By EmmaLee Italia | Correspondent

Celebrating a feast that calls upon the boundless mercy of God, Catholics in the Diocese of Trenton joined Catholics worldwide April 12 in Divine Mercy Sunday prayer and devotion.

On the Second Sunday of Easter, 2000, St. John Paul II promulgated the Feast to occur on the Sunday at the end of the Octave of Easter. That same day he canonized St. Maria Faustina Kowalska – the Polish nun to whom Jesus revealed his message of Divine Mercy between 1931 and 1938. Since then the celebration of Divine Mercy has become one of the fastest growing movements within the Church, recognizing God’s limitless mercy for mankind.

Several parishes in the Diocese marked the feast with various acts of devotion, including Masses, novenas, Eucharistic Adoration, Benediction, recitation of the Divine Mercy Chaplet and veneration of the image of the Divine Mercy and relics of St. Faustina.

St. John Paul II’s special devotion to the Divine Mercy brought it to the forefront of Catholic worship. Besides creating the feast of Divine Mercy Sunday, he had her writings translated into a book called “Divine Mercy in My Soul,” also published as “The Diary of St. Maria Faustina Kowalska.”

St. Faustina was a young nun in the convent of the Congregation of the Sisters of Our Lady of Mercy in Cracow, Poland, when she began to receive revelations directly from Jesus, who instructed her to record the experiences, and gave her the words to what is now known as the Divine Mercy Chaplet.

Jesus instructed St. Faustina to create the image we now associate with the Divine Mercy; he appeared to her the way he is depicted in the painting, with large red and white rays emanating from his breast – symbolizing blood and water. Jesus asked her to include the signature “Jesus, I trust in you,” and gave a special promise of mercy associated with the devotion.

“I promise that the soul that will venerate this image will not perish. I also promise victory over [its] enemies already here on earth, especially at the hour of death. I myself will defend it as my own glory. (Diary of St. Faustina, 47-48).”

In 2002 the Apostolic Penitentiary of the Holy See promulgated a decree that in order “to ensure that the faithful would observe this day (Divine Mercy Sunday) with intense devotion… this Sunday be enriched by a plenary indulgence… so that the faithful might receive in great abundance the gift of the consolation of the Holy Spirit.” The plenary indulgence is granted – under the usual conditions of Confession, receiving Eucharist and a prayer for the intentions of the Pope – to the faithful who, on the feast, in a spirit completely detached from sin, recite the Our Father and the Creed, and add a devout prayer (Merciful Jesus, I trust in you!).