Deacon Mike Meyer / Sunday, April 12, 2026 / Categories: Blog, Homilies What Does Divine Mercy Look Like? Homily for the Second Sunday of Easter, Divine Mercy Sunday Sister Faustina Kowalska was very upset. You see, one of the extraordinary messages she received from Jesus in 1931 at the convent of the Sisters of Our Lady of Mercy in Poland was that she should create a picture of him as he appeared to her in that moment, a picture that would later be known as the Divine Mercy image. As she described it, “I saw Jesus clothed in a white robe. One of His hands was raised in a gesture of blessing, and with the other, He was touching the robe on His chest. There were two big rays, one red and the other pale, emerging from a fold in the robe on His chest.”[1] Several years later, a Polish artist named Eugeniusz Kazimirowski attempted to capture the image described by Sister Faustina on canvas, but he never did so to Sister Faustina’s satisfaction. Again, in her words, “The painting was never as beautiful as Jesus.” In my view, Kazimirowski had an impossible task. What does Divine Mercy look like? To paint a picture of Divine Mercy on this Divine Mercy Sunday, we need to get to know our subject first. Let’s start with mercy. In English, the word mercy means lenient or compassionate treatment of people who are in distress or who’ve offended us in some way. But the Hebrew word for mercy, a variant of which is used in today’s Psalm, has a more vivid, more colorful meaning. That word, chesed, “has a rich variety of meanings ranging from ‘loyalty’ and ‘fidelity’ to ‘mercy’ and ‘loving-kindness’. At root, it carries a sense of ‘devotion’ or ‘commitment to another,”[2] which leads us to Divine Mercy. Appearing some 250 times in the Old Testament, chesed is one of the most important words in the Hebrew Scriptures. Why? It describes the never-failing, covenantal relationship God has with humanity, and what’s expected of us in our relationship with God and with each other. “Time and again, Scripture emphasizes how [God] is lovingly bound to his children and manifests his fatherly care through guidance, faithfulness, and mercy,”[3] the very mercy that our Psalmist tells us, “endures forever.” As Sister Faustina wrote, “Heaven and earth may change, but God’s mercy will never be exhausted.” History proves, though, that God’s much better at extending mercy to us than we are to God and others. On a human level, chesed is the obligation to remain faithful to God and to extend God’s steadfast loving-kindness, God’s mercy, to each other. We, however, aren’t always faithful to God. We doubt God’s truth and even God’s existence, and we tend to prefer justice over mercy. We seek punishment on our afflicters and vengeance for the wrongs committed against us under the mistaken belief that justice and mercy are opposing forces. They aren’t. They go hand-in-hand. “Mercy without justice is the mother of dissolution; justice without mercy is cruelty.”[4] And that’s why the Divine Mercy image is so important for us today. Jesus gave Sister Faustina the Divine Mercy image to remind us that God’s love for us—all of us—never fails, and his mercy is greater than all our sins combined. If we turn to him in trust to receive his mercy, that mercy will flow through us to others so all can share God’s joy. So now that we know what Divine Mercy is, we can return to the question at hand: “What does Divine Mercy look like?” Well, we see it in our first reading from Acts when the early Christian community divided their property and possessions among all according to each one’s needs. We see it in St. Peter’s acknowledgment that our new birth into eternal life through Jesus’ passion, death, and resurrection is God’s most merciful gift to us. We see it when Jesus repeatedly extends God’s peace to his terrified disciples in our Gospel, and when he lets doubting Thomas touch his wounds, instead of casting him out for his disbelief. Divine Mercy appears to us today, too. We see it when we join the Holy Father in person, online, or in spirit to pray for peace in our war-ravaged world. We see it when we support our less fortunate brothers and sisters through our Thanksgiving and 40 Cans for Lent food collections. We see Divine Mercy in the selfless service of our military and first responders. We see it in the tender care of a parent for a child and a child for a parent. We see it when we come to Church to humbly receive God’s mercy in the Sacrament of Penance and in Christ’s abiding presence among us in the Eucharist. No, we can’t capture Divine Mercy in all its beauty on canvas, but we know it when we see it. That’s why Sister Faustina was so upset, and I understand how she felt. In Kazimirowski’s painting, Jesus looks too stern to convey a message of mercy. The version we have here in the sanctuary, painted by Adolf Hyla, is nice, but it portrays Jesus as unnaturally pale, in my opinion. In a third approved version, painted by Robert Skemp, Jesus appears, well, stoned . . . and I don’t mean with rocks. After leaving Kazimirowski’s studio, Sister Faustina went straight to her convent’s chapel and had a good cry. Through her tears, she asked Jesus, “Who will paint You as beautiful as You are?” Jesus answered, “Not in the beauty of the color, nor of the brush is the greatness of this image, but in my grace.” That’s what Divine Mercy looks like. Readings: Acts 2:42-47; Psalm 118; 1 Peter 1:3-9; John 20:19-31 [1] Saint Faustina, Jesus, I Trust in You, https://www.saint-faustina.org/image/. [2] Scott Hahn and Curtis Mitch, eds., The Ignatius Catholic Study Bible, 2d Catholic ed. (San Francisco: Ignatius Press2024), 170. [3] Hahn and Mitch, 170. [4] Thomas Aquinas, Super Matthaeum, Cap. V, 1.2. Choose God Print 69 Please login or register to post comments.