Give thanks to the Lord for His love is everlasting; His mercy endures forever.

 

SECOND SUNDAY OF EASTER  A  2023

 

From today’s responsorial psalm:  Give thanks to the Lord for He is good; His love is everlasting. His mercy endures forever.

In this Easter season, we gather in the mystery of the Eucharist to Give thanks to the Lord for He is good; His love is everlasting. His mercy endures forever.

St John Paul II declared the Second Sunday of Easter to be Divine Mercy Sunday. First and foremost, Jesus is the face of the Father’s Divine Mercy.  Today is the Day of Mercy -- Divine Mercy.

Last Supper account is the example of God’s divine mercy to us. And Jesus gives us the Sacrament of the Eucharist to continue God’s divine mercy to us.

From today’s Gospel, I invite you to consider the faith journey of the apostle Thomas on this Divine Mercy Sunday. The popular interpretation of Thomas is that he is ‘doubting Thomas’ -- seen in a bit of a negative light. I invite you to revisit this Easter gospel and see Thomas as a model of faith.

Thomas said before he could believe in Jesus’ resurrection, he must see the holes the nails made in his hands, put his finger into the holes and his hand into the great wound made by the centurion’s lance.

On this Divine Mercy Sunday, my hunch is that we who are gathered today come from all over the spiritual landscape. There is a side of us that is doubting Thomas and there is a side of us that is believing, Thomas. Each one of us is unique. This is not by accident. It is by God’s design that there is no perfect cookie-cutter approach of the journey of faith for Catholics. We need to dispense with the myth that there is one size that fits all for us as Catholic Christians.

I suggest Thomas is teaching the important lesson that we must not separate the resurrection from the cross. We are the disciples of the crucified as well as the risen Lord.

We cannot live the life of grace, the risen life, authentically unless we bear in our bodies the wounds of the cross. What does this mean? This means being conscious that we develop the capacity to love and be loved only by dying to ourselves.  It is in the experience of our wrestling with the experiences of our life in which we struggle, in which we experience the cross in our life that will lead us to recognizing our need for the grace and the mercy of God. Our wounds are a constant reminder of our frailty, and that it is God’s grace that raises us up to new life.

Thank you, Thomas, for bringing honesty into our faith, for helping to acknowledge at times that there are areas in our life that Jesus is not yet Lord. Thomas did not pretend that he was better than he was. He began by wanting proof and ended by being glad of faith. He is the patron saint of transitions and steps in faith. Faith is a journey. He is the saint of faith in our times.

His parish community, so to speak, was the place he found faith, having lost it when he tried to go it alone. Then he came back to the community of faith and went on a journey of life that took him to martyrdom in India.

The journey of faith of each one of us is unique. But it is the plan of Jesus that we are better together as a parish community rather than as isolated individuals. This was the experience of the apostle Thomas, and I suggest that in this community may you experience again the merciful love of Jesus in the love we have for each other as a parish community.

We are called to move beyond a covid isolation and return again to community, to our community of faith. The mystery of the Eucharist for which we gather is meant to be experienced in the context of our faith community.

The Bible describes mercy as a gift of God, a gift that is to be given to those who need it. Establishing the abiding faithfulness of God, we the Church of the Holy Spirit are to circulate mercy, to pay it forward irrespective of deservedness, inviting one and all to experience the merciful love of Jesus.

We are to be the mercy of a loving and forgiving God. God wants us to help him bring the mercy and the forgiveness into our world.

We are to be the mercy of a loving and forgiving God. God wants us to help him bring the mercy and the forgiveness into our world.

Jesus is the model leader and spiritual guide. He is pleased to give Thomas the assurance he is looking for, and then challenges him to look forward to the day when he will believe without seeing – always in the Jesus who passes through death to resurrection.

Jesus on this Divine Mercy Sunday is pleased to give you what you are looking for in your journey of faith. Jesus does not want His Body, the Church, to remain in the tomb but always raise her up to new life. Each of us is not to remain in the tomb of our doubts, of our fears, of our anxieties.

Lord, we thank you for friends, leaders and spiritual guides who challenge us as Jesus challenged Thomas. But may we like Thomas know that we need to see the scars and the wounds for us also to believe in resurrection and new life. Thomas professes the true faith of the Church. We too must insist that the Jesus we follow is the true Jesus, the one whose risen body bears the wounds of Calvary.

Lord, forgive us that we want to help those in need without sharing their pain; we look for their resurrection but do not want to see their wounds.

We thank you for people like Thomas who will not let us away with easy solutions.  They insist that we must see the holes nails have made in the hands of victims, and only then believe that they have within themselves the capacity to rise to a new life.

On this Divine Mercy Sunday, may live in a state of thanksgiving for God’s redemptive mercy that is shared with each and every one of us. And may the Gospel we proclaim help us to recognize that scars are the pathway to our sharing in the Risen life of Christ. This was the journey of the apostle Thomas. It is the journey for each one of us.

Have a Blessed Day.