Divine Mercy Sunday

PATERSON  Bishop Serratelli was the main celebrant of the noon Mass April 28 in St. Stephen Church here to mark Divine Mercy Sunday (also the Second Sunday of Easter).

Divine Mercy Sunday is a special feast for the Paterson parish brought to the parishioners by Polish-born Father Dariusz Kaminski, pastor. The Mass was celebrated in three languages of the parish community — English, Polish and Spanish. The feast was designated in 2000 by St. Pope John Paul II on the day he canonized St. Faustina Kowlaska. Divine Mercy is based on the diaries of the young Polish nun about her encounters with Jesus, who presented himself to her as Divine Mercy during the 1930s. “There is nothing more man needs than Divine Mercy — that love which is benevolent, which is compassionate, which raises man above his weakness to the infinite heights to the holiness of God,” said Pope John Paul II when he visited the Shrine of Divine Mercy in Krakow, Poland in 1997.

St. Stephen Parish honors the devotion to Divine Mercy year-round with special holy hours, a pilgrim statue of the Blessed Mother that travels from one parishioner’s home to another, and through the devotions of the Eucharistic Missionaries of the Divine Mercy at the parish.