Digital Continent Digital Continent_Template amended | Page 207

III D. DIVINE MERCY: GOD’S GIFT AND THE CHURCH’S MISSION 323
By reason of the Incarnation of the Son of God…Mary's Magnificat… sings of
"mercy from generation to generation.” …Pondering upon…these inspired words,
…applying them to the sufferings of the great human family; following in the
footsteps of the tradition of the Old and the New Covenant, and above all of Jesus
Christ Himself and His Apostles,…the Church must bear witness to the mercy of
God revealed in Christ, in the whole of His mission as Messiah, professing it in
the first place, as a salvific truth of faith, and as necessary for a life in harmony
with faith, and then, seeking to introduce it and to make it incarnate in the lives
both of her faithful and …in the lives of all people of good will. Finally, the
Church - professing mercy and remaining always faithful to it, has the right and
the duty to call upon the mercy of God, imploring it in the face of all the
manifestations of physical and moral evil (Pope John Paul II, Dives in
Misericordia, VII).
III D.1 Divine Mercy: God’s Gift to the Church and to the Whole World 324
Jesus Christ Himself told Sr. Faustina, “I am Love and Mercy itself” (Diary, # 1074).
St./Pope John Paul II also wrote in his Encyclical Letter, Dives in Misericordia that Christ is the
“Incarnation of merciful love” (DM, I-2, II-3), the “Gospel of mercy” (DM, II-3), the “clear sign
of God…who is Father, who is love…who is rich in mercy” (Eph 2:4; DM, II-3), lxxxii as well as
the “Revelation of mercy…revealed in the Cross and Resurrection” (DM, I-1). 325
323
Pope John Paul II, Dives in Misericordia (DM), V-7; Faustina, Diary, # 723, 1075.
Ibid., Faustina, Diary, # 1745-1747, 723, 1632, 167, 848, 965, 1075; Pope John Paul II, Dives in Misericordia, I-
1-2, V-7-8; CCC, 257-260, 476-478, 480, 169, 623.
325
Ibid., Pope John Paul II. Dives in Misericordia, I-1-2, II-3, V-7-8; CCC, 65, 238-241, 461, 781.
324
196