2nd Sunday of Easter: Mercy for all!

"My Lord and my God! 

John 20: 19-31

https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/042725.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 all the time. 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 brief symbols that speak for themselves such as the “swoosh mark” for a popular maker of sports clothing or the world’s largest coffee brand 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.”

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 lives and our life in general. If you are ever asked who Jesus is, simply state: “He is my Lord and God.”

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 created in his image, 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.

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 this dignity of persons 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.

That the central purpose of our lives is to come to know him, to love him, and to be joined forever in happiness in eternity with him.  

This weekend we celebrate Divine Mercy Sunday.  What greater act of mercy could there be from Jesus than the forgiveness of our sins?  The simple act of Jesus standing before the confused and frightened disciples on that Sunday evening must have put even greater fear and wonder in the hearts of these men.  Rather than shame them for their abandonment in his greatest time of need, he offers them his “shalom,” his peace – healing, well-being, forgiveness and reconciliation. In this tender act of forgives despite their unfaithfulness, the risen Lord brings them confidence in his mercy.

This profound and life changing act on the part of Jesus is of course the basis of our Sacrament of Reconciliation.  In essence that beautiful healing moment through the confession of sin should each time be met with a merciful response.  We priests, as ministers of the sacrament, have a humbling opportunity to convey this God like compassion to every penitent.

So, Jesus breathes on these startled disciples, shares his spirit then commissions them to be his ambassadors. He sends them as witnesses to go and offer his forgiveness and mercy to all who hear their message of peace. At the core mission of the Church is the proclamation of God’s mercy and what better Sunday than this one to recall that rich act of love on God’s part for humanity.

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. 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. 

And so, as we contemplate the implications of Jesus’ resurrection, we know that God has revealed to us his desire. That we are to live our life according to the Gospel values fleshed out in the person of Jesus, that we hear his call to conversion, that we should be people of joy, hope and optimism knowing that nothing is impossible with God and that no evil, including death, is greater than his mercy.

The Lord is risen, Alleluia!