On Divine Mercy Sunday, we trust in Jesus who is the face of God's Divine Mercy.

Divine Mercy Reflection

In the 1930’s, Jesus chose a humble Polish nun, Sister Maria Faustina Kowalska to receive private revelations concerning Divine Mercy that were recorded in her diary.  Sister Faustina became the herald of one powerful message:  God is mercy – the truth of the merciful Christ.  Jesus said to Sister Faustina as recorded in her diary: “Mankind will not have peace until it turns to My mercy.” Then in the year 2000, Sister Faustina was declared a saint and is known as the great apostle of mercy.

Then on May 5, 2000, Pope John Paul II decreed that the Second Sunday of Easter would henceforth be known as Divine Mercy Sunday.  On the eighth day of the Resurrection, the octave day, we celebrate God’s solemn commitment, his covenant of merciful love.

In the very familiar Divine Mercy Image, the red and white rays emanate from the heart of Jesus symbolizing the blood and water that was poured out on the cross for our salvation and sanctification.  The red rays recall the blood which is the sacrifice of Golgotha and the mystery of the Eucharist.  The white rays symbolize the water of baptism and the gift of the Holy Spirit.  Through the wounded heart of Jesus, His merciful love is showered upon us.  The wounds of Jesus are the wounds of mercy to us.  In the revelation recorded by Sister Faustina, the Lord requested that the words: “Jesus, I trust in you” be inscribed under the image.

As we gaze upon the image of Jesus, this Divine Mercy image, Jesus is the visible face of the invisible Father, of the God who manifests his power above all by forgiveness and mercy.

In the first Scripture reading from the Letter to the Ephesians, St. Paul writes:  “God, who is rich in mercy, because of his great love for us, brought us to life with Christ.”  The first and only step required to experience mercy is to acknowledge that we are in need of mercy.  I call to mind the prayer we say before receiving Communion, “Lord, I am not worthy that you should enter my roof, say but the word and my soul shall be healed.”

In the responsorial psalm., we sang of the Lord’s mercy -- the medicine of mercy.  The Lord is kind and merciful…Slow to anger, abounding in kindness.  God’s anger lasts but a moment, his mercy forever.

The Gospel is taken from the first seven verses of the 15^th chapter of Luke’s Gospel.  This chapter with three beautiful parables of Jesus could be considered the Gospel of the Divine Mercy of God.  These parables reveal the heart of God towards sinners.  The best known of these parables is the Parable of the Prodigal Son.  This parable could be renamed the Parable of the Merciful Father.

I call your attention to the first two verses of Luke 15.  They speak to the reason Jesus told these parables.  The Pharisees and scribes began to complain, saying “This man welcomes sinners and eats with them.”

Jesus knew that the attitude of the Pharisees to sinners was not God’s attitude to sinners.  The idea of God seeking our sinners shocked the scribes and the pharisees.  Jesus teaches in his words and his actions that God desires all of us who are sinners to encounter the merciful love of Jesus.  As in the parable of the prodigal son, the father embraced his son and showered him with mercy and forgiveness and welcomed back home.

In the parable of the lost sheep, we see the love and the care of the shepherd who continues to look for the lost sheep until he finds it.  The shepherd values the life of an animal so much that he continually searches until he finds it.   The Gospel message is how much more is a person valued in the sight of God.  As God’s shepherd, Jesus is seeking and saving that which is lost.    The God of heaven actively seeks lost sinners in order to bring them back to Himself, and the God of heaven rejoices over a lost sinner and showers that sinner with God’s merciful love.  What a saint is a loved and forgiven sinner.

As we pray these beautiful Scriptures, we ask ourselves what is our part in all of this?  We who are the recipients of God’s divine mercy are to be the Church, the people of God, we are to be the visible face of God’s divine mercy in the world.  In our parish communities, may everyone feel sought after, loved, and forgiven.  We are to be the ambassadors of God’s divine mercy in our parish communities.

 Thanks be to God; mercy is the central teaching of Pope Francis.  The pope wants the Church to be a field hospital.  He says: “I prefer a church which is bruised, hurting and dirty because it has been out on the streets, rather than a church which is unhealthy from being confined and from clinging to its own security.”  Indeed, the Church is a field hospital that dispenses the divine mercy of God to the bruised, hurting and broken people in our communities.

We need to honestly ask ourselves: could our parish faith community be described as a field hospital in which the poor and the hurting people of our community feel very much welcome?

Living in the dark cloud of COVID-19, we implore God’s divine mercy to bring healing to our world.  We pray:  Lord God, we trust in your Divine Mercy to bring healing to our lives.  We seek to be anointed with your merciful love in discovering your healing presence for our lives and for our world.  Help us to wait in joyful hope for the coming of the Risen Jesus more deeply into our hearts.  Amen.

