Learn From Our Mother of Mercy on Divine Mercy Sunday| National Catholic Register

Divine Mercy Sunday brings the faithful many ways to approach Jesus, “The Divine Mercy,” on this day and any day of the year, from praying the Chaplet of Divine Mercy to venerating the image of Divine Mercy — and turning for help to his Mother of Divine Mercy.

When the first image of Jesus, The Divine Mercy, was shown for public veneration on Divine Mercy Sunday in 1935, it took place in Vilnius, Lithuania, at the Chapel of the Gate of the Dawn, built over the eastern gate of the city’s ancient defensive walls. In the chapel is inscribed: “Mother of Mercy, we fly to your patronage.” 

The chapel contains a centuries-old miraculous image of Our Lady of the Dawn. Yet before the Divine Mercy image was made public, in 1927 with Pope Pius XI’s permission, the image was solemnly crowned and renamed Mother of Mercy, depicting Mary, as our Mother of Mercy, anticipating her Son Jesus, The Divine Mercy, who was to come to that same place in 1935 in the image he told Faustina to have painted. In a great sense, Mary was bringing Jesus to the faithful again — this time at this chapel, the Shrine of the Mother of Mercy, at the heart of the Divine Mercy devotion.

“Mary … is the one who has the deepest knowledge of the mystery of God’s mercy. She knows its price, she knows how great it is. In this sense, we call her the Mother of mercy: Our Lady of Mercy, or Mother of Divine Mercy,” as St. John Paul II wrote in his encyclical Dives in Misericordia (Rich in Mercy).

In the Church’s Litany of Loreto, one of the invocations is the title “Mother of Mercy.” Therefore, if Jesus is The Divine Mercy, his mother, and ours — Jesus gave her to us from the cross — is Mother of Mercy, too.

St. Faustina heard this title from our Blessed Mother herself. In one vision, the saint saw Mary holding the Infant Jesus; and while her own confessor was kneeling and speaking with the Blessed Mother, Faustina heard a few of Our Lady’s words she was speaking to Blessed Michał Sopoćko. What she did hear plainly, she wrote down:

The words were: I am not only the Queen of Heaven, but also the Mother of Mercy and your Mother. (Diary, 330)

Divine Mercy Sunday is an opportune time to realize that the Blessed Virgin Mary also appeared to Faustina, underscoring her maternal role and guidance in Divine Mercy.

St. Faustina related how Mary appeared to her and spoke of God’s mercy:

Then I saw the Blessed Virgin, unspeakably beautiful. She came down from the altar to my kneeler, held me close to herself and said to me, ‘I am Mother to you all, thanks to the unfathomable mercy of God. Most pleasing to Me is that soul which faithfully carries out the will of God.’ (Diary, 449)

Through these and other ways, Faustina noted the role of Mary as the Mother of Mercy, writing:

“Through Her, as through a pure crystal, Your mercy was passed on to us. Through Her, man became pleasing to God; Through Her, streams of grace flowed down upon us.” (Diary, 1746)

Indeed, Mary demonstrates Divine Mercy to the world. As Robert Stackpole, director emeritus of the John Paul II Institute of Divine Mercy at the National Shrine of The Divine Mercy in Stockbridge, Massachusetts, has explained at TheDivineMercy.org, “Mary is Mother of Mercy because, through her Immaculate Conception, God fashioned her to be the created masterpiece of his mercy in the world.”

He continued, “In short, the first reason we can rightfully call Mary our ‘Mother of Mercy’ is that by God’s special, prevenient grace, He created her soul to be the masterpiece of His Mercy in the world, and this special gift of grace within her was the foundation of His whole work of mercy in the world through Christ. Everything about Mary was fashioned by Divine Mercy and for the work of Divine Mercy. No other creature, therefore, so completely manifests God’s mercy as does Mary Immaculate.”

And Mary proclaimed this mercy when visiting Elizabeth, bringing Jesus, The Divine Mercy, hidden yet within her womb, and in her Magnificat said: “He has mercy on those who fear him in every generation,” and “He has come to the help of his servant Israel for he has remembered his promise of mercy, the promise he made to our fathers, to Abraham and his children forever.”

St. John Paul II also saw the connection of Mary to Divine Mercy at that time of suffering preceding the Resurrection. In Dives in Misericordia he examined how, “in an exceptional way, she made possible with the sacrifice of her heart her own sharing in revealing God’s mercy. This sacrifice is intimately linked with the cross of her Son, at the foot of which she was to stand on Calvary. Her sacrifice is a unique sharing in the revelation of mercy, that is, a sharing in the absolute fidelity of God to His own love, to the covenant that He willed from eternity and that He entered into in time with man, with the people, with humanity; it is a sharing in that revelation that was definitively fulfilled through the cross.”

“Mary, then, is the one who has the deepest knowledge of the mystery of God’s mercy,” he concluded. “She knows its price; she knows how great it is.” 

And our Mother of Mercy helps us attain mercy. Jesus identified himself to St. Faustina as “The Divine Mercy,” and he gave us what he called his “signature” under his image — “Jesus, I Trust in You.” Jesus also emphasized, “The graces of My mercy are drawn by means of one vessel only, and that is — trust” (Diary, 1578).

Our Blessed Mother also brought this message to Faustina. On Aug. 15, 1936, at Mass just before the elevation of the Host, Faustina recorded:

God’s presence pervaded my soul, which was drawn to the altar. Then I saw the Mother of God with the Infant Jesus. The Infant Jesus was holding onto the hands of Our Lady. A moment later, the Infant Jesus ran with joy to the center of the altar, and the Mother of God said to me, ‘See with what assurance I entrust Jesus into his hands. In the same way, you are to entrust your soul and be like a child to him.’ After these words, my soul was filled with unusual trust.

We have the perfect model of Divine Mercy to follow in the Blessed Virgin Mary, the Mother of Mercy. 

This Divine Mercy Sunday, may we turn to the Mother of Mercy to lead us on the path to repenting, trusting in and accepting her Son as The Divine Mercy.