March 29, 2024 / 12:26 AM
Next April 7, Second Sunday of Easter, the Church celebrates Divine Mercy Sunday.
During the Jubilee of the year 2000, Pope Saint John Paul II established for the entire Church that the Sunday following Easter Sunday – the last day of the Easter Octave – be called the Sunday of Divine Mercy.
The Holy Father desired that this Sunday be dedicated in a special way so that the faithful consider with gratitude the gift of divine mercy, by which we receive forgiveness again and again, by virtue of the death and resurrection of Christ. That now distant Second Sunday of Easter in the year 2000 was chosen for the canonization of Saint Faustina Kowalska (1905-1938), compatriot of the Polish Pope and – as Benedict XVI called her – ‘messenger of the merciful Jesus’.