Divine Mercy Sunday

He found an artist in Vilnius.

St. Faustina found it hard to explain what the painting should look like, so she asked Jesus for help and got an explanation of the two rays as well as a request for Divine Mercy Sunday to be instituted.

When she saw the painting, it was a great disappointment to her in comparison with the beauty of Jesus in her visions, but he explained, not in the beauty of the color nor of the brush lies the greatness of this image, but in my grace.

Now the image was made, but it had to be publicly venerated.

He didn't have any authority to put that, that image on the Eastern Gate.

Then he was invited to preach, uh, unexpectedly at, at a jubilee celebration held at the gate on April twenty-sixth to twenty-eighth, nineteen thirty-four.

These were the last three days of the Octave of Easter, so it was leading up to the Sunday after Easter, the future Divine Mercy Sunday.

Father Sopaczko asked for the image to be displayed next to the icon of Our Lady on the gate and was told no, but later the archbishop suddenly acquiesced.

In 1965, then-Cardinal Karol Wojtyła received permission from the Vatican to open an initial informative process into Kowalska's life and virtues and submitted his positive findings two years later.

However, it wasn't until 1978, the year that Cardinal Wojtyła was elected Pope John Paul II, that the Vatican lifted its ban on St. Faustina's writings and the process of her canonization was initiated, culminating in her canonization on the eighth day of Easter 2000, the first Universal Church celebration of Divine Mercy Sunday.

For reasons we will only understand in heaven, God chose this poor, simple, devout, and humble young woman to deliver a message to the world that would become one of the most central and important messages ever delivered.

The Divine Mercy of God must be accepted, pondered, lived, and given to others.

It is for today.

Reflect upon your own devotion to the Divine Mercy.

Do you pray the chaplet, venerate the image, honor the three o'clock hour, participate in Divine Mercy Sunday, and seek to spread this sacred devotion as an apostle of Divine Mercy? Know that this is a universal invitation from God.

It is an invitation and exhortation given to you.

She was canonized in 2000.

Divine Mercy Sunday is now an official feast.

Condemned to feast day in 42 years.

And Maria Valtorta's visions were placed on the Index of Forbidden Books and declared not supernatural in origin.

The Divine Mercy Chaplet is, is definitely important.

It was, uh, interesting because that was one of the first promotions that I ran through Holy Reels trying to promote and help people practice through Divine Mercy Chaplet, and also the Divine Mercy Sunday Novena was really important because I don't, I don't think people realize, you know, the indulgences that come with the novenas, and I think that's really encouraging and also exciting to know that you can practice for a period, you can learn your faith, and then also acquire this indulgence that helps to forgive your sins, which gives you something of a clean slate to be able to approach God with.

Because a lot of people are carrying this, like, heavy heart with all their sins.

They are scared to go to confession, but these indulgences are a way to kind of help alleviate that and allow them to feel, like, a sense of acceptance and feel cleaner, I guess, when re-engaging with the faith.

So I think that the Divine Mercy Sunday indulgence, Divine Mercy Chaplet is extremely important, um, for helping younger people return to the faith and feel like they haven't, uh, you know, failed.

That is a theme that I like to kind of return to with our channel is just we are Catholics that are continuously failing in our faith, but we will continue to do better, you know, every day because, uh, we're humans and we're going to make...

We're going to err.

and that plenary indulgence has the requirement of no attachment to sin, even venial.

Yes, there is a plenary indulgence offered on Divine Mercy Sunday through the authority of the church.

But in paragraph 699 of the diary, there is what we call the extraordinary promise given through private revelation, approved private revelation, that Christ gives that those souls who on this day, meaning the eighth day, the octave of Easter, have been to confession, so they're in a state of grace, and receive Holy Communion, will be granted the complete forgiveness of sin and the temporal punishment due to sin.

Now, we are often criticized because people claim that we state that there's no requirements whatsoever that any sinner thinks that this is a get out of jail card and they don't have to do anything.

And so far, so good.

These aren't extremely difficult, but it's the fourth condition that sinks most all of us, and that is no attachment to sin, even vinaigre.

And so What the gift of Divine Mercy Sunday is different than a plenary indulgence is that that condition doesn't exist such defined that you can have zero attachment.

What you can have is a rectification and a purpose of amendment to detach.