King of Mercy & Rich In Mercy - Come To Him
Rich in Mercy, Mercy of God as the Presence of Love that is Greater than evil, greater than sin, and greater than death.
Divine Mercy was clearly on the mind of John Paul II early in his papacy. On the First Sunday of Advent, November 30, 1980, he published his second encyclical letter, Rich in Mercy (Dives in Misericordia), in which he describes the mercy of God as the presence of love that is greater than evil, greater than sin, and greater than death. In it, he summons the Church to plead for God's mercy on the whole world.
The publishing of his second encyclical was, in fact, a significant event in the life of the Holy Father and in his relationship to Faustina and The Divine Mercy message and devotion. As evidence of this, in Witness to Hope: The Biography of Pope John Paul II, George Weigel shares from a personal interview in 1997 with John Paul II about the encyclical. It reveals Faustina's influence on him as he began to write it:
As Archbishop of Krakow, Wojtyla had defended Sr. Faustina when her orthodoxy was being posthumously questioned in Rome, due in large part to a faulty translation into Italian of her diary, and had promoted the cause of her beatification. John Paul II, who said that he felt spiritually "very near" Sr. Faustina, had been "thinking about her for a long time" when he began Dives in Misericordia. (Weigel, Witness to Hope. New York, N.Y.: HarperCollins, 1999, p. 387.)
Further, Pope John Paul II himself wrote in striking terms in his final book about his encyclical Rich in Mercy (Dives in Misericordia) and St. Faustina's strong influence on him:
[T]he reflections offered in Dives in Misericordia were the fruit of my pastoral experience in Poland, especially in Krakow. That is where Saint Faustina Kowalska is buried, she who was chosen by Christ to be a particularly enlightened interpreter of the truth of Divine Mercy. For Sister Faustina, this truth led to an extraordinarily rich mystical life. She was a simple, uneducated person, and yet those who read the Diary of her revelations are astounded by the depth of her mystical experience (John Paul II, Memory and Identity. New York, N.Y.: Rizzoli, 2005, pp. 5-6).
There are more examples of the influence of Divine Mercy and Faustina on Pope John Paul II's life, to which he personally testified. On November 22, 1981, Pope John Paul II made his first public visit outside of Rome — following a lengthy recuperation from medical complications he had suffered in the aftermath of the attempt on his life earlier that year on May 13. He traveled on the Feast of Christ the King to the Shrine of Merciful Love in Collevalenza, near Todi, Italy. There, within a few days, an international congress was held to reflect on the encyclical Rich Mercy (Dives in Misericordia).
After celebrating the Holy Sacrifice of the Eucharist, he made a strong public declaration about the importance of the message of mercy right from the beginning of his papacy:
A year ago I published the encyclical Dives in Misericordia. This circumstance made me come to the Sanctuary of Merciful Love today. By my presence I wish to reconfirm, in a way, the message of that encyclical. I wish to read it again and deliver it again.
Right from the beginning of my ministry in St. Peter's See in Rome, I considered this message my special task. Providence has assigned it to me in the present situation of man, the Church, and the world. It could be said that precisely this situation assigned that message to me as my task before God (John Paul II at The Shrine of Merciful Love in Collevalenga, Italy, November 22, 1981).
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