Divine Mercy Sunday / Msgr. Owen F. Campion
The Sunday Readings
With deep faith and faith-filled excitement, the Church continues the celebration of Easter it began a week and a day ago, the Lord’s resurrection and final victory over death and sin.
As is the case in almost every Mass of this season, the first reading this weekend comes from the Acts of the Apostles. Acts originally was seen to be a continuation of St. Luke’s Gospel, and these books should still be considered as being in sequence.
Together they tell an uninterrupted story of salvation in Jesus, from Mary’s conception to a time years after Christ’s ascension.
This continuing story is a lesson. The redemption of humanity from the effects of its sin did not end when the Lord returned to the glory of heaven. It has not ceased. It brought the mercy of God to the first Christians, mentioned in Acts, and has continued to do this to every generation thereafter, including our own.
The first Christians, most of whom likely knew Jesus, reverently followed the Apostles. Together, they truly were the Church, eagerly caring for those in need, praying, especially in “breaking the bread,” a term referring to the Eucharist (Acts 2:42).
Most importantly, Jesus continued to live and act through the Apostles and in the Church. The sick were cured. The deaf heard. The blind saw. No one was beyond the Apostles’ concern.
For its second reading this weekend, the Church offers us a passage from the First Epistle of St. Peter.
Inspiring in this reading is the early Church’s obvious and intense love for and faith in the Lord. It was a faith that hardly went unchallenged. The culture in which Christianity was born and grew in almost every respect either rejected the ideals of the Gospel or held them in outright contempt.
St. John’s Gospel provides the last reading. It is the story of the reluctance of the Apostle St. Thomas to accept that Jesus indeed had risen from the dead. Then, as all recall, Jesus dramatically appears on the scene. He invites Thomas to believe. In awe and the uttermost faith, Thomas declares that Jesus not only is teacher and Redeemer, but indeed that he is God.
The Lord then confers upon the Apostles that most divine of powers, the power to forgive sin.
Reflection
This weekend is Divine Mercy Sunday, a breathtakingly refreshing thought. We are all sinners, but all is not lost. God’s love endures. It is expressed in his divine mercy, in granting us forgiveness.
Jews and the people in Israel always remember the millions who died in Adolf Hitler’s savage persecution of Jews. As years pass, some people have started to forget that horrific time. We cannot forget. Atrocities remind us of how terrible is a life lived without the Gospel. Acts reminds us that Christ lives in the Church and the Gospel it proclaims. The gift of the Gospel is God’s greatest gift of mercy to individuals, societies and humanity.
The Apostles and the bishops today who are their successors in the Church still bring us this mercy, faithfully and truly connecting us with God and the hope of being forgiven. They do this just as the Apostles brought it to the first Christians as recorded in Acts.
God sent his divine mercy to us in the Lord Jesus. Christ’s humanity, life, death and triumph over death provided our access to divine mercy.
Goodness is not imposed upon us. No one drags us into heaven. The choice to accept these gifts or to reject them belongs to us individually.
The Church always gathers around the Apostles. We become part of the Church with the help of God’s grace by modeling in our hearts the faith of the first Christians, including Thomas.
Through this faith, the basis of our life in the Church with the successors of the Apostles, we experience the divine mercy of God. †