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.
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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.