The Divine Mercy Devotion

God calls us to a total commitment to Him as God of Mercy in the Devotion to The Divine Mercy. He desires for us to decide to trust in Him completely, to be accepting of His mercy with thanksgiving, and to be merciful to others as He is merciful to us. This devotion was given by Jesus Himself to a young Polish nun, Sr. Faustina, in the 1930's. It reminds us that God is infinitely merciful and forgiving, if we come to Him in trust and with a contrite heart. But it goes beyond that in that it also requires us to likewise be merciful and forgiving of our neighbors, always and everywhere. We are to spread God's mercy to others by our actions, our words, and our prayers. By receiving the sacraments of Confession and Eucharist, we allow Jesus to transform our hearts into hearts that are merciful. By praying the Divine Mercy Chaplet, we offer to God the Eternal Father, His Son Jesus as our intercessor in atonement for our own sins as well as for the sins of the whole world, asking Him for mercy.

Divine Mercy is a Eucharistic devotion. Our Lord Jesus gives us Himself, Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity, truly present in the Eucharist, every time we worthily go to Communion, as the "Fountain of Life", a miracle of mercy. And it is Jesus Himself that we offer up to His Father as our merciful intercessor.

Jesus reminds us that He is truly present and alive in the Eucharist, and He also calls us to repentance, to be washed clean by His mercy through Confession and Holy Communion, no matter how terrible our sins are. With Divine Mercy, Jesus offers us the opportunity to start over again, to become again as we were on the day of our Baptism. He does not stop, however, by giving us a single grace. Jesus opens up an unlimited supply of graces, a veritable floodgate of graces and mercy which flow from His merciful heart. Our Lord holds back nothing. If we just let Jesus into our hearts, even just a little, and trust, God will do the rest.