SECOND SUNDAY OF EASTER
(SUNDAY OF DIVINE MERCY)
24 April 2022 – St. George, Hartford
Acts
5:12-16
Rv
1:9-11a, 12-13, 17-19
Jn
20:19-31
The
Octave Day of Easter, this Sunday, has had and still has all kinds of different
names. The most recent addition to the list, dating from Pope Saint John Paul
II, is Divine Mercy Sunday and is tied to the private revelations of Our Lord
to St. Faustina, a Polish religious sister. She was born in 1905 and died in 1938
and was canonized a saint in the year 2000. Her spiritual diary is the basis or inspiration for the Divine Mercy devotion and its
chaplet, which have become very popular in recent years and now form the heart
of this Sunday’s special devotions and prayers. The
Octave Day is traditionally called Low Sunday (Dominica in Albis) and is
still one of the principal dates for the First Holy Communion of children.
As the Octave Day of Easter, we celebrate
it as the last day of the eight-day celebration of the Feast which especially
in the Breviary is observed as one big, long day, with daily liturgies filled
with the accounts of the appearances to the disciples of the Risen Lord Jesus. Today
focuses on the institution of the Sacrament of Penance: “Jesus said to them
again, “Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you.” And when
he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, “Receive the Holy
Spirit. Whose sins you forgive are forgiven them, and whose sins you retain are
retained.”
This happened on Easter Sunday evening in the absence
of St. Thomas and then a week later there was Christ’s appearance with Thomas
present. In today’s Gospel passage from St. John, the Risen and Glorious Christ
challenges my patron saint to put his finger into the nail marks and his hand
into Jesus’ side, to which Thomas responds with the unforgettable words, “My
Lord and My God!”
Our Gospel today concludes with the words: “Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of his
disciples that are not written in this book. But these are written that you may
come to believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that through this
belief you may have life in his name.”
You can
think what you want, I suppose, of my patron saint, about his declaration that
he would not believe that Jesus was truly risen until he could see Him with the
Glorious Wounds of His Passion and actually touch His Wounds. The point,
however, would seem to be another. Yes, Thomas was setting conditions for believing
that Christ was truly risen, but the point would be that his conditions were no
more extreme and demanding than what the disciples gathered in the Upper Room
on Easter Sunday evening were telling him excitedly that they had witnessed. Jesus
is risen from the dead and has appeared to Simon! Let
it sink in!
My point
would be that St. Thomas was struggling with the announcement of the
Resurrection. Maybe he effectively rejected his colleagues’ witness, but he did
not lend them a deaf ear. Thomas was being far from indifferent; he truly
wanted to believe and set down his conditions for doing so. For the 11
Apostles, for the women and other disciples who found their way back together
after the Crucifixion and Death of our Lord, the Good News of the Empty Tomb
and the Appearances of the Risen One moved them all deeply. The difference with
St. Thomas was not that he was not moved but that in his sorrow over Christ’s
Death he refused the witness of his brethren on Easter Sunday. “Jesus said to him, “Have you come to believe because
you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and have believed.”
There are lots of people like that in
the Church today, maybe nobody I am speaking to here today, but there are lots
of people in the Church these days who do not have the fire in their hearts
either for believing in Christ Risen and Victorious or for rejecting Him with a
measure of anger or sorrow, they just don’t care and sadly I guess they belong
to the Devil, or should we say they have fallen for his deception.
From just a hundred years ago we read in
her diary how Sr. Faustina agonized over issues of faith. Today lots of
relatively young people would look right past her and not understand her
anguished search for the mercy of God for herself and for her people.
“Now Jesus did many other signs in
the presence of his disciples that are not written in this book. But these are
written that you may come to believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God,
and that through this belief you may have life in his name.”
“For the sake of His sorrowful Passion,
have mercy on us and on the whole world!” That’s how we pray in the chaplet. A
lot of younger people are seemingly lost to issues of faith because nobody in
their lives, neither at home nor elsewhere, really witnessed to the Good News
of Christ’s Resurrection. These people knew no witnesses to Christ, neither as
saints nor as sinners. We cannot let that be their fate, however. We cannot
resign ourselves to leaving them in indifference, to losing them to the faith.
That is ultimately the significance of what we are praying about in the Divine
Mercy chaplet.
“Jesus
said to him, “Have you come to believe because you have seen me? Blessed are
those who have not seen and have believed.”
Maybe a lot of people have wandered away
from the faith because they have seen nothing of faith at home or elsewhere in
the course of growing up. That is all the more reason for us to pray to God for
His Mercy upon us and upon them.
If you personally have issues with the
faith, pray! Pray the chaplet and ask the Lord to do for you in His Great Mercy
what he did for St. Thomas!
“Holy God, Holy Mighty One, Holy
Immortal One! Have mercy on us and on the whole world.”
This Sunday is there as well to remind
us that Christ in His Mercy has given the power of the keys to His Church, to
His priests, to remit sin and for those who turn to Him in their last hour,
yes, to open the gates of Heaven. Pray for sinners! May they repent, opening
their hearts and lives to Christ Who loved us even unto death on a Cross!
Christ is Risen from the dead, yes, He
is truly Risen, Alleluia!
PROPERANTES ADVENTUM DIEI DEI
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