Our Spirituality

But Divine Mercy isn’t just a devotion. It’s a way of life. And like the forms of the Divine Mercy devotion, the spirituality of Divine Mercy is also easy to remember. All you have to do is keep in mind your ABCs:

A = Ask for mercy.
B = Be merciful in deed, word, and prayer.
C = Completely trust in Jesus.

Let’s look at these mercy ABC’s more closely.

A = Ask for His Mercy

Through the passion and death of Jesus, an infinite ocean of mercy was made available for all of us. But God, who created us free, will not force anything on us, not even His mercy. He waits for us to turn from our sinfulness. He tells us, “Ask and it will be given to you … for everyone who asks receives” (Mt 7:7, 8).

The Scriptures are filled with examples of how to trust in God and ask for His mercy: the psalms; the faith of Abraham and Moses who pleaded and “bargained” with God; the man who persuaded his friend to get up in the middle of the night to lend him some bread; the persistent widow who secured justice from the unjust judge; the Canaanite woman who “argued” with Jesus about her right to His mercy; and the witness of Mary, whose appeal for mercy at Cana led Jesus to perform His first public miracle.

Pope John Paul II echoes this scriptural message with a new urgency for our own times:

At no time … especially at a moment as critical as our own — can the Church forget the prayer that is a cry for the mercy of God. … The Church has the right and the duty to appeal to the God of mercy ‘with loud cries’ (Rich in Mercy,15).

To St. Faustina, Jesus revealed this same message once again. He gave her three new ways to ask for mercy on the strength of His passion: the Chaplet, the Novena, and prayer at three o’clock; and He taught her to transform her daily life into a continuous prayer for mercy. Through her, He calls us all to ask for His mercy:

Souls that make an appeal to My mercy delight Me. To such souls I grant even more graces than they ask. I cannot punish even the greatest sinner if he makes an appeal to My compassion(Diary,1146). Beg for mercy for the whole world (570). No soul that has called upon My mercy has ever been disappointed (1541).

B = Be merciful in deed, word, and prayer.

Mercy is love that seeks to relieve the misery of others. It is an active love, poured out upon others to heal, to comfort, to console, to forgive, to remove pain. It is the love that God offers us, and it is the love He demands from us for each other: “I give you a new commandment. … As I have loved you, so you must love one another” (Jn 13:34). “Be merciful, even as your Father is merciful” (Lk 6:36).

Repeatedly the Scriptures remind us that the measure we use for others is the measure God will use for us (Lk 6:38), for He will indeed “forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us” (Mt 6:12-14). “Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy” (Mt 5:7), but “judgment is without mercy to one who has shown no mercy” (Jas 2:13). The parables of the Good Samaritan, the Rich Man and Lazarus, and the Unforgiving Servant all demonstrate this essential truth that only if we give mercy can we hope to receive it; for we will be judged on the basis of our merciful actions toward others: “I was hungry and you gave me food …” (Mt 25:35-46).

Our Lord spoke to St. Faustina about the importance of deeds of mercy on several occasions. For instance, he said to her:

I demand from you deeds of mercy which are to arise out of love for Me. You are to show mercy to your neighbors always and everywhere. You must not shrink from this or try to excuse yourself from it. … Even the strongest faith is of no avail without works(Diary, 742). If a soul does not exercise mercy in some way, it will not obtain My mercy on the day of judgment (1317).

In His mercy, Jesus explains to St. Faustina how to exercise mercy:

I am giving you three ways of exercising mercy toward your neighbor: the first — by deed, the second — by word, the third — by prayer. In these three degrees is contained the fullness of mercy, and it is an unquestionable proof of love for Me. By this means a soul glorifies and pays reverence to My mercy (742).

Later, St. Faustina elaborated on these three “degrees” of mercy in the following passage from her Diary:

The first: the act of mercy, of whatever kind. The second: the word of mercy — if I cannot carry out a work of mercy, I will assist by my words. The third: prayer — if I cannot show mercy by deeds or words, I can always do so by prayer. My prayer reaches out even there where I cannot reach out physically (163).

So, how do we exercise mercy? Through our actions, our words, and our prayers, and by developing an attitude of mercy in our daily lives. Every day we can choose to respond to the people and events we encounter by immersing them in the ocean of God’s mercy. And let’s not forget to pray especially for the dying, remembering Jesus’ words to St. Faustina:

Pray as much as you can for the dying. By your entreaties, obtain for them trust in My mercy, because they have most need of trust, and have it the least. Be assured that the grace of eternal salvation for certain souls in their final moments depends on your prayer (1777).

Jesus recommended to St. Faustina to use the Chaplet of Divine Mercy to aid the dying:

At the hour of their death, I defend as My own glory every soul that will say this Chaplet; or when others say it for a dying person, the indulgence [pardon] is the same (811).

C = Completely trust in Jesus

Trust in Jesus is the essence of the message of mercy. When we go to a public fountain, we can draw water from it as long as we have a vessel or container of some kind to put the water in. If our vessel is small, we can only bring back a little water; if it’s large, we can bring back a lot. And anyone with a vessel can draw water from the fountain. The water is there for us, and no one is excluded. All we need is a vessel.

So it is with God’s mercy. In repeated revelations to St. Faustina, our Divine Savior makes it clear that the fountain is His Heart, the water is His mercy, and the vessel is trust:

I have opened My Heart as a living fountain of mercy. Let all souls draw life from it. Let them approach this sea of mercy with great trust(Diary, 1520). On the cross, the fountain of My mercy was opened wide by the lance for all souls — no one have I excluded! (1182). I am offering people a vessel with which they are to keep coming for graces to the fountain of mercy. That vessel is this image with the signature: “Jesus, I trust in You” (327). The graces of My mercy are drawn by means of one vessel only, and that is — trust. The more a soul trusts, the more it will receive (1578).

In the Diary of St. Faustina,we hear our Lord reminding us that we can depend upon His love and that He alone is worthy of our trust:

I never reject a contrite heart (1485). Sooner would heaven and earth turn into nothingness than would My mercy not embrace a trusting soul (1777).

But there is more to trust than just believing that God is trustworthy. We have to act upon that belief. Trust involves a turning back to God, a real conversion of our whole lives to God, repenting of our sins and forgiving others. Trust is a living faith.

Trust means that we agree to let God be God, instead of trying to be God ourselves. (Trust is the antidote to the first sin of Adam.) It means that we agree that God can write the script of our lives, instead of insisting on our own script. It means that we agree with the great pledge we make in the Our Father: “Your will [not mine] be done on earth as it is in heaven.” It means that even in our moments of agony we agree with the cry of Jesus in the Garden, “Not my will, but Yours be done” (Lk 22:42).

God is Mercy itself, and we are called to practice the ABC’s of mercy. As we do, our trust in Jesus is the vital ingredient. We don’t simply ask for mercy, nor do we simply try to be good to other people. We ask with complete trust, and Our Lord fills us with grace so that we can be merciful as our Heavenly Father is merciful.

I am Love and Mercy itself. When a soul approaches Me with trust, I fill it with such an abundance of graces that it cannot contain them within itself, but radiates them to other souls (1074).