REDEEMED BY INEXHAUSTIBLE MERCY OF GOD

SUNDAY OF DIVINE MERCY

Act 5:12-16; Ps 118:2-4,22-27; Rev 1:9-13,17-19; Jn 20:19-31

Jesus Christ. the Font of Divine Mercy

The Jewish leaders thought Jesus Christ was a disturbance and a reproach to their way of life, a reprimand for their warped religion. They planned to eliminate him without knowing that they were about to open the font of God’s inexhaustible mercy and cause the replication of Jesus everywhere. In ignorance, they captured Jesus Christ, made him suffer, and carried his cross to Calvary, where they crucified him on the cross. The transformed or glorified Lord can now be present everywhere by his Holy Spirit in his members who believe in his resurrection. The Acts of Apostles report this phenomenon in Jerusalem. Jesus is present in many places where the faithful are present and continues to work salvation through them. “So many signs and wonders were worked among the people at the hands of the apostles that the sick were even taken out into the streets and laid on beds and sleeping mats in the hope that at least the shadow of Peter might fall across some of them as he went past.” The sick and the tormented were flocking in from the neighbouring towns to Jerusalem to be healed and converted. All the healings, signs, and wonders demonstrate the resurrection of Jesus Christ, the fact that he atoned for human sins by his passion and death. Evil spirits have no ground to hold people down in darkness, sickness, and sinfulness because Christ has died and risen.

By submitting to the will of the Father in all things until death, the Son of Man was humble to the point of dying on the cross as one cursed. By his great humility, he vanquished the devil and crushed his proud head. Thus, he is made one with God in glory. Though he was in the form of God, he took our nature to battle with our enemy, the devil, for our rescue and redemption. The healing and salvation granted to all demonstrate the victory he won over the forces of evil by his great humility, obedience, suffering, and death according to the will of the Father. The vision of Saint John reports the Son of Man in the glory of his resurrection. “When I saw him, I fell in a dead faint at his feet, but he touched me with his right hand and said, ‘Do not be afraid; it is I, the First and the Last; I am the Living One, I was dead and now I am to live for ever and ever, and I hold the keys of death and of the underworld.” The risen Lord has taken charge of death and the underworld; every force and power of evil is now subject to his will. These are part of the content of the great package the Father has given to us by the resurrection of the Lord. The risen Lord is our heritage, for he rose in our nature and glorified it. Through faith in him, we have access to this divine largesse. In this sense, John introduces himself as our brother. “My name is John, and through our union in Jesus I am your brother and share your sufferings, your kingdom, and all you endure.” We are one with him in nature, but most importantly, one with him in faith in Jesus Christ.

By the above, John implies that we inherit the risen and glorified Lord and every part of his life, passion, death, and resurrection. He has to live through every one of us to attain his glory. The gradual transformation through faith is what we mean by our journey into the mystery of Jesus Christ. Christ suffuses every part of the journey with divine mercy, which he ministers to us as the High Priest of God’s spiritual religion. Because he entered the heavenly tabernacle with his blood, he can obtain mercy and forgiveness for our sins. John saw him in this guise: “I turned round to see who had spoken to me, and when I turned, I saw seven golden lamp-stands and, surrounded by them, a figure like a Son of man, dressed in a long robe tied at the waist with a golden girdle.” Because he lives forever to intercede for, the divine mercy of God is superabundance in our lives. The perpetual offering of his precious body, blood, soul, and divinity will always win us God’s infinite mercy when we call him.

The only way to partake of this divine largesse offered to all men through the resurrection is by faith. We must believe in the resurrection of the Lord; not a head belief, but a faith we daily and gradually work into our hearts, minds, strength, and senses. As we work out and apply the implications of the Lord’s resurrection into our lives, he transforms us into Himself through the fullness of the Holy Spirit He sends us to represent him in our spaces. “The disciples were filled with joy when they saw the Lord, and he said to them again, ‘Peace be with you. ‘As the Father sent me, so am I sending you.’ After saying this he breathed on them and said: ‘Receive the Holy Spirit. For those whose sins you forgive, they are forgiven; for those whose sins you retain, they are retained.’” He also incorporates us in his work of dispensing the infinite mercy of God. To refuse to believe is to exclude oneself from the divine mercy of God and refuse to dispense the divine mercy of God.  Our Lord was not pleased with Thomas when he refused to believe the testimony of those who experience the risen Lord. “Then he spoke to Thomas, ‘Put your finger here; look, here are my hands. Give me your hand; put it into my side. Doubt no longer but believe.’ Thomas replied, ‘My Lord and my God!’ Jesus said to him: You believe because you can see me. Happy are those who have not seen and yet believe.’”

Let us pray: 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 washed, by whose Spirit 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.