Dom's Story of Love and FORGIVENESS
Stories of Divine Mercy
Our Sunday Visitor Article, April 2017
Every year, on the first Sunday after Easter, we celebrate God’s mercy, which is greater than any sin we may ever commit. This feast day, known as Divine Mercy Sunday, was established 17 years ago by Pope St. John Paul II and is observed by Catholics all over the world.
The inspiration for Divine Mercy Sunday can be found in the diaries of St. Faustina Kowalska, a Polish nun who experienced apparitions of Jesus and recorded his messages. “My daughter,” Jesus told her, “say that I am love and mercy personified.”
During the canonization of St. Faustina on April 30, 2000, Pope John Paul II proclaimed that henceforth the first Sunday after Easter “will be called ‘Divine Mercy Sunday.'” He also named St. Faustina the “apostle of Divine Mercy” and urged everyone to make her “beautiful exclamation your own, ‘Jesus, I trust in you!'”
Five years later, on the vigil of Divine Mercy Sunday in 2005, Pope John Paul II died. He was beatified on Divine Mercy Sunday in 2011 by Pope Benedict XVI. On Divine Mercy Sunday in 2014, Pope Francis canonized Pope John Paul II.
On this Divine Mercy Sunday, we share stories of how people have experienced Divine Mercy. It is our hope that you will recognize in these stories your own call to trust Jesus, to accept his mercy, and to become an instrument of his mercy by extending love and forgiveness to others.
Mercy and forgiveness
Seventeen-year-old Dominik Pettey was returning from a party with friends on Nov. 1, 2014, when their car ran out of gas on the Beltway around Washington, D.C. The boys were waiting for help when an oncoming vehicle veered onto the shoulder of the road and crashed into them. Dominik, who was sitting in the backseat, died instantly.
“Our family has always had a deep devotion to Divine Mercy,” his parents, Magdalena and Patrick Pettey of Potomac, Maryland, recalled. “When our children were little, we traveled to Poland several times where we prayed at the tomb of St. Faustina. There was never any doubt in our minds that it was the merciful Jesus who was carrying us through the devastating death of Dominik. And we came to believe that through Dominik’s death, others would experience Divine Mercy.”
Dominik’s funeral was held at Washington’s Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception, the largest Catholic church in North America. The Pettey family asked that the Divine Mercy image be placed in front of the ambo, and that the Rosary and the Divine Mercy Chaplet be prayed before Dominik’s funeral Mass began. On one side of Dominik’s memorial card was the Divine Mercy image and on the other side was how to pray the Divine Mercy Chaplet.
“After the Mass a family member read a statement which expressed our deep sorrow, but also our belief that God would not have taken Dominik unless he had a mission for him,” the Petteys said. “We asked each person in the standing-room-only Basilica to practice active mercy and kindness toward one another, to share with the world that we have an all-merciful God, and to believe that no sin is too great that it cannot be forgiven.”
In the months that followed, small miracles began to unfold. Several people had dreams about Dominik. Some said they felt Dominik’s presence. Others said Dominik and the message of mercy had renewed their faith and changed their lives. It changed the lives of Magdalena and Patrick Pettey, as well.
“Because of our devotion to Divine Mercy, we knew that we wanted to forgive the woman who killed our son,” Patrick Pettey explained. “We called her the day before Dominik’s funeral to see how she was doing. In the months that followed, we continued to pray for her. We met with her in person 11 months after the accident. She told us that she was suffering, too, and how much our forgiveness has helped her.”
“When you don’t forgive, you hold onto anger, and it only hurts you more,” Magdalena Pettey said. “Our faith in Divine Mercy helped us to forgive — even though we still feel the loss and the sadness of losing our son. But God gives us the grace we need, and when we are open, more graces come to us.”