Perhaps the first recorded apparition of Jesus after He rose from the dead and ascended into heaven forty days later was to Saul. Jesus met him and blinded him and spoke to him as he traveled to Damascus to find Christians to persecute. But Jesus showed great mercy to this great sinner. As St. Paul put it in his First Letter to Timothy: “I was once a blasphemer and a persecutor and an arrogant man, but I have been mercifully treated…. This saying is trustworthy and deserves full acceptance: Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners. Of these I am the foremost. But for that reason I was mercifully treated, so that in me, as the foremost, Christ Jesus might display all his patience as an example for those who would come to believe in him for everlasting life” (1 Timothy 1:13, 15-16).
Since that first century apparition, Jesus has appeared to others. In the 1930’s He appeared to a Polish nun, Faustina Kowalska, and told her that the greatest divine attribute is mercy. Jesus told her: “The Feast of Mercy emerged from My very depths of tenderness. It is My desire that it be solemnly celebrated on the Sunday after Easter. Mankind will not have peace until it turns to the Fount of My Mercy” (Diary #699).
For many years, a poor translation of Faustina’s Diary led to the Church’s disapproval of it until the future Pope St. John Paul II, when he was Archbishop of Krakow, provided for a more accurate translation and the Diary’s approval. On April 30, 2000, when he canonized St. Faustina, he fulfilled Jesus’ request and declared that the Second Sunday of Easter would henceforth be known as Divine Mercy Sunday.
In his homily on that day, the Holy Father said: “The message of Divine Mercy is implicitly a message about the value of every human being. Each person is precious in God’s eyes; Christ gave his life for each one…. This consoling message is addressed above all to those who, afflicted by a particularly harsh trial or crushed by the weight of the sins they committed, have lost all confidence in life and are tempted to give in to despair. To them the gentle face of Christ is offered; those rays from his heart touch them and shine upon them, warm them, show them the way and fill them with hope. How many souls have been consoled by the prayer ‘Jesus, I trust in you'”?
Today we are celebrating the 25th anniversary of this very special Sunday. In doing so we not only praise God for the mercy He has shown us through His Son Jesus, but we also open ourselves up to that mercy praying, in the words of the Introductory Prayer of the Chaplet of Divine Mercy: “O Fount of Life, unfathomable Divine Mercy, envelop the whole world and empty Yourself out upon us.”
