Divine Mercy Sunday
April 5, 2024 at 3:46 p.m.
Bishop David M. O’Connell, C.M., issued the following message for Divine Mercy Sunday, a feast which is observed throughout the Church this year on April 7.
The most supreme act of love and mercy that the world has ever known was the Crucifixion of the Lord Jesus Christ celebrated by the Church throughout the world little more than a week ago on Good Friday. The consequence of that greatest love and mercy was the Resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ on Easter Sunday. The proof of that greatest love and mercy was the empty tomb which the women found when they came that Easter morning to anoint his body. That proof continues to unfold in today’s Gospel from St. John when the Risen Lord Jesus appears to his apostles wishing them peace, giving them the power to show mercy and forgive sins.
Today is the Second Sunday of Easter, known throughout the Catholic Church as Divine Mercy Sunday, formally established by Pope St. John Paul II twenty three years ago. At his first celebration of Divine Mercy Sunday Mass in Rome in 2001, Pope St. John Paul II proclaimed:
“’Humanity will never find peace until it turns with trust to Divine Mercy.’ Divine Mercy! This is the Easter gift that the Church receives from the Risen Christ and offers to humanity… (Pope St. John Paul II, “Homily for Divine Mercy Sunday,” April 22, 2001).
The passion, death and resurrection of the Lord Jesus, although individual moments in his human life, constitute one Paschal gift of God’s loving mercy! “God so loved the world,” John’s Gospel tells us, “that he gave his only begotten son (John 3:16).” And his Only Begotten Son so loved the world that he gave his life “so that those who believe in him might not perish but might have eternal life (idem).” And Christians continue to fulfill the Lord Jesus’s command to “love one another as I have loved you (John 13:34).”
The idea of “Divine Mercy Sunday” did not, however, begin with Pope St. John Paul II. Its origin is rooted in the visions of a now canonized Polish nun and mystic, Sr. Faustina Kowalska (1905-1938), who reported having regular apparitions and conversations with the Lord Jesus who, on one occasion, told her “this feast emerged from the very depths of my mercy, and it is confirmed in the vast depths of my tender mercies. Every soul believing and trusting in my mercy will obtain it (Diary of Sr. Faustina Kowalska: Divine Mercy in My Soul, 420).” Sr. Faustina wrote in her Diary, “Yes, the first Sunday after Easter is the Feast of Mercy, but there must also be deeds of mercy, which arise out of love for me (Diary, 742).”
We join together this Sunday, with Catholics throughout the world, to celebrate God’s mercy, “living and visible in Jesus of Nazareth, reaching its culmination in him … (who) by his words, his actions and his entire person reveals the mercy of God (Pope Francis, Bull of Indiction for the Year of Mercy Misericordiae Vultus, April 11, 2015, 1).”
And it is Divine Mercy which unites all Catholics together today in all the churches and parishes of the world. With them we pray, “Jesus, I trust in you!”
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Bishop David M. O’Connell, C.M., issued the following message for Divine Mercy Sunday, a feast which is observed throughout the Church this year on April 7.
The most supreme act of love and mercy that the world has ever known was the Crucifixion of the Lord Jesus Christ celebrated by the Church throughout the world little more than a week ago on Good Friday. The consequence of that greatest love and mercy was the Resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ on Easter Sunday. The proof of that greatest love and mercy was the empty tomb which the women found when they came that Easter morning to anoint his body. That proof continues to unfold in today’s Gospel from St. John when the Risen Lord Jesus appears to his apostles wishing them peace, giving them the power to show mercy and forgive sins.
Today is the Second Sunday of Easter, known throughout the Catholic Church as Divine Mercy Sunday, formally established by Pope St. John Paul II twenty three years ago. At his first celebration of Divine Mercy Sunday Mass in Rome in 2001, Pope St. John Paul II proclaimed:
“’Humanity will never find peace until it turns with trust to Divine Mercy.’ Divine Mercy! This is the Easter gift that the Church receives from the Risen Christ and offers to humanity… (Pope St. John Paul II, “Homily for Divine Mercy Sunday,” April 22, 2001).
The passion, death and resurrection of the Lord Jesus, although individual moments in his human life, constitute one Paschal gift of God’s loving mercy! “God so loved the world,” John’s Gospel tells us, “that he gave his only begotten son (John 3:16).” And his Only Begotten Son so loved the world that he gave his life “so that those who believe in him might not perish but might have eternal life (idem).” And Christians continue to fulfill the Lord Jesus’s command to “love one another as I have loved you (John 13:34).”
The idea of “Divine Mercy Sunday” did not, however, begin with Pope St. John Paul II. Its origin is rooted in the visions of a now canonized Polish nun and mystic, Sr. Faustina Kowalska (1905-1938), who reported having regular apparitions and conversations with the Lord Jesus who, on one occasion, told her “this feast emerged from the very depths of my mercy, and it is confirmed in the vast depths of my tender mercies. Every soul believing and trusting in my mercy will obtain it (Diary of Sr. Faustina Kowalska: Divine Mercy in My Soul, 420).” Sr. Faustina wrote in her Diary, “Yes, the first Sunday after Easter is the Feast of Mercy, but there must also be deeds of mercy, which arise out of love for me (Diary, 742).”
We join together this Sunday, with Catholics throughout the world, to celebrate God’s mercy, “living and visible in Jesus of Nazareth, reaching its culmination in him … (who) by his words, his actions and his entire person reveals the mercy of God (Pope Francis, Bull of Indiction for the Year of Mercy Misericordiae Vultus, April 11, 2015, 1).”
And it is Divine Mercy which unites all Catholics together today in all the churches and parishes of the world. With them we pray, “Jesus, I trust in you!”