The Feast of Mercy is celebrated on the first Sunday after Easter, that is, the second Sunday of Easter, currently called Divine Mercy Sunday.
This party was established in 1985, first in the Archdiocese of Krakow by its bishop, Cardinal Franciszek Macharski, and later in some other dioceses in Poland. Ten years later, in 1995, Pope John Paul II extended it to all of Poland, at the express request of the Polish episcopate. On April 30, 2000, the second Sunday of Easter and the day of Saint Faustina’s canonization in Rome, Pope John Paul II instituted it for the universal Church.
Who instituted this party?
The Lord Jesus in person appeared to Sister Faustina, a Polish nun of the early 20th century, and told her: “I want the first Sunday after Easter to be the Feast of Mercy” (Little Diary of Sister Faustina, 299). She also explained the meaning of the festival: “I want the Feast of Mercy to be the resource and refuge for all souls, and especially for poor sinners. On this day the bowels of my mercy open, I pour out a whole ocean of graces on the souls that approach the source of my mercy; every soul that confesses and communicates will receive complete forgiveness of their faults and the remission of their penalties; on this day all the divine sources through which graces flow open” (Little Diary, 699).
(The Feast of Mercy is a preponderant practice of the entire Devotion to Divine Mercy, given the special promises it contains and the place it occupies in the liturgy of the Church. Jesus spoke about it to Sister Faustina for the first time in the convent of P?ock, in the month of February 1931, during His first appearance regarding the painting of the picture. He then told him: “I want there to be a feast of Mercy. I want this picture, which you will paint with a brush, to be solemnly blessed on the first Sunday after Easter; that Sunday should be the Feast of Mercy” (Small Diary, 49). The Lord repeated the request in successive years, in other revelations to Sister Faustina, specifying not only the date, but also the reason and the way to celebrate the party).
The Feast of Mercy, a “second baptism”
In his theological analysis of Faustina’s Little Diary for her beatification process, Abbot Professor Ignace Ró?ycki explains that the grace of the feast exceeds the grace of plenary indulgence. In effect, “the grace of plenary indulgence consists in the remission only of the temporal penalties owed for having committed sins, but it never remits the faults themselves.” Of the seven sacraments of the Catholic Church, only baptism offers the remission of sins. By promising “complete forgiveness of sins” to those who have confessed and received Communion on this feast, Christ “elevated it to the rank of a ‘second baptism'”, says Father Ró?ycki.
How to prepare for the Feast of Divine Mercy?
What do these last words of Jesus on the cross mean? How could he believe that God was abandoning him? These words, spoken in Aramaic, echo the beginning of Psalm 22, close to the passage in Isaiah about the suffering servant.
Through a novena that consists of praying the rosary to Divine Mercy for nine consecutive days, starting on Good Friday. Jesus insisted: “Say, my daughter, that the feast of Mercy has sprung from my heart for the consolation of the whole world” (Little Diary, 1517).