Not for nothing did Pope John Paul II make Sister Faustina Kowalska the first saint of the third millennium.

For the simple Polish nun was not only a model of holiness and exemplary generosity, but she was also a special messenger for Christ.

In a series of private revelations from 1931 to 1938, later deemed by the Church to be authentic and not contradictory to the public revelation of Scripture in any way, Jesus asked Sister Faustina to be his secretary of Divine Mercy.

Following through on the instructions she said the Lord gave her, she brought the world the message that Jesus’ limitless mercy is available to even the greatest of sinners. Christ also asked Sister Faus-tina to show people how to draw upon his mercy by praying a new prayer, the Chaplet of Divine Mercy, and by venerating an image he gave of himself as the Divine Mercy. (The popular image shows Jesus with red and white rays emanating from his Sacred Heart; underneath are the words: “Jesus, I trust in you.”)

And he asked that a new feast of Divine Mercy be celebrated by the Church on the first Sunday after Easter. This the Holy Father made official the same day he canonized Sister Faustina — April 30, 2000.

Oceans of mercy and special graces are available for the claiming on what is now known simply as Divine Mercy Sunday. But Christ never said Divine Mercy was to be a one-day deal. To the contrary, he made it clear we're supposed to live out the Divine Mercy message all year long.

“We have to be vessels and icons of Divine Mercy in our daily lives,” says Dr. Brian Thatcher, who founded the Eucharistic Apostles of the Divine Mercy in 1995. “Our niche as Eucharistic Apostles is to help people understand that.” His group is a lay-outreach ministry of the Marians of the Immaculate Conception at the National Shrine of Divine Mercy in Stockbridge, Mass.

Thatcher had already given up his medical practice to spread the Divine Mercy message full time after a personal conversion. He was a wealthy physician living a fast-lane life that wasn't holy. But when personal troubles sent him to rock bottom, a friend sent literature on the Divine Mercy. Thatcher said what Jesus told St. Faustina struck him to the core of his heart: “The greater the sinner, the greater the right [he has] to my Divine Mercy.”

From one small group he started for studying the diary of St. Faustina — as integrated with Scripture, the Catechism and the Chaplet of Divine Mercy — a nationwide movement spread. Today the Eucharistic Apostles of Divine Mercy orchestrate Divine Mercy ministries and activities in 21 countries from their home base near Tampa, Fla. (For more on the group, see this week's ProLife Profile.)

Marian Father Seraphim Michalenko, who served as vice postulator for St. Faustina's cause during the canonization process, says we do well to note the close linking of Divine Mercy, Eucharistic adoration and respect for life.

“Actually, the message of Divine Mercy is very Eucharistic,” he says. “It leads to the Eucharist, and the chaplet can be thought of as an extension of the Eucharistic sacrifice. Its whole efficacy comes from the ongoing sacrifice of Jesus.”

Then, too, it is significant that the Eucharistic Apostles for Divine Mercy encourage people to pray for the end of the scourge of abortion in the world, Father Michalenko adds.

Like that group, the Mother of Mercy Messengers, based in San Antonio, also a lay-outreach ministry of the Marians of the Immaculate Conception, promotes the Divine Mercy message in myriad ways. But its main avenue of communication is drama.

“The beautiful thing about our ministry is we can take it to the parish level,” says Joan Maroney, who co-founded the ministry with her husband, David. “We help educate and inspire people about this message so it affects their lives. Then they can't help but share it with others.”

Mother of Mercy Messenger presenters reverently convey the merciful words of Jesus in the heart of St. Faustina's diary using lighting, background music, narration and a Marian Way of the Cross. Through the local pastor or a Marian priest traveling along with the group, the presentation includes exposition of the Blessed Sacrament and the sacrament of reconciliation.

“The program opens up the heart,” David Maroney says. “Then we find they can open their hearts in front of the Blessed Sacrament and in confession.”

The Maroneys also tailor presentations for Catholic schools and religious-education classes of all ages. However old the audience, the program always ends with the praying of the chaplet for the sick and dying, David says.

“The [Divine Mercy] image speaks to the pre-K children, too,” Joan adds. “One little 4-year-old left clutching his image and saying, ‘This is the bestest program I ever saw and I'm going to trust Jesus forever and ever and ever.’”

What that little lad might not yet understand is that the Church makes plenary and partial indulgences available to the faithful on Divine Mercy Sunday. For a concise summary of how to obtain them, go to ewtn.com/ Devotionals/mercy/summary.htm on the Internet.

Bringing Jesus’ mercy and peace to the sick and dying prompted Marie Romagnano, a registered nurse specializing in catastrophic care in New England, to found the Nurses of Divine Mercy.

The idea hit home on Sept. 11, 2001, when she was working at a Boston hospital as a burn and trauma nurse. “I realized the only thing we could do to help these people [in Manhattan] was by praying, specifically by using the Divine Mercy chaplet,” says Romagnano, who began an affiliation with the Marians of the Immaculate Conception at the national shrine in 1984. “The other nurses didn't know what the chaplet was.”

That day prompted her to write, with the help of Father Michalenko and several priests, a pocket-sized manual called Nursing with the Hands of Jesus: a Guide to Nurses for Divine Mercy. Published by the Marians at the national shrine in Stockbridge — and scheduled for release this very Divine Mercy Sunday, April 18 — the book shows all health care workers how to apply the Divine Mercy message and devotion to the care of the sick, injured and dying.

Interest in the new booklet is so high that the sister-director at Lourdes, France, will begin distributing the nurse's manual to the approximately 8,000 nurses and hospice caregivers who accompany pilgrims there yearly.

In years of work with catastrophic injury, Romagnano has come to believe in the powerful healing properties of the Divine Mercy Chaplet and St. Faustina's message.

“I'm thoroughly convinced that, in certain cases, Our Lord directly intervened,” she explains. “Several of my patients recovered miraculously.”

Romagnano tells about a former patient who was pinned under a tractor for eight hours. During six months in the hospital, four in intensive care, “his wife and I took turns praying,” she says. “Several times he was extremely close to death. One time he went into cardiac arrest. Against all odds, he pulled through.”

Romagnano finds even non-Catholic nurses and patients open to the Divine Mercy message. One non-Catholic family of a man dying from an industrial accident had a great devotion to Jesus. When she talked to them about Divine Mercy, the man's son taped the image on his father's chest and asked her to pray the chaplet for him.

The Divine Mercy message knows no bounds.

“We need to forgive, to change, to be merciful, to trust more, to understand the role of suffering in our lives,” Thatcher says. “We have to let those rays of blood and water that emanate from his pierced heart radiate out to us and, through us, to others.”

Joseph Pronechen writes from Trumbull, Connecticut.