Divine Mercy
April 27, 2025
Jesus Christ: Yesterday, Today, and Forever ~
The Sunday after Easter is called Divine Mercy Sunday. In light of what our sins did to Our Lord on Good Friday, and His mercy upon us after His Resurrection; this day, Divine Mercy Sunday, is a day in which we meditate upon Our Lord’s mercy, thank Him, and worship Him for it.
In the 1930s Jesus began appearing to a Polish nun named Faustina Kowalska (now a canonized saint) and passed on to her a series of messages that she recorded in her diary which has become a book called Divine Mercy in My Soul. It’s a book about God’s abiding presence and love for us; as well as an underlying warning to turn away from sin and to the infinite mercy of God. This theme of mercy pervades Jesus’ messages to St. Faustina, yet the message of God’s mercy is as old as the Bible itself, and the Church has been proclaiming it for 2000 years. However, Our Lord has made a very special point of emphasizing His mercy to us in the past century through St. Faustina. This raises the question: why did Jesus wait so long? Why did He wait until the 20th century to find a saint to pass along this very special message about His mercy? By comparison, the Rosary was given to St. Dominic by the Blessed Virgin Mary in the early 13th Century—eight centuries ago. The answer to this question lies in our age/generation/epoch of time.
God has allowed our generation to stray as far from Him as at the time of Noah, when God flooded the earth killing everyone except the people on Noah’s ark (God has His reasons). Today, the vast majority of the human race ignores God, let alone its Savior Jesus Christ. Things that almost all people knew were sins and shunned in past centuries are now celebrated. Ignorance and defiance of God and His laws are so great today that if the normal rules of culpability found in past ages were applied to us today, the vast majority of the human race would be lost forever. For these reasons, Christ has chosen unprecedented mercy (unjust mercy if you will) to save souls that in other generations would have been damned for sins we indifferently engage in today. Think of our age as having a special dispensation from heaven; and that dispensation is unprecedented mercy: “...but despite the increase in sin, grace has far surpassed it” (Rm 5:20). It won’t be like this forever, the clock on God’s mercy will naturally turn to His justice (a super good thing too). It always does. During this time of transition from the godless and wicked age that we live in now, to the God fearing and God loving age to come, we have Christ’s mercy found in the chaplet that He gave to St. Faustina; a powerful prayer from heaven for Our Lord’s consolation and ours, as well as the salvation of sinners.
Most of us are aware of the Chaplet of Divine Mercy, a very popular devotion, one worth learning and praying. Parishioners at Holy Redeemer Parish have been praying it every Friday in the church at 3pm for years. If you’ve ever listened to a Catholic radio station, then you’ve probably heard it sung or said. Every year at Holy Redeemer, a nine-day novena is prayed in the church from Good Friday until this Sunday. I encourage you to grab a brochure found in the literature area of your church or online, and start praying for God’s mercy upon all of us poor sinners.
In the Passion, Death, and Resurrection of Jesus Christ,
Father Thomas Nathe
