The Second Sunday of Easter is Divine Mercy Sunday, established by Pope John Paul II on the day that he canonized Sister Faustina Kowalska in Rome (April 30, 2000). The special devotion to the divine mercy is based on the writings of Saint Faustina.

On the day of his election as Pope, Benedict XVI spoke about the devotion of Pope John Paul II to the divine mercy, saying: "We listen with joy to the proclamation of the year of mercy… Jesus Christ is divine mercy in person: To find Christ means to find the mercy of God… The day of vengeance and the year of favor coincide in the paschal mystery, in Christ, dead and risen. This is the vengeance of God: He himself, in the person of the Son, suffered for us. The more we are touched by the mercy of the Lord, the more we are in solidarity with his suffering, the more disposed we are to complete in our flesh ‘what is lacking in Christ's afflictions’ (Colossians 1:24)." 

In his Encyclical on the Mercy of God, Dives in Misericordia (Latin for "Rich in Mercy), Pope John Paul II wrote: "Although God ‘dwells in unapproachable light,’ He speaks to man by means of the whole of the universe: ‘Ever since the creation of the world his invisible nature, namely, his eternal power and deity, has been clearly perceived in the things that have been made.’ This indirect and imperfect knowledge, achieved by the intellect seeking God by means of creatures through the visible world, falls short of ‘vision of the Father.’ ‘No one has ever seen God,’ writes St. John, in order to stress the truth that ‘the only Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, he has made him known.’ This ‘making known’ reveals God in the most profound mystery of His being, one and three, surrounded by ‘unapproachable light.’ Nevertheless, through this ‘making known’ by Christ we know God above all in His relationship of love for man: in His ‘philanthropy.’ It is precisely here that ‘His invisible nature’ becomes in a special way ‘visible,’ incomparably more visible than through all the other ‘things that have been made’: it becomes visible in Christ and through Christ, through His actions and His words, and finally through His death on the cross and His resurrection." (Pope John Paul II, from "Dives in Misericordia," November 30, 1980.)

To learn more about Divine Mercy Sunday and the indulgences attached to devotions in honor of the divine mercy, visit https://www.ewtn.com/devotionals/mercy/backgr.htm.