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• Readings for Sunday, April 27th

  Divine Mercy Sunday
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• Homily

  Divine Mercy Sunday!
  
  This observance - just 25 years old - was given us by Pope Saint
  John Paul II - to help us remember - through all our personal trials
  - that mercy is the heart of God - that God is with us - God will
  help us - and will always love us.
  
  In short, that God is love.
  
  Mercy is the focus of this Gospel where the Risen Christ visits the
  disciples in the Upper Room on Easter Sunday night, after the
  Resurrection, as well as a week later. So, two scenes are captured
  here.
  
  What’s really striking about the Gospel is the relationship
  between Christ’s saying, “Peace be with you” and displaying his
  wounds. We shouldn’t miss that connection.
  
  Jesus offers his disciples His peace - “Shalom” is the word - and
  then shows them the wounds in his hands and side.
  He shows those wounds for a purpose. He wants his disciples to
  see what sin has done. He was put to death because of sin.
  Practically everyone around the story of His Passion contributed
  to his death.
  
  Now, in his Risen body, Christ’s wounds are on display - to tell
  us that all people bear some responsibility for them. The sin of
  the cross reflects to us our need for grace - the grace of
  forgiveness.
  
  After the cross, no one can say: “Everything’s cool.” “I’m okay,
  you’re okay.”
  
  But joined to that display of the wounds comes that beautiful
  word “Peace,” “Shalom” which means:

  
  I wish you complete flourishing
  all that life can be
  total joy
  absolute fulfillment

  
  “Shalom” represents everything God wanted his people to know
  from the beginning of time. That every sin can be forgiven. We
  need only ask. We need only confess them and take responsibility
  for them.
  
  Then...nothing can possibly separate us from the love of God!
  Even though we’re sinners, and the wounds of Christ prove it,
  God still loves us.
  
  If Christ had shown us His wounds alone, without offering peace,
  He’d simply be convicting us of our sins.
  
  And if he had just offered peace, without showing the wounds,
  he’d simply be offering an easy way out. Cheap grace.
  
  But the two together, first, peace, then the wounds, give us one of
  the most important lessons about Easter: What you yourselves
  have received as a gift, forgiveness, give as a gift. Forgive one
  another!
  
  That’s a huge part of our Easter faith.
  
  And so, 8 days after his Resurrection, Jesus sends his disciples on
  a mission of forgiveness.
  
  He breathes on them and says, “Receive the Holy Spirit. If you
  forgive men’s sins, they are forgiven them, if you hold them
  bound, they are held bound.”
  
  The Church is receiving from the Lord its essential mission: to be
  bearers of divine mercy.
  
  We’re entrusted with speaking the “Peace” of the Risen Jesus to
  a fallen world.
  
  All of us are to become conduits of God’s mercy and grace.
  
  And how will the world come to know its sin can be forgiven?
  Through us, the Body of Christ, the Church. And through our
  leaders.

  
  ***

  
  As we all know, the world just lost one its great pastoral leaders
  in the death of Pope Francis. He lived the spirit of this Gospel. He
  became a living symbol of the mercy of God of which Jesus so
  often spoke.
  
  On Easter Monday morning this great pilgrim of hope set out on
  his last journey, to stand before the merciful God he proclaimed
  throughout his life, the just and merciful God before whom we
  will all eventually stand.
  
  He gave new force to an ancient truth: the necessity of mercy.
  
  Ten years ago, he called for an extraordinary Jubilee Year, the
  Jubilee of Mercy, for the whole Church. He saw a need for the
  world to learn again the mercy God extends to all sinners. He gave
  a renewed call to come to the Sacrament of Penance. And he
  wanted us to grow in virtue by living the corporal and spiritual
  works of mercy.
  
  Francis believed that seeing our God as a merciful God was
  central to our growth in holiness and in spreading the Gospel. And
  the spread of the Gospel was to be communicated through the joy
  of knowing Christ.
  
  He also championed the forgotten. Just one example, you’ll recall,
  is that some years ago he asked all the parishes and all the
  Christian families of Europe to welcome refugees into their own
  homes. There were millions of them.
  
  From his earliest days as a priest in Argentina, he always carried
  in his heart those who were most fragile, those on the margins,
  those often excluded.
  
  Through his own highly visible person-to-person encounters he
  made himself a sign of compassion and welcome and love.
  
  As with Pope Saint John Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI before
  him, central to his teaching was that our Christian life should be
  infectious by the way we live it, and that joy is the sign of God’s
  life in us.
  
  So, these are days to be thankful for his gift. We thank God that
  our brief sojourn in this life intersected with his. We are better
  because our paths crossed.
  
  We pray that God, in his divine mercy, will give the Holy Father
  rest, and the eternal joy he so often proclaimed, and peace at last.

• Download the homily

  • Homily for Divine Mercy Sunday