On Sunday, we celebrate Divine Mercy Sunday.
From the 2020 Book of Grace-Filled Days.
(awkwardly edited to cut off the original date.)
A while back, I posted on an interesting fresco in Florence – an “Allegory of Mercy.” Here’s that post, and here’s the image and a bit about it.
In the fresco, a large frontally-posed female figure, a personification of the Lord’s Mercy, towers over smaller kneeling male (to her right, the position of privilege) and female figures (to her left). Eleven historiated roundels depicting the six canonical works of mercy, plus the non-canonical seventh, burial of the dead, decorate her cope. An early-Florentine cityscape, with Santa Croce and the Cathedral still under construction, is at the base of the fresco. The entire composition is framed by a decorative border representing the personified virtues; interspersed herein are an image of a stork defending its nest against a serpent and a pelican piercing its breast to feed its young. While similar in composition to the popular Madonna of Mercy image-type, the painting’s central figure is commonly believed to be an allegorical representation of the Lord’s Mercy rather than the Virgin Mary; on her crown are inscribed the words “Misericordia domini.”
Related to Sunday’s Gospel, here’s a page or two from The Loyola Kids Book of Bible Stories.
The story includes most of the post-Resurrection appearances, including the Thomas narrative, the focus of Sunday’s gospel.
Arranged, as I have mentioned before, according to the point in the liturgical year one would be most likely to hear that passage proclaimed in Mass (most Catholic’s point of encounter with Scripture).
And then, St. Faustina from The Loyola Kids Book of Heroes.