THE MERCY OF GOD FOR MAN

DIVINE MERCY SUNDAY   

Acts 2:42-47; Ps 118:2-4,13-15,22-24; 1 Pet 1:3-9; Jn 20:19-31

The Gift of Peace and Joy in Jesus Christ

The second Sunday of Easter is traditionally regarded as Low Sunday or Divine Mercy Sunday. On this second Sunday, the wonder of the Lord’s resurrection and its divine effects are gradually sinking deep into the disciples. We are gradually meditating on the fact of Jesus Christ's resurrection from the dead. The different appearances to some disciples were reported and discussed with amazement and untold joy. What is the meaning of the Lord’s resurrection from the dead? What are the implications for the disciples? What nature would his ministry on earth take from then? These questions must have been in the minds of the disciples as he appears and disappears at will. It was gradually dawning on them that his presence with them would no longer take a physical form, for he only appears to them for a purpose and disappears again, leaving them instructions on what to do. The Church uses the second Sunday of Easter to meditate on the stupendous works of human salvation that God has accomplished through his Son, Jesus Christ. She contemplates the depth of divine mercy in saving us through the passion and death of His Only Begotten Son. We know that the one who suffered and died is the Son of God because of his resurrection from the dead. The resurrection of Jesus Christ confirms and seals his teachings.

The disciples, who experienced the passion and death of their master as a shock, failed to see the hand of God in the whole event. They believed that the enemies and forces of evil triumphed over God’s plan for their salvation. Hence, they were afraid and hid themselves in a locked room. The Risen Lord came among them to illuminate their minds and hearts on God’s work and purpose. “Jesus came and stood among them. He said to them, ‘Peace be with you’, and showed them his hands and his side. 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.’” Peace is the first gift we receive when we believe in the resurrection of the Lord. The reality of the resurrection implies that the Son of Man has overcome the power of death, the forces of evil that unleashed death on him, and the malice of men who were instruments of perpetrating evil and death. If these foes have been conquered by the Lord in his resurrection, then there is nothing to fear again. This realisation is the cause of peace and joy in all who believe in the resurrection of Jesus Christ. The power to overcome these enemies of human salvation makes him Lord and Master of all peoples. These constitute the background of the Lord’s gift of peace to his disciples and their commissioning.

Just as the resurrection demonstrates that the Son of Man has conquered every enemy of our salvation, it also demonstrates his ascendance to the Father’s presence in heaven. His resurrection from the dead shows that he has assumed the glory of God and divine authority through his perfect obedience to the Father’s will. Thus, he presents the Father to us and acts in the Father’s place. His divine authority is most demonstrated in his gift of the Holy Spirit to his disciples. Since one cannot give what does not belong to him, his gift of the Holy Spirit shows he is God. “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.’” By this gift, the Lord invites us to be what he was before his death and follow the pattern of his life and death; he invites us, sinful as we are, to the same glory of God. All these reveal the mercy of the Father on us, mere men. Saint Peter sings of this mercy. “Blessed be God the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who in his great mercy has given us a new birth as his sons, by raising Jesus Christ from the dead, so that we have a sure hope and the promise of an inheritance that can never be spoilt or soiled and never fade away, because it is being kept for you in the heavens.”

The understanding and possession of this mercy of God immerse our hearts in deep peace and joy. These peace and joy overcome every adversity and enemy in Jesus Christ because of the certainty of the same glory of Christ that is in store for us in heaven. The commission is to proclaim this divine mercy to all men, empowered and guided by the Holy Spirit. The same peace and joy informed the whole community of believers and made them truly Christlike. “The whole community remained faithful to the teaching of the apostles, to the brotherhood, to the breaking of bread and to the prayers.” The anointing they received when they believed the resurrection gave them new life and the Spirit of Jesus Christ as the principle of the new life. The three basic and characteristic activities of the Spirit in them are as listed: faithfulness to apostolic teaching, fraternity based on the one Spirit, and Eucharistic celebration and prayer by which Christ feeds them on his body. These characterise the Church’s witnessing with the Holy Spirit everywhere in the world. It is a celebration of the divine mercy of God poured out on us through the salvific works of Jesus Christ, and prolonged through the life and celebration of the universal Church. Though we did not see him physically, we see him in the Church and her celebration of the mysteries. “You did not see him, yet you love him; and still without seeing him, you are already filled with a joy so glorious that it cannot be described, because you believe; and you are sure of the end to which your faith looks forward, that is, the salvation of your souls.” We are blessed because we believed without seeing.

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.