Jesus, Mercy Incarnate

Augustine called the whole octave “the days of mercy and pardon,” and the Sunday “the compendium of the days of mercy.” Now revived as “Mercy Sunday,” this feast enables the Church to celebrate the merciful love of Jesus Christ that flows from His Sacred Heart, and that lies behind all the acts He has undertaken for our salvation . As Pope John Paul II said in his Regina Caeli address on Mercy Sunday in 1995, “the whole Octave of Easter is like a single day,” and the Octave Sunday is meant to be the day of “thanksgiving for the goodness God has shown man in the whole Easter mystery.” In fact, Jesus taught Sr. Faustina that the Feast itself is a gift to the Church from His Merciful Heart. Fr. George Kosicki in his book Special Urgency of Mercy shows that just like the rays of Mercy in the Image, the Feast too flows from the Merciful Heart of Jesus: The Merciful Heart of Jesus as a unifying element of the devotion to the DivineMercy has a fascinating relationship to the requested Feast of Divine Mercy. Our Lord told Sister Faustina: “This feast emerged from my most tender pity and it is confirmed in the depths of my mercy” (Diary 699). The Polish word, translated by “depths” is literally the “Innerds or organs, or viscera.” This is the same word that is used by our Lord to describe the source of the rays of His mercy that come from His pierced Heart: “These two rays issued forth from the very depths of My tender mercy when My agonized Heart was opened by lance on the Cross” (Diary 299). The source of the feast of mercy and the rays of mercy are the same — the pierced Heart of Jesus, the depths of His mercy. 43 There would seem to be a great need in the liturgical calendar for the Feast of Mercy. It would be, as St.Augustine put it, a “com- pendium... of mercy:” a feast that celebrates not just one particular event in the story of our redemption (e.g. Christmas, Holy Thursday, Good Friday, Easter, or Pentecost) but the merciful love 120 Jesus, Mercy Incarnate