The Gift of Divine Mercy

Third week of Lent 2022

Dear Friends,

I hope you are having a lovely day. It is warm and sunny here- such a nice change from the snow and ice! The temperature should get up to the mid 70’s and yesterday while walking to early morning Rosary and Mass, the birds were singing and everything smelt fresh after last night’s rain.

I left off last week with the promise to talk to you about Divine Mercy this week. As you know, I just moved to my new place a few weeks ago. I live within walking distance to church and the congregation was very welcoming. Within the first week, I was invited to both a Bible Study class and Cenacle. I had no idea what “Cenacle” was, but I said I would come.

So, later I looked up the word and found out it was a group of people who discuss a certain topic, but more than that it is the name of the room where the Last Supper took place. So, I called one of the ladies who had invited me to ask more about it and she said it was a discussion group about Divine Mercy and about the book, “Diary of Saint Maria Faustina Kowalska”.

I was surprised, having just asked the Father a couple of months ago, on New Year’s Eve, if I could learn more about the Chaplet of Divine Mercy! Now, here I was invited to a discussion group about this beautiful prayer.

So, I did a little research on this saint…

Saint Maria Faustina Kowalska was a Catholic nun and Mystic in Poland in the early 1900’s. She had many experiences with Jesus in which Jesus spoke to her and she kept His words in a diary, along with her own thoughts of her experiences with Him. He spoke to her about the extreme importance of Divine Mercy and forgiveness, of how His blood had been spilled out for all people of the world and this gift could bring them forward into eternal light. He taught her the Chaplet of Divine Mercy, giving her the words to say. He told her that when this prayer was said, it could bring souls to heaven because He, Himself, would stand between the prayer and the soul, pouring out His own Mercy-not as a judge, but as a Savior.

That this prayer could be said even after death by those living, and the soul of the departed would be shown mercy because with God there is no time or space. I cannot express how awe-inspiring this prayer is. If you have never heard it, please read it, pray it, because there is a depth to it that is indescribable.

Here is the webpage on how to pray the Chaplet of Divine Mercy and below that the Divine Mercy website:

This prayer for me is life-changing because, again, another prayer was answered. I have, for years now, been searching for my ancestors and now, with Ancestry.com, and all the other tools we have for genealogy, I have found several.

About two years ago it came to me to pray for my ancestors and I took my first ancestral trip in 2019, and I prayed at each of their graves, going back to the 1400s. Of course, I could not find all the graves, because some are lost to history, but I would find the nearest church to where I thought they might be or where they lived, and prayed there, trusting that the Father would know, because He does know. Now, I have been given this gift of the Chaplet of Divine Mercy to pray for them.

I do want to share with you later on some of my experiences with praying for ancestors and the importance of it. However, next week I would like to write about the image of Divine Mercy, which Saint Maria Faustina Kowalska had painted from the image that Jesus showed her of Himself. Until next week!

Yours in Christ Light- Jody