Every pope since Pope John Paul II has made God’s mercy a hallmark of his pontificate. Pope Leo XIV, who leaves today on an eleven-day journey to Africa, is just getting started.
After greeting pilgrims in St. Peter’s Square, the Holy Father briefly referenced Divine Mercy Sunday in his Regina Caeli message, noting that it was founded by John Paul II. “The Sunday Eucharist is indispensable to the Christian life,” he continued. “It is through the Eucharist that our hands become the hands of the Risen One, giving witness to his presence, mercy, and peace.”
Leo has not been shy about invoking God’s mercy. When he closed the Holy Doors of St. Peter’s Basilica at the end of the Jubilee Year on January 6, he noted that “the gate” of God’s mercy will never be shut; God “will always sustain the weary, raise up those who have fallen,” and offer “good things” to those who place their trust in him.
God’s Eternal Mercy
Divine Mercy isn’t new, but the Catholic Church’s emphasis on it is. God has always loved us with an incomprehensible passion. He is always ready to forgive us if we only turn to him with our whole heart, especially when we trust Jesus with fearless abandon.
Catholic teaching holds that mercy is God’s greatest attribute. We can’t fully understand who God is without reflecting on his mercy—his radical love, forgiveness, and kindness toward those who don’t deserve it, which is to say all of us! Justice means giving us what we deserve. The truth is that we all deserve hell. However, mercy goes further, offering what we truly need: second chances, healing, and hope.
The Catechism of the Catholic Church explains that “God reveals his fatherly omnipotence by the way he takes care of our needs . . . above all by his mercy” (270), and more directly, that “the gospel is the revelation in Jesus Christ of God’s mercy to sinners” (1846).
Scripture teaches that God forgives those who truly repent and turn back to him: “If we acknowledge our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive our sins and cleanse us from every wrongdoing” (1 John 1:9). This promise is echoed in Acts 3:19, which calls us to “repent . . . and be converted, that your sins may be wiped away,” showing that conversion opens the door to God’s mercy and forgiveness.
The Catechism emphasizes that no sin is beyond God’s forgiveness if we turn back to him with a sincere heart. It states, “There is no offense, however serious, that the Church cannot forgive. . . . There is no one, however wicked and guilty, who may not confidently hope for forgiveness, provided his repentance is honest” (982), underscoring that God’s mercy is always greater than our sin.
A Time for Mercy
This message took on special importance in our time through a young Polish nun named St. Faustina Kowalska. From 1931 to 1938, the young mystic experienced powerful visions of Jesus, who spoke to her about his mercy and asked her to share that message with the world. He entrusted her with a remarkable mission: “You will prepare the world for my final coming.”
Faustina didn’t travel the world or preach to the masses. Instead, she followed Jesus’ instructions to commission a painting of him as she saw him—with red and pale rays coming from his heart—with the words “Jesus I trust in You” at the bottom. Faustina wrote about her experiences in a diary, describing her conversations with Jesus and his call for people to trust him. Her diary has become one of the most important spiritual works of modern times.
Faustina’s message may not have gained traction without Pope St. John Paul II. As the archbishop of Kraków, he opened her cause for sainthood in the 1960s. Later, as pope, he continued to shepherd her cause, finally canonizing her on April 30, 2000, as the first saint of the new millennium.
In a despairing world, John Paul declared, no one is too far from God to be forgiven. “There is nothing that man needs more than Divine Mercy,” he said in 1997.
Following in his footsteps, Pope Benedict XVI taught that God’s mercy and justice are not contradictory, but complementary aspects of divine love, with mercy as the supreme, crowning attribute that fulfills justice. In his 2007 encyclical Spe Salvi, he taught that “grace does not cancel out justice. It does not make wrong into right. . . . Both justice and grace must be seen in their proper relationship to each other” (44).
Then came Pope Francis, who surprised many by how forcefully he focused on mercy. During his Extraordinary Jubilee of Mercy, churches around the world opened special Holy Doors as a sign that God’s mercy is open to everyone. Francis also encouraged people to go to confession so they could personally experience God’s mercy.
When Francis canonized Mother Teresa during the Year of Mercy, he hailed her as an “icon of the Good Samaritan,” calling her a model and “generous dispenser of divine mercy.”
With Pope Leo, it’s clear that the Church’s focus on mercy isn’t going away. In fact, I believe that it will grow stronger, because Jesus has made it clear that the Magisterium is to play a central role in preparing the world for his final coming.
Leo mentioned Faustina’s apparitions in his address to Polish pilgrims to Rome in February, and in last year’s apostolic letter on the 1,700th anniversary of the Council of Nicaea, he wrote, “In the face of disasters, wars and misery, we bear witness to God’s mercy to those who doubt him only when they experience his mercy through us.”
It’s fair to expect that the American pope will continue to emphasize Divine Mercy because, as John Paul II taught, it’s what the world needs most.
Justice vs. Mercy
Some Catholic pundits believe that the world needs more of God’s justice. Justice will come. We must first try to wrap our minds around the fact that God’s love for his people is simply beyond us. The Lord’s love for us—demonstrated by his death on the cross—is simply not logical. It’s a supernatural love.
Divine Mercy, in a sense, refutes Pelagianism, the heresy named after Pelagius, a fifth-century monk who taught that human beings can achieve holiness and salvation through their own efforts, without the need for God’s grace. The Church rejects this idea because it contradicts core Christian teaching about sin and grace. Pelagianism denies the reality of original sin and the absolute necessity of grace. Catholic teaching holds that we are wounded by sin and depend entirely on God’s grace, especially through Jesus Christ, for salvation.
Divine Mercy challenges us to ponder God’s mercy more deeply, to abandon ourselves to it, and to incorporate it into our own lives. As we forgive, we will be forgiven.
In the end, the message Jesus gave Faustina is one of hope. It reminds us that no matter how far we’ve strayed, Jesus longs for us to come back. No one is beyond God’s love.
If we can incorporate this teaching into our own lives, even in small ways, it will transform us and the whole world.