The Chaplet of the Divine Mercy Prayers, Music & Images - Those Who Sing Well, Pray Twice

Separate and distinct images and meditations for each single prayer in The Chaplet of the Divine Mercy. Background music masterworks in separate settings of the ancient hymn Ave Verum Corpus, “Hail True Body” (Pope Innocent VI).

How to Use the Prayers, Music and Images on this page (Click/Expand or Bypass)

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This page is a mockup for a video of The Chaplet of the Divine Mercy currently under development. The video’s elements are in three layers.

The images with captions constitute a front layer. The images were originally developed as slides; in some instances there is excessive “white-space” at the bottom of the images. Please scan past the white-space and continue praying.

For the middle layer, praying out-loud the prayers displayed on the images, which you can do while scanning through each image in a series while each section’s background music is playing, is part of a testing process to eventually set up narration tempo (how fast the prayers are read), to be incorporated in the final video.

The back layer is the music audio tracks. Their length will be carefully balanced with the tempo of the narration; some notes may have to be cut or added to coordinate with the prayer sections. (In Windows, the music can be halted by touching the spacebar.)

You can help develop this project by praying the prayers and commenting the experience.

All seven of the background music selections are historic masterworks of the common practice period (1450-1950) based upon the text of the Gregorian Plainchant hymn “Ave Verum Corpus”, Hail True Body.

To audition the core thematic hymn, click the ▶ button to listen to the Gregorian Plainchant monody Ave Verum Corpus, attributed to Pope Innocent VI (1282-1362), or play the music in a New Window ⧉

Ave verum corpus, natum
de Maria Virgine,
vere passum, immolatum
in cruce pro homine
cuius latus perforatum
fluxit aqua et sanguine:
esto nobis praegustatum
in mortis examine.

[O Iesu dulcis, O Iesu pie,
O Iesu, fili Mariae.
Miserere mei. Amen]

Hail, true Body, born
of the Virgin Mary,
having truly suffered, sacrificed
on the cross for mankind,
from whose pierced side
water and blood flowed:
Be for us a sweet foretaste
in the trial of death!

[O sweet Jesus, O holy Jesus,
O Jesus, son of Mary,
have mercy on me. Amen.]

Prayers, Music and Images for The Chaplet of the Divine Mercy
Introduction	Fourth Decade
First Decade	Fifth Decade
Second Decade	Conclusion
Third Decade

About the Introductory Prayer Section, Background Music (Click/Expand or Bypass)

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To audition background music for the Introductory Prayers of The Chaplet of the Divine Mercy (the short Introductory declarations of The Chaplet of the Divine Mercy, The Pater Noster, The Ave Maria, and The Apostles Creed), click the ▶ button to listen to an organ setting of the composition Ave Verum Corpus by the middle Renaissance Burgundian composer Josquin des Prez (1455-1521), or play the music in a New Window ⧉

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*Jesus’ Eyes Downcast at the Moment He Died*
Thou didst expire, Jesus, but the source of life gushed forth for souls, and the ocean of mercy opened up for the whole world.

O Fount of Life, unfathomable Divine Mercy, envelop the whole world and empty Thyself out upon us.

O Blood and Water, which gushed forth from the Heart of Jesus as a fountain of Mercy for us, I trust in Thee!

I believe in God, the Father almighty, Creator of heaven and earth, and in Jesus Christ, His only Son, our Lord, Who was conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of the Virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died and was buried; He descended into hell; on the third day He rose again from the dead; He ascended into heaven, and sitteth at the right hand of God the Father almighty; from thence He will come to judge the living and the dead. I believe in the Holy Spirit, the holy Catholic Church, the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body, and life everlasting. Amen.

About background music for the First Decade of prayers of The Chaplet of the Divine Mercy (Click/Expand or Bypass)

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To audition background music for the First Decade of prayers of The Chaplet of the Divine Mercy, click the ▶ button to listen to an organ setting of the polyphonic acapella composition Ave Verum Corpus by the high Renaissance English composer William Byrd (1540-1623), or play the music in a New Window ⧉

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Eternal Father, I offer Thee the Body and Blood, Soul and Divinity of Thy Dearly Beloved Son, Our Lord, Jesus Christ, in atonement for our sins and those of the whole world.

He began to fear, and to be heavy, to grow sorrowful, His soul becoming saddened, unto death.

“God put Jesus forward as a propitiation for forgiveness of sins by His blood, by the sacrifice of Himself.” (Romans 3; Hebrews 9) Jesus was tormented in all the members and senses of His body, and was still more bitterly afflicted in all the powers of His soul; so that the internal pains which He endured infinitely surpassed His external sufferings.

