Although the message of Divine Mercy is prominent in the teachings of Jesus, and expressed through His works of healing throughout His Galilean ministry, the gospel writers emphasize that it is the Cross and the Resurrection of Jesus, above all, that is the most decisive breakthrough of God's merciful love in this fallen world.
If our definition of Divine Mercy is accurate, then it has to fit not only with the meaning of the Biblical terms for mercy, such as "hesed," "rachamim," and "eleos," but also with the whole story of God's dealings with His chosen people Israel, and with all that He has revealed to us through Jesus Christ. As the Catholic biblical scholar John L. Mackenzie claimed: "the entire history of the dealings of Yahweh with Israel can be summed up as 'hesed'."
Mercy presents us with a semantic problem. After all, the word mercy in contemporary English has a very restricted meaning. It is usually used to refer to an act of pardon, as in "Let me off, judge; have mercy" or "He threw himself on the mercy of the court." In the Catholic tradition of theology, however, mercy means far more than just the cancellation of punishment. Far more then that.