Divine Mercy Sunday at St. Paul May 1

St. Paul will celebrate Divine Mercy Sunday this coming Sunday (May 1) at 1:45 p.m. The service will begin with with Benediction. There will be quiet prayer time, Scripture reading, praying the Divine Mercy Chaplet, Devotions and Litany and prayerful music.

The Feast is dedicated to the Devotion to the Divine Mercy and is celebrated on the first Sunday following Easter. The feast was established by the late Pope John Paul on April 30, 2000 on the occasion of Blessed Sister Faustina’s canonization.

(Pope John Paul coincidentally died on the vigil of the Divine Mercy Sunday in 2005)

Devotion to Jesus as The Divine Mercy is based on the writings of Saint Faustina Kowalska, an uneducated Polish nun who, in obedience to her spiritual director, wrote a diary of about 600 pages recording the revelations she received about God's mercy. Even before her death in 1938, the devotion to The Divine Mercy had begun to spread.

One of the most well-known and largest Divine Mercy Sunday celebrations in the country is at the National Shrine of The Divine Mercy in Stockbridge, Mass. The service attracts between 15,000 and 20,000 and is staffed by 500 to 600 volunteers.

The feast was celebrated last year on April 29 in the Summit South 76 Cluster at Queen of Heaven parish.

Would you like to know how to pray the Divine Mercy Chaplet to be prepared for the service? Click here to download a nice PDF file in our online storage area you can download and print out. The file prints on one 11/1/2 by 8 inch (horizontal page) which can be folded into a neat tri-fold you can carry with you. The prayer instructions also will be provided at the service on Sunday

Check out the shrine in Stockbridge