From the moment of His Incarnation, He foresaw all the sufferings that He would undergo. (In the Visitation, St. John the Baptist kneels within the womb of his mother, St. Elizabeth, adoring the Lord Jesus enthroned within the womb of His mother, the Blessed Virgin Mary.) Jesus even from the first instant of His life continually suffered all the torments of His Passion; He had before His eyes all the horrid scene of torments and insults which He was to receive from men, the scourges, the thorns, the cross, the outrages of His Passion, the desolate death that awaited Him. *“My sorrow is continually before Me.”* —Psalm 37:18

Him, who knew no sin, He hath made sin for us, that we might be made the justice of God in Him. — 2nd Corinthians 5:21
**He came to die for love of us, that we might come to love Him.** How is it possible for us to enter upon the meditation of the Passion of Jesus Christ without being wounded, as by so many darts of love, by those sufferings and agonies which so greatly afflicted the body and soul of our loving Lord, and without being sweetly constrained to love Him who loved us so much?

His greatest sorrow was that He saw how His Passion and death, offered with supreme love, would be of no avail to many souls. His infinitely meritorious Sacrifice, the power to save men from all their sins, would be received with indifference and ingratitude. *“Souls do not want to accept My mercy.”*

And He said: Abba, Father, all things are possible to Thee: remove this chalice from Me; but not what I will, but what Thou will.

And there appeared to Him an angel from heaven, strengthening Him. And being in an agony, He prayed the longer. – Luke 22:44
I die of love! … Come near and sustain Me in My mystic agony … Will you this evening be angels of consolation to me for one hour? – Fr. Mateo, January Holy Hour

And he came to His disciples, and found them asleep; and He said to Peter: What? Could you not watch one hour with me?

And Jesus said to him: Judas, do you betray the Son of man with a kiss?

**Whom are you seeking?** They answered Him: Jesus of Nazareth. Jesus said to them: **I AM** (**Ἐγώ εἰμι – Ego Eimi- I, I AM**). As soon therefore as He had said to them: **I Am**, they went backward, and fell to the ground. — John 18:5-6
Moses said to God: Lo, I shall go to the children of Israel, and say to them: The God of your fathers hath sent me to you. If they should say to me: What is His name? what shall I say to them? God said to Moses: **I AM WHO AM. (YHWH)** He said: Thus shalt thou say to the children of Israel: **HE WHO IS,** hath sent me to you. And God said again to Moses: Thus shalt thou say to the children of Israel: The Lord God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, hath sent me to you: This is My Name for ever, and this is My memorial unto all generations. – Exodus 3: 13-15

About background music for the Second Decade of prayers of The Chaplet of the Divine Mercy (Click/Expand or Bypass)

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To audition background music for the Second Decade of prayers of The Chaplet of the Divine Mercy, click the ▶ button to listen to an organ setting of a composition of Ave Verum Corpus by the early French Baroque composer Marc-Antoine Charpentier (1643-1704), or play the music in a New Window ⧉

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Then the band and the tribune, and the servants of the Jews, took Jesus, and bound Him, and they led Him away.
Greater love than this no man has, that He lay down His life for His friends. (John 15: 13) But He laid down His life for us, when we were not His friends, but enemies and rebels against Him.

Peter said: I do not know Him. And immediately, as he was yet speaking, the cock crowed. And the Lord turning looked on Peter.

And they brought Jesus to the high priest; and all the priests and the scribes and the ancients assembled together.

Art Thou the Christ, the Son of the blessed God? And Jesus said to him: I am. And you shall see the Son of man sitting on the right hand of the power of God, and coming with the clouds of heaven.

You say that I am a king. For this was I born, and for this came I into the world; that I should give testimony to the truth. Every one that is of the truth, hears My voice.

Because Jesus did not wish to be delivered from death, and because wicked Herod was not worthy of His answers, He was silent, and answered him not.

I find no cause in this man, in those things wherein you accuse Him, nor Herod neither. Nothing worthy of death is done to Him. I will chastise Him therefore, and release Him.

The plowers plowed upon My back; they made long their furrows. – Psalm 129:3

I have given my body to the strikers, and My cheeks to them that plucked them: I have not turned away My face from them that rebuked me, and spit upon Me. – Isaiah 50:6

But He was wounded for our transgressions, He was bruised for our iniquities; upon Him was the chastisement that made us whole, and with His stripes we are healed. – Isaiah 53:5

About background music for the Third Decade of prayers of The Chaplet of the Divine Mercy (Click/Expand or Bypass)

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To audition background music for the Third Decade of prayers of The Chaplet of the Divine Mercy, click the ▶ button to listen to an organ setting of a composition of Ave Verum Corpus by the late Renaissance and early Baroque English composer Fr. Peter Philips (1560-1628), or play the music in a New Window ⧉

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Then the soldiers of the governor taking Jesus into the hall, gathered together unto Him the whole band.