This is the day we celebrate God’s mercy.  His mercy is infinite.  His mercy is greater than sin, than evil, than suffering, than death.  In His mercy, we have eternal life.

For your take home message on this Divine Mercy Sunday, I invite you to remember your ABC’s.

A.     Ask for His mercy.

B.     Be merciful

C.     Completely trust in Jesus.

Have a blessed day.

This week is holy because of love -- the reconciling love of God for us.

Palm Sunday  A  2020

Today begins the most sacred week of the Church’s entire liturgical year.   We   will walk with Jesus through Holy Week in the pattern of his death and resurrection.  Once again we renew the commitment that was made on the day of our baptism, perhaps many moons ago, when our parents and godparents desired that we become disciples of Jesus and enter into the mystery of our sharing in the dying and rising of Jesus.  The week we call holy invites us to enter into the heart of our faith. 

Even with our confinement and social distancing, may we enter into the mystery of the dying and rising of Jesus during these days of Holy Week.  .

In our sharing of the paschal mystery of Jesus, I invite you to think about dying.  I don‘t mean this in a morbid sense, but I invite you to reflect on a most important  component of our spiritual journey.  God wants us to die before we die.  The dying we embrace during these days is the dying to our demons, our sinfulness, and our self-centeredness.   For us to share in the risen life of Jesus, we need to die to all that is in us that does not reflect the Gospel message of Jesus.  Plain and Simple, how do I live more fully in the service of others, how do I wash the feet of God’s poor?

In the midst of our grappling with this pandemic that has turned our life upside down, may we have the grace to die to our fears and anxiety so that we can live trusting in Jesus as the Lord and Savior of our life.

St Paul in the second Scripture reading reveals who Jesus is: “Christ Jesus, though He was in the form of God, did not regard equality to God something to be grasped, rather he emptied himself taking the form of a slave…he humbled himself.”

Who are we as the disciples of Jesus?  Our God wants us to embody the humble actions of Jesus:  The God who emptied himself, the God who humbled himself, the God who sat on a donkey.

Traditionally during Holy Week, we focus on the sufferings of Jesus.  But it is not suffering, not even the sufferings of Jesus, that makes this week holy.  Rather it is holy because of love -- the reconciling love of God who has come to live among us in the person of Jesus Christ.  For me, where I stand, God’s love is the only thing that stands between utter chaos and an attempt to stand whole and complete in the middle of this pandemic crisis.  God’s love is the only thing that makes sense out of suffering, conflict and tragedy. God’s love does not do away with suffering; the very fact of the cross should teach us that.  God’s love makes it possible to deal with suffering, to remember it, to share in it, and, yes, even to celebrate it.  God’s love is the essence of the story of salvation.

In the passion account, Jesus looks like a victim.  He is not triumphant as we understand triumph.  Instead he appears to be a failure.  Judging by one set of standards, Jesus has not met our expectations.  But according to another standard – the standard of unconditional love –he has far surpassed our expectations.   At once regal and lowly, he brought healing and holiness to others through his own pain and brokenness.  He would claim victory by being defeated; he would establish his reign by serving and by dying.  His crown would be a weave of thorns.

As we gather in prayer on this day, may we be very conscious that Palm Sunday is not about ancient history.  It is about NOW.  As we reflect upon the Passion account, we see the first apostles, despite their closeness to Jesus, do not stand by Him in His suffering. 

They wrestled with the truth that Jesus refuses to save the world by what we recognize as power.  He still does not use divine power to wipe out disease, poverty, crime, oppression, injustice or error. 

Yes, our life has been turned upside down by Covid-19 but as the disciples of Jesus the mission given to us by Jesus Himself has not changed.  We still need to be faithful to this mission and so we ask:  Will we the followers of Jesus be still willing to turn the other cheek, walk the extra mile and forgive seventy times seven times?  Will we the followers of Jesus evoke from our contemporaries a comment like that was paid to our ancestors in faith: “See how they love one another.”  Will our parish community be a beacon of God’s merciful love in the community of Penfield and Webster?

On the first Palm Sunday, Jesus rode into Jerusalem on a donkey with palm branches being spread on the road. When he entered Jerusalem, the whole city was in turmoil: “Who is this?” people asked.  In Jesus, God is the one who identifies with and enters into the experience of the people He loves.  Today God is sending a message through Jesus in this Palm Sunday celebration that states that Jesus once again accompanies us in these days of the pandemic.  God wishes to be in solidarity with us.  All of life –even the confinement of our social distancing – is so precious that God wishes to be in solidarity with us.  God will embrace and transform our sufferings so that we may enter more fully into the risen life of Jesus.

Have a blessed and safe day.