“God is not outdone by evil. So, in a time of great evil, God wants to give even greater graces.”
Mercy is “Love’s second name.” It’s a particular kind of love, a particular mode of love when it encounters suffering, poverty, brokenness, and sin. Divine Mercy is when God’s love meets us and helps us in the midst of our suffering and sin. From our perspective, then, every good we receive is an expression of Divine Mercy.
Divine Mercy was brought to us through the mystic Sister Maria Faustina Kowalska (now St. Faustina). Being a mystic means she received extraordinary experiences of the Lord Jesus in prayer. In fact, Jesus appeared to her and even spoke with her.
Why did Jesus come to Sister Faustina? He wants to remind us of the heart of Sacred Scripture, namely his mercy for us sinners. In fact, he’s saying to us, “Now is the time of mercy. Now is a time of extraordinary mercy! Now is a time when I want to give especially great graces to the human race. I want to pour out my mercy in a big way.
Why would God want to give us such great graces in our time? St. John Paul II explained it best. First, he pointed out that there were all kinds of blessings in our contemporary society. For instance modern technology. Yet, in the midst of these blessings and in some ways because of the very same advances in technology that brought them, St. John Paul II would say that evil has a reach and power in our day like never before. He would also say “Be not afraid.” Why should we not be afraid? Because of what St. Paul writes in Romans, “Where sin increased, grace abounded all the more” (5:20).
In other words, God is not outdone by evil. So, in a time of great evil, God wants to give even greater graces, and in our time, the
graces are huge, precisely because there’s so much sin.
Writings above from the book by Father Michael Gaitley, “Divine Mercy Explained”.
Written by: Christina Garni
April 2, 2021