Following immediately after Easter Sunday is Divine Mercy Sunday, which has become one of the most treasured feasts of the Easter season. This year it is celebrated on April 27. But where did this relatively new (less than 100-year-old) feast come from, and how should you honor it?
Mankind’s need for the message of Divine Mercy took on urgency in the early 20th century, when civilization began to lose respect for the sanctity and dignity of human life. In the 1930s, Jesus chose a humble Polish nun, St. Maria Faustina Kowalska, to receive private revelations about Divine Mercy that were recorded in her diary. This was at a time when St. John Paul II later noted the evil ideologies of nazism and communism were forming, calling Sister Faustina’s message that God is mercy the only truth capable of offsetting that evil.