Jesus appeared and stood in their midst and said to them, “Peace be with you.”
Jesus explained to his disciples before his passion and death that the peace he gives is different than anything the world can give.
When Jesus appeared to his disciples after rising from the dead, he gave them the fullness of the peace that he had promised. That peace is reconciliation with God through the loving obedience with which Jesus suffered his passion and death before rising from the dead.
The peace that Jesus gave to the disciples in the upper room is available to us all. The octave day of Easter is a memorial of God’s mercy especially through the institution of the Sacrament of Penance and Reconciliation. This Sacrament enables us to receive God’s mercy when we have separated ourselves from him, and otherwise to deepen our experience of his mercy throughout life.
Divine Mercy Sunday is part of the revelations of Jesus to St. Faustyna Kowalska in Poland between 1925 and 1938. When the world was about to be torn apart by war, he commissioned her to be an apostle of God’s mercy. The messages included an image, a feast day, and devotional prayers including “Jesus, I trust in you” and the Chaplet of Divine Mercy.
The Chaplet of Divine Mercy is a devotion to the Lord’s passion that invokes God’s mercy on the world. It is prayed using Rosary beads and cane be recited in 5-8 minutes. Although promulgated recently, the prayer is deeply connected to the sacramental and devotional life of the Church. The start of each decade is a prayer of offering the Father the Body, Blood, soul, and divinity of Jesus, forming an extension of the eucharistic sacrifice we offer at Mass. This is followed by asking God’s mercy for the sake of the Lord’s passion ten times. The Chaplet concludes with the trisagion, an ancient prayer used in liturgies of the eastern churches that addresses the Most Holy Trinity as the holy, mighty, and immortal Godhead and asks again for his mercy on us.
We all need the peace that Jesus Christ brings, and receiving God’s mercy more deeply is the key that unlocks that peace. Jesus’ revelations of the Divine Mercy devotions are a wonderful help to experiencing God’s mercy in daily life. Keep an image of Divine Mercy in your home; learn to pray “Jesus, I trust in you” so that it becomes your first word in moments of trial; become familiar with the Chaplet and consider praying it on a daily basis. God has made his unfathomable mercy available to us through the sacraments of the Church and the sufferings we can offer in union with our Lord, and he calls all of us to experience, share, and proclaim it.
-Fr. Nate
