THE CHAPLET TO THE DIVINE MERCY


Begin with:

Our Father..., Hail Mary..., I Believe in God...

On the large beads (once):

Eternal Father, I offer You the Body and Blood, Soul and Divinity of Your dearly beloved Son, Our Lord Jesus Christ, in atonement for our sins and those of the whole world.

On the small beads (10 times):

For the sake of His sorroful Passion, have mercy on us and on the whole world.

Conclude with (3 times):

Holy God, Holy Mighty One, Holy Immortal One, have mercy on us and on the whole world.


On September 13, 1935 Sr. Faustina had a vision in her cell of an angel coming to punish the world for its sins. When she saw this sign of God's anger, she started to beg the angel to hold off for a while yet, for the world to do penance. However, when she came before the Majesty of Holy Trinity, she did not dare repeat her plea. It was only when she felt the power of Jesus' grace in her soul that she started praying in the words that she heard from within, and saw that the punishment had been removed from the earth. On the next day, when she entered the chapel Jesus again gave her detailed instruction how this prayer was to be said, using the ordinary rosary beads.

With the words of this prayer: I offer You the Body and Blood, Soul and Divinity, we are offering up to God the Father the Person of God the Son in His Divinity and His Humanity. While praying in this way we behave likewise during an act of offering, which is celebrated in the Eucharistic sacrifice. We can participate in the offering of Christ through the common priesthood of the People of God. By reciting the words of Your dearest Son - we refer to the love which God the Father has for his Son, and through Him for all the people. In this way, we are resorting to the strongest motive we can for God to hear our prayer.

The words: for the sake of His sorrowful passion refer not only to the satisfaction Christ accomplished on the cross, but also they refer to the merciful love revealed the most in the passion of the Son, which God the Father bestows on man. Therefore by reciting the chaplet, we wish that the sorrowful passion of God's Son be not vain, but we want it to bring fruit in our life and in the lives of all people.

In the chaplet we ask for mercy for us and for the whole world . The pronoun "us" denotes the person saying the prayer and those for whom he/she is or wishes to pray. Whereas the words the whole world stand for all the people alive on earth and the souls suffering in purgatory.

In a dozen or so revelations the Lord Jesus showed the value and effectiveness of this prayer pointing out to the promises which are connected with it. It pleases me to grant souls everything they ask of Me when they say the chaplet, if what you ask for is compatible with My will. The will of God is an expression of His merciful love for man, so anything that is not compatible with it is either evil or harmful, and thus cannot be granted by the Heavenly Father. The specific promises concern the hour of death: the grace of happy and peaceful death. The grace in question will be received not only by those who recite the chaplet themselves, but also by the dying at whose deathbed other people say the chaplet. Priests will recommend it to sinners as their last hope of salvation. Even if there were a sinner most hardened, if he were to recite this chaplet only once, he would receive grace from My infinite mercy - says the Lord Jesus. Thus the greatness of this promise rests in the fact that it is to be granted to any sinner who should recite the whole chaplet at least once, but in the spirit of devotion to the Divine Mercy that is in the attitude of trust, humility, and in sincere repentance for his sins. The recitation of the chaplet should not only be an outward act of inner trustfulness , but it should also be persistent. For Jesus promised that we would be able to obtain anything by saying this chaplet, but nowhere - except for the grace of good death - did He say that once was enough.

Besides the exclamatory prayer: Jesus I Trust in You, the chaplet is the best known and most popular prayer to the Divine Mercy. It is recited in all corners of the world and has been translated even into some African dialects.