"Do not be unbelieving but believe"
John 20: 19-31
The Word: https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/040724.cfm
Would there be a way we could compress the entire Gospel message into one small sound bite? We’re very familiar with such abbreviated phrases. We see them in marketing for businesses and politics. In fact, even more brevity are mere letters rather than whole words such as POTUS (President of the United States) or DMV (Department of Motor Vehicles), or the sports world which markets through simple symbols that speak for themselves such as the “swoosh mark” for a popular maker of sports clothing or the world’s largest coffee business with a green circular figure of what appears to be a mermaid.
Beautifully, our passage
from the Gospel of John this Sunday offers us a wonderful sound bite. Upon seeing the risen Lord standing before
him, and in response to Jesus’ invitation to touch his wounds, Thomas, overcome
with emotion, proclaims: “My Lord and my God.” This is the first time in the
Gospels that Jesus is referred to specifically as God.
The words of Thomas
summarize not only this Easter season but where the Lord needs to be in our
lives as well; he is our “Lord and God” and thereby the center of our faith and
how we live. If you are ever asked who Jesus is, simply state: “He is my Lord
and God.”
Yes, he is our Savior but so
is my doctor when I have symptoms of some illness, or parents who save their
children from harm or danger, or a good friend who may save you from despair
when you feel lonely or troubled. While I don’t mean at all to diminish the
saving role of Jesus from sin, to proclaim him as the Lord of my life is indeed
on point.
These words of Thomas are a
proclamation of the Gospel message. If
Jesus is Lord and God, that changes everything.
The resurrection changes everything about our perception of God, about
how we live, who we are as human beings, and about the whole meaning and
purpose of our lives.
If Christ is risen, we know
we have a God who has the power to overcome the finality of death and sin
through the death and resurrection of Christ. That our physical death is not
the final word. A God of the living not of the dead.
Before the appearance of
Thomas, however, there is a moment that should not be passed over. As Jesus appears to this frightened and confused
band of disciples, he offers them first his gift of Peace – “Shalom.” All good
be with you and all calm.
Secondly, and most importantly,
he verifies his identity by revealing the wounds of his passion and then he “breathes
on them” with the words, “receive the Holy Spirit.” Maybe strange at first but
quickly this became the breath of new life, as God blew into Adam his life, then
the power to forgive in Jesus’ name is extended from the Apostles to the
Church. Through God’s overwhelming
forgiveness, now made possible to all through Jesus’ death and resurrection,
humanity is gifted with this divine promise that sin can be forgiven, and new
life begun in us. Was this the
establishment of the Sacrament of Reconciliation? It certainly is at the root of that divine
encounter.
We know we have a God who
embraced humanity and forever joined it to divinity. When Jesus died for us,
humanity died to sin with him and when he was raised, we rose with him to a new
life. Jesus died but was raised and
transformed in his physical body and so will we. That as human beings, created
in his image and likeness, male and female, we are baptized as his beloved sons
and daughters and offered this new hope.
We know we have a God who
has shown us the way to become what he has created us to be and that our
dignity as his beloved sons and daughters extends to our connection with others
in community, with the risen Lord in our midst. Through his offer of
forgiveness, his “Shalom,” we are made whole in Christ. In other words, the resurrection changes
everything.
This weekend we celebrate
Divine Mercy Sunday. What greater act of
mercy could there be from Jesus than the forgiveness of our sins? In his tender act of forgiveness expressed by
Jesus offer of peace rather than revenge for their betrayal of him, the risen Lord brings these men
confidence in his mercy and the foundation of the mission they will be sent out
to preach in Jesus’ name. We priests, as
ministers of the sacrament, have a humbling opportunity to convey this God like
compassion to every penitent.
Our first reading from the
Acts of the Apostles today pictures for us how we come to know this risen Lord
as we see and touch the Lord Jesus under the signs of bread and wine - the
breaking of the bread and the prayers." Through the preaching of the
Apostles many came to believe. Today, we
continue to hear and believe as we live out our lives in the community of the
Church. Every sacrament is an encounter with the risen Christ. Despite all the
negativity, the threats, the distortion and anti-Christian and Catholic
rhetoric, the presence of the risen Christ remains. We as his disciples must come to know him and
to touch him through our sacramental life and the mercy we bring to others.
The Lord is risen indeed!
Alleluia!
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God of everlasting mercy,
who in the very recurrence of the paschal feast
kindle the faith of the people
you have made your own, increase, we pray,
the grace you have bestowed, that all may grasp
and rightly understand in what font they
have been reborn, by whose Blood they have been redeemed.
Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son,
who lives and reigns with you
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
God, for ever and ever.
(Collect of Mass)
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