They stripped Him, and put a scarlet cloak about Him; and platting a crown of thorns, they put it upon His head, and a reed in His hand.

And they said: Hail, King of the Jews; and they gave Him blows.

He was despised and rejected by men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief; and as one from whom men hide their faces He was despised, and we esteemed Him not. – Isaiah 53:3

Surely He hath borne our infirmities and carried our sorrows: and we have thought Him as it were a leper, and as one struck by God and afflicted. – Isaiah 53:4

This torture, the most painful and long-lasting of all, compressed His eyes together. Everywhere the thorns pierced into His head, the most sensitive part, every time they were touched, the anguish was renewed afresh. Our sins, our evil thoughts, were the wicked thorns which afflicted His sacred head.

Behold, O God our protector: and look on the face of Thy Christ. — Psalm 83:10

Jesus therefore came forth, bearing the crown of thorns and the purple garment. And he saith to them: Behold the Man. But they cried out: Away with Him; away with Him; crucify him!

For what crime was He sentenced to death? That of loving us, to rescue us from Satan’s clutches, to love us into eternal life.

Then therefore he delivered Him to them to be crucified. And they took Jesus, and led Him forth.

About background music for the Fourth Decade of prayers of The Chaplet of the Divine Mercy (Click/Expand or Bypass)

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To audition background music for the Fourth Decade of prayers of The Chaplet of the Divine Mercy, click the ▶ button to listen to a setting of a composition of Ave Verum Corpus as adapted from a fragment of figured bass, traditionally called an Adagio, attributed to the 18th-century Venetian Baroque composer Tomaso Albinoni (1671-1751), by the twentieth century Italian musicologist and composer Remo Giazotto (1910-1998), or play the music in a New Window ⧉

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Consider how Jesus, in making this journey with the Cross on His shoulders, thought of us, and offered for us, to His Father, the death He was about to undergo.

Consider this first fall of Jesus under His Cross. His flesh was torn by the scourges, His Head crowned with thorns, and He had lost a great quantity of blood. He was so weakened that He could scarcely walk; and yet He had to carry this great load upon His shoulders. The soldiers struck Him rudely, and thus He fell several times in His journey.
In the midst of condemned criminals there moves forward to death the King of heaven, the only-begotten Son of God, laden with His cross, to be executed, together with the malefactors, upon a gibbet of infamy.

Consider how the Jews, seeing that at each step Jesus was on the point of expiring, and fearing He would die on the way, when they wished Him to die the ignominious death of the Cross, constrained Simon the Cyrenean to carry the Cross behind our Lord.

Jesus and Mary looked at each other, and their looks became as so many arrows to wound those hearts which loved each other tenderly.

Consider the second fall of Jesus under the Cross—a fall which renews the pain of all the wounds of the Head and members of our afflicted Lord.

But Jesus said to them, “Weep not for Me, but for yourselves and for your children.”

Jesus’ face is wiped with the veil of Veronica.

Consider the third fall of Jesus Christ. His weakness was extreme, and the cruelty of His executioners excessive, who tried to hasten His steps when He had scarcely strength to move.

Consider the violence with which the executioners stripped Jesus. His inner garments adhered to His torn flesh, and they dragged them off so roughly that the skin came with them.

They have pierced My hands and feet. They have numbered all My bones. – Psalm 21:17-18

About background music for the Fifth Decade of prayers of The Chaplet of the Divine Mercy (Click/Expand or Bypass)

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To audition background music for the Fifth Decade of prayers of The Chaplet of the Divine Mercy, click the ▶ button to listen to a polyphonic organ setting, implicitly in a minor mode, of the Gregorian Plainchant Ave Verum Corpus, the original attributed to Pope Innocent VI (1282-1362), or play the music in a New Window ⧉

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And I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all things to myself. — John 12:32
*O Son, Divine Lord, made man, draw me entirely to Thyself, detach me from earth, crucify me with Thyself that I may become, in union with Thee, a sacrifice of praise for the glory of Thy Father.*

They parted My garments amongst them; and upon My vesture they cast lots. – Psalm 21:19

Amen I say to thee, this day thou shalt be with Me in paradise. – Luke 23:39-43

Woman, behold thy son. … Behold thy mother. And from that hour, the disciple took her to his own. – John 19:26-27
And the dragon was angry against the woman: and went to make war with the rest of her seed, who keep the commandments of God, and have the testimony of Jesus Christ. – Revelation 12:17

My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?
Jesus was abandoned in His passion in order that we might not remain abandoned in the sins which we have committed.

