 Christ has risen, alleluia. Today we complete the octave of Easter Sunday. This octave is a beautiful tradition in the church, obviously taken from the gospels themselves, in which we celebrate Easter for eight days consecutively. It's unlike the octave of Christmas, which is not a real octave in the proper sense. That's just eight days we're happening to celebrate Christmas day. But the church considers these eight days one liturgical day. It is the day of Easter. It just takes us eight days to celebrate it. It's that big a feast. And it also represents eternity. The number eight in the Bible is the number of eternity or the number of heaven. If you think about it from this perspective, how many days did it take God to create the heavens and the earth? Seven. So that means one more day would be heaven. Eight always represents the eternal day. And so we celebrate for eight days because we're celebrating this gift of salvation and grace as we will forever in heaven. So we complete that today with what is appropriately called Divine Mercy Sunday. Now I'm sure all of you have seen the Divine Mercy image that we have hanging on the confessional. And I want to tell you a little bit about that particular image of the Divine Mercy. You see there are many Divine Mercy images out there, many different slight variations and versions. Jesus looks a little different in this one or in that one. The rays are a little more brown or white or blue or I don't know, right? So there are lots of renditions. And most of you know that I was a religious brother for several years before going into major seminary. The community I was a member of, they're called the Marians of the Immaculate Conception. And they're the community that runs the Divine Mercy Shrine in Stockbridge, Massachusetts. It's the National Shrine of Divine Mercy. They're the religious community that throughout the whole world spreads the devotion to the Divine Mercy. And they're the ones who print and distribute the diary of Saint Faustina. So I have a lot of history obviously with the Divine Mercy in Saint Faustina and this community. Now, I chose this image to hang on our confessional because this is the original Divine Mercy image. It's called the Vilnius image. I hope I'm pronouncing that right, it's Polish. But it was the one that Saint Faustina herself had painted. So Jesus would often appear to her. And at one point he appeared to her under this form, the image of the Divine Mercy. And he said to her, Faustina, I want you to have an image of me painted like this. So she goes to Mother Superior and she says, Mother Superior, Jesus appeared to me and he wants to have an image painted. And so she describes the image and Mother Superior says okay. So they go to a local artist in Vilnius. That's why it's called the Vilnius image. And they commission him to paint this. And Faustina describes to him the vision. He does his sketches and then he works up at least the first draft of the painting. And over the next year or two, regularly Faustina and Mother Superior would go to him to check on the progress of the work and to see how it was going. And Faustina always had corrections. No, no, you got the eyes wrong. They're too far apart. No, no, no, it's got to be a little more blue here. And she was always correcting the artist. And it was never good enough. So the artist was getting a little flustered. Mother Superior was getting a little flustered. And Faustina was just frustrated that it wasn't perfect. So one day in her cell, which is what nuns call their bedroom, in her cell, Jesus appeared to her and he said, Faustina, the image is never going to be perfect. But it's good enough. Leave them alone. So Faustina accepted it. And the next time she saw the image, she said, Jesus approves. It's okay. And this is the image we have. And that's the one I wanted to be here. Because again, it's the original one. And there's something unique and special about this one I want to share with you. And I learned this while with the community. There was a group of laymen and women who worked with the Marians of Immaculate Conception, going around trying to spread devotion to three particular holy images, our late of Guadalupe, the Divine Mercy image, and the Shroud of Turin, the burial cloth of our Lord. And so they had very large versions of these images created, and they would go around all over the country from church to church giving talks and showing these images and handing out little portfolio versions just to spread devotion. And you can imagine people who've committed so much of their time and money and energy to do this clearly have a great love and devotion to these holy images. Well, one day, I won't say by accident, but by providence, they discovered something very fascinating. So you know, they had these really large images. So one of the men was carrying two of them back to the hotel room one day, and he just had them kind of slung together and was just carrying them under his arm. And it was the Shroud of Turin and the original Divine Mercy image. And when he got to the hotel room, his wife was inside, and he set them down just inside the door. And the light from the hallway shone through the images. And his wife was shocked to discover that the faces matched up perfectly. The face that St. Faustina had painted and the face on the Shroud of Turin when sized correctly matched up flawlessly. So for all intents and purposes, the image that we have that Faustina had painted, the Vilnius image, is actually a photograph. It's what Jesus looked like 2,000 years ago, which is exactly what we have in the image of our Lady of Guadalupe. Most people don't realize this. They think our Lady of Guadalupe looks like the indigenous peoples of Mexico. No, she doesn't at all. She looks like a Jewish woman from 2,000 years ago. All the scholars have been able to prove this. So our Lady of Guadalupe and the Divine Mercy image are basically heavenly photographs of our Lord and our Lady, which is why it's so appropriate to have a powerful devotion to them. But if you think about this image in particular, the Divine Mercy image, this is how Jesus appeared to the apostles today in the Gospel. You can imagine him there, not only on the first day of the Resurrection, last Sunday, but today, the eighth day, he appears and he says to Thomas, this is what he looked like, still with the wounds in his hands feet inside, in a white tunic, radiating light. Thomas, come, touch my hands and my feet. Here, put your hand into the wound in my side. That's the Divine Mercy image. And that's why this is Divine Mercy Sunday. The Church recognized the connection. And she also recognized that on this day, in particular, we hear Jesus giving the power to the apostles to forgive sins in his name. That's what the Mercy of our Lord is all about, the forgiveness of sin. Without mercy, we are lost. Without mercy, every soul is damned for eternity. But because of this mercy, because of the suffering, death and resurrection that we behold in the image of Divine Mercy, we have hope and consolation. And rightly, we should often make the words written under the image our own. Jesus, I trust in you. In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.