Summary of 7 Secrets of Divine Mercy by Vinny Flynn

Foreword: Monopoly Spirituality

Divine Mercy is a way of life – it is about living lives “shaped by mercy” (Pope Francis).

“Devotion to Divine Mercy is the devotion, the “umbrella” devotion over everything else. Every other devotion in the Church, every ritual, every activity, every teaching is under that umbrella. It’s all there to help us understand and enter into Divine Mercy. Everything in our lives becomes more meaningful, more powerful, more life-changing once we understand and embrace Divine Mercy. It is the primary reality of our existence” (2).

Secret 1: God Has a Plan

“Mercy is the endless outflowing of Trinitarian love” (19).

“The Father’s plan of mercy is to introduce each of His children into the Trinity — the divinize us and unite us with Him and with each other in mutual self-giving love” (203).

Secret 2: Good Enough Isn’t Good Enough

“God expects — and demands — that you and I become holy because He is holy (Lev 20:7). What does this holiness consist of? Being perfect as He is perfect (Mt 5:48). How is this perfection to be expressed? By being merciful as He is merciful (Lk 6:36)” (51). Our job is to long for holiness, to strive for holiness, to dare to be saints!

“The prerequisite for our participation in this plan is holiness — which is only possible if we allow God to fill us with His holiness” (203).

Secret 3: It’s Not Just a Picture of Jesus

The Divine Mercy Image is an icon of Jesus showing us the Father who is rich in mercy.

“Jesus’ hands, together tell us the essential “story” of mercy, the story we most need to hear and understand, the story of how loved we are by God” (85).

“The right hand tells us that all the Father wants to do is bless His children; the left shows us the actual source of that blessing and invites us to come and receive it as it pours out upon us through the open Heart of Christ” (85).

“The Divine Mercy Image is not just a picture of Jesus for us to look at. It’s, in a very real sense, an icon that helps us enter into the reality of the way God looks at us, that helps us see with our inner eyes the way God loves, and thus come to know our merciful Father” (109).

Secret 4: God Loves Backwards

God doesn’t merely love more than we do. He loves differently. Whereas we love others who most deserve our love, God loves those who least deserve His love. We focus on behaviour, God focuses on relationship.

We need to understand the radical difference between the way God loves and the way we tend to love, and come around to His way. We need to learn to love “backwards” (129).

Jesus says to Faustina: “The greater the sinner, the greater the right he has to My mercy… Let the greatest sinners place their trust in My mercy. They have the right before others to trust in the abyss of My mercy… I am more generous toward sinners than toward the just… These souls have a right of priority to My compassionate Heart, they have first access to My mercy” (Diary 723, 1146, 1275, 1541).

“Why do the greatest sinners have the greatest right to God’s mercy? Because they need it most” (127).

Secret 5: Prodigal Doesn’t Mean Bad

We encounter the Prodigal Father in the Divine Mercy Image, freely pouring His mercy out upon all.

The story of the prodigal son is really the story of the prodigal father, who is so full of love that He gives it out freely and in abundance, not based on merit, but on relationship: “This son of mine was dead and is alive again.” (138).

“He is the Prodigal Father, full of love and compassion, always watching and waiting for us to come home. There’s no limit to his generosity. He is always blessing, always inviting us back into His Heart, always squandering grace, squandering love, squandering mercy” (139).

“Conversion to God always consists in discovering and rediscovering the Father who is rich in mercy” (JP2, RM, 13).

Secret 6: You Should Always Pray Now and Then

The Divine Mercy devotions, or “vessels of mercy,” are great ways to receive grace from the fountain of the Father’s mercy by entering into the Passion of Christ. They are all dependent upon trust and reflect and point to the Eucharist.

“By “now and then,” I don’t mean occasionally. I mean we need to pray constantly (see 1 Thes 5:17), offering our prayer both now (in this present moment), and also then (in the past)” (155).

“I give great graces to souls who meditate devoutly on My Passion… There is more merit to one hour of meditation on My sorrowful Passion than there is to a whole year of flagellation that draws blood” (Diary, 737, 369).

“The graces of My mercy are drawn by means of one vessel only, and that is — trust. The more a soul trusts, the more it will receive” (Diary, 1758).

The Divine Mercy Image is a perfect example of Christ’s insistence on trust — “Jesus, I trust in You.” This Image is a complete, visual “Theology of Divine Mercy” and a powerful icon of the Paschal Mystery (159).

The chaplet of divine mercy must be prayed from the heart with trust. Jesus said it would have great power and draw “unimaginable graces” (Diary 687) — “Everything can be obtained by means of this prayer” (1128). The chaplet is a prayer — and an offering — to the Father meant to transform us into “living Chaplets.” It is like a mini-Mass: an extension of the Eucharist to each moment (172). We each make the offering ourselves (“I offer you”) for “us” and “the whole world”.

Divine Mercy Sunday is really the Feast of the Prodigal Father — “the day when, for the sake of His Son’s sorrowful Passion, the Father lets out all the stops, opening up all the floodgates of the ocean of mercy, and pouring out the fruits of Christ’s sacrifice on everyone” (185).

Secret 7: The Goal is Transformation

Divine Mercy is all about transformation — to become transparent to God, so restored in the Father’s likeness, so filled with God’s own life, His holiness, that we reflect His eternal glory (208).

“Just as, by gazing at the Divine Mercy Image, we’re supposed to become what we behold, so, as we receive the Eucharist (the real Divine Mercy Image), we are supposed to become who we receive, to become living Eucharist, living images of Divine Mercy in the world” (216).

Some questions to conclude:

How am I serving the Lord’s plan of mercy? How am I helping Him in His thirst for souls?

Am I trying to trust even more? To love as Jesus loves? To forgive as He forgives?

Am I asking Him to fill me so full of mercy that I can radiate it to others?

Am I allowing my heart to be so wrenched open by the roundedness of those around me that I’m compelled to try to help them?

Can I say with Jesus, “The very inner depths of My being are filled to overflowing with mercy, and it is being poured out upon all” (Diary, 1784)?