s Mercy. Christ revealed to Faustina that our celebration of the feast day would be blasphemy if we asked for God’s mercy but weren’t willing to show this mercy to others in our lives.

The message of the Divine Mercy is pretty basic:

1. God loves us, even when we have sinned;
2. He wants us to know that His mercy is greater than our sins;
3. We not only can receive God’s mercy, but we need to let it flow through us to others, so all can come to share His joy.

This Divine Mercy Sunday, our Lord calls us to repent of our sins and extend the love He shows us by forgiving others who have hurt us. He will shower His mercy upon us and upon the whole world.

If you haven’t prayed the Chaplet of Divine Mercy before, this Sunday is a perfect time to learn it and make it a regular part of your prayer life. You can pray it at any time, but the chaplet is traditionally prayed at “the Hour of Mercy.” This would be 3 p.m., when Jesus died on the Cross. Jesus told Faustina those who pray during this sacredly significant time will experience the full power of his mercy.

Whether we choose to pray the chaplet or not, our fundamental task this Sunday – and the other 364 days of the year – is to trust in Jesus. The more we open our hearts to trust, the more room we will make to receive blessings from Him.