Pray
The Divine Mercy Chaplet
A prayer of trust in God's mercy: for yourself, and for a world that badly needs it.
Where it comes from
The Chaplet of Divine Mercy traces back to St. Faustina Kowalska, a Polish religious sister who died in 1938 and reported private revelations of Jesus emphasizing his mercy. St. Faustina was canonized by Pope John Paul II in 2000, and that same year he established Divine Mercy Sunday: the Second Sunday of Easter: as a feast for the universal Church.
Devotion to the Divine Mercy Chaplet is widespread in the Catholic Church, but the private revelations behind it belong to a different category than dogma: you are never required to accept every detail of a private revelation to be a faithful Catholic. The prayer itself, however, is a simple and widely used act of trust in God's mercy.
How to pray it
1. Begin
Make the Sign of the Cross. Pray one Our Father, one Hail Mary, and the Apostles' Creed.
2. On the large bead before each decade
"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."
3. On each of the ten small beads
"For the sake of his sorrowful Passion, have mercy on us and on the whole world." Repeat ten times.
4. Repeat for five decades
The pattern of one 'Eternal Father...' followed by ten 'For the sake of his sorrowful Passion...' repeats five times in total.
5. Close
Pray three times: "Holy God, Holy Mighty One, Holy Immortal One, have mercy on us and on the whole world."
The Chaplet is traditionally prayed on ordinary Rosary beads. It is often prayed at 3:00 pm, remembered as the hour of Jesus' death, but it can be prayed at any time.
What mercy does (and does not) mean
Mercy, in Catholic teaching, is God's love reaching toward what is broken: it is about God's faithfulness to you, not about what you owe another person.
Mercy does not mean: that harm didn't matter, that you must trust someone who hurt you again, that you must stay in contact with someone unsafe, or that forgiving a person requires reconciling with them. Mercy never requires returning to someone who harms you. Safety and mercy are not in conflict.
Mercy does mean: that you are not defined by your worst moment, that God's love for you does not run out, and that you can bring the whole truth of your life (including anger, doubt, and exhaustion) into this prayer without pretending otherwise.