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For the sake of His sorrowful passion,
have mercy on us, and on the whole world.

I THIRST. Thirst that did not proceeded from dryness, but which sprang from the ardor of His love for us, His desire to suffer for us, showing us His love, and the immense desire that He had of being loved by us, by the many sufferings that He endured for us.

Jesus therefore, when He had taken the vinegar, said: It is consummated.

Father, into Thy hands I commend My spirit.

When they saw that He was already dead, they did not break His legs. But one of the soldiers with a spear opened His side, and immediately there came out blood and water.

About background music for the Ending Prayers of The Chaplet of the Divine Mercy (Click/Expand or Bypass)

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To audition background music for the Ending Prayers of The Chaplet of the Divine Mercy, click the ▶ button to listen to an organ setting of the composition Ave Verum Corpus by the late Romantic English composer Edward Elgar (1857-1954), or play the music in a New Window ⧉

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Oh, how exceedingly tender, loving, and constraining was that declaration of our Blessed Redeemer concerning His coming into the world, when He said that He had come to kindle in souls the fire of divine love, and that His only desire was that this holy flame should be enkindled in the hearts of men: “I am come to cast fire upon the earth; and what will I but that it should be kindled?” —Luke 12:49

Even on the cross He has opened in His wounds so many fountains of grace, that to receive them it is sufficient to ask for them in faith. And, not satisfied with this, He has given us His whole self in the Most Holy Sacrament.

Eternal God, in whom mercy is endless and the treasury of compassion inexhaustible, look kindly upon us and increase Thy mercy in us, that in difficult moments we might not despair nor become despondent, but with great confidence submit ourselves to Thy holy will, which is Love and Mercy itself.

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
May the most holy, most sacred, most adorable, most incomprehensible and ineffable Name of God be forever praised, blessed, loved, adored and glorified in heaven, on earth, and under the earth by all the creatures of God and by the Sacred Heart of Our Lord Jesus Christ in the Most Holy Sacrament of the Altar.

How the Several Main Traditional Catholic Groups, the SSPX, the FSSP and ICKSP, regard the Orthodoxy of The Chaplet of the Divine Mercy

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How do the several main Traditional Catholic groups, the SSPX, the FSSP and ICKSP regard the orthodoxy of The Chaplet of the Divine Mercy?

There is variation among Traditional Catholic groups, and it hinges on both their general approach to private revelation and their attitude toward the post–Vatican II liturgical landscape.

1. SSPX (Society of St. Pius X)

Official stance: The SSPX has historically been critical of the Divine Mercy devotion and chaplet. Their critique is not just about liturgical novelty, but also about the theological underpinnings of St. Faustina Kowalska’s diary.
Concerns include:
- Ambiguous language about God’s mercy (they argue it risks minimizing God’s justice).
- The association with John Paul II, who canonized Faustina and promoted the devotion, which the SSPX often interprets in the broader context of post-conciliar innovations.
- The earlier 1959 prohibition (the Holy Office initially forbade public propagation of the devotion due to translation and theological concerns; this ban was lifted in 1978). The SSPX tends to point back to the fact that serious doubts once existed at the Vatican level.
Summary: The SSPX does not promote the Chaplet of Divine Mercy and often warns the faithful against it, preferring traditional devotions such as the Rosary, Sacred Heart, and traditional Stations of the Cross.

2. FSSP (Priestly Fraternity of St. Peter)

Official stance: The FSSP, being in full canonical union with Rome and generally deferential to papal guidance, accepts the Chaplet of Divine Mercy as orthodox and legitimate.
Practice: Many FSSP parishes may not emphasize it as much as the Rosary or traditional devotions, but they do not oppose it. Individual priests sometimes lead Divine Mercy devotions, especially around Divine Mercy Sunday.
Summary: Seen as an approved, orthodox devotion, but not at the center of their apostolate.

3. ICKSP (Institute of Christ the King Sovereign Priest)

Official stance: Like the FSSP, the ICKSP is fully regularized under Rome and does not oppose the Chaplet of Divine Mercy.
Practice: Their spirituality is heavily oriented to the Sacred Heart, Christ the King, and liturgical solemnity, so the Chaplet of Divine Mercy is not a major emphasis. However, it is not excluded or regarded as heterodox.
Summary: Accepted as orthodox, but not as central as older, “classic” devotions.

Overall picture

SSPX: Skeptical, critical, discourages it.
FSSP & ICKSP: Accept its orthodoxy, do not oppose it, but usually emphasize older traditional devotions.

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