2nd Sunday of Easter (Divine Mercy)

 

27 April 2025

Acts 4:32-35

Ps 118:2-4, 13-15, 22-24

1 Jn 5:1-6

Jn 20:19-31

 

Confitemini Domino quoniam bonus,

quoniam in saeculum misericordia eius

 

"Give thanks to the Lord for he is good,

His mercy endures forever" (Ps 118:1).

 

St. John Paul II began his homily for the Second Sunday of Easter on 30 April 2000 with the opening and closing words of Psalm 118.  They are words that encourage us to rejoice in God's mercy, a mercy that is never withheld, despite our unfaithfulness.  

 

During that Mass the Holy Father canonized St. Faustina Kowalska, the Polish visionary religious sister who wrote of Christ's Divine Mercy in her diary. And he declared that from that day on the Second Sunday of Easter

would be known as Divine Mercy Sunday.

 

The familiar image of Divine Mercy depicts Jesus clothed in white. with His right hand raised in blessing and His left touching his chest.  Rays of red and white emanate from beneath His hand.  The rays recall the blood and water

that flowed from Jesus' side when he was pierced by the soldier's lance. They represent the Divine Mercy poured out upon the worldthrough baptism and the Eucharist.  Below the image is the signature: "Jesus I trust in You."

 

“Unless I see the marks . . . . “

 

Many like to slag Thomas for doubting. But doing so misses a deep narrative thread in today’s gospel. The story  of Thomas is not about doubt, but about faith, faith that, like ours, was tested. Thomas’ faith emerged victorious from that test. 

 

Doubt is not the opposite of faith.  Indifference or not caring is faith’s opposite.

Faith and doubt are sides of the same coin. One cannot exist without the other. Faith must always contend with doubt if it is to grow. Faith does not mature or come to fullness without periodic struggles with doubt, struggles during which we wonder about deeper meaning.

 

Thomas, who was not present when Jesus first appeared after his Resurrection, is a model for us today.  Thomas' love for Jesus did not die on the cross.  Thomas continued to love Jesus with the same kind of love we hold for a dead parent or friend, a love that may keep us off-balance for a long time. In his sorrow he found it difficult to believe the message of the other apostles that they had seen Him.  His faith was tested.  And then we hear his faith-filled gasp when Jesus appeared: “My Lord and my God!”

 

In his Letter to the Romans Paul reminds us that,  “Faith comes from what is heard and what is heard comes by the preaching of Jesus Christ.”  That preaching does not come to us only in oral form as it did at the Sermon on the Mount or in Jesus' many parables.  Jesus' preaching comes to us in scripture, in the tradition of the Church, and, most especially, in the reception of the Eucharist.

 

Over the coming weeks we will hear of the beginnings of the Church.  Those early communities had the task of defining what it means to be a follower of Jesus Christ.

 

In today's reading from Acts we hear of communal mercy that fulfilled the needs of those who otherwise would have gone without. That mercy is a reflection of the Divine Mercy bestowed on us today.  We will hear more in the coming weeks.

 

At the end of their encounter, Jesus asked Thomas a question and bestowed a blessing,

 

“Have you believed because you have seen me?  Blessed are those who have not seen and yet believe.” 

 

We too must answer that question.

 

The last sentence of this reading puts the Gospels into perspective:  “Now, Jesus did many other signs in the presence of his disciples that are not written in this book.  But these are written that you may come to believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that through this belief you may have life in His name.”

 

The gospels are not albums of verbal snapshots from Jesus' life.  They are not log books tracing Jesus' daily movements. There is no Captain Kirk-like "Star Date".  The gospels are not diaries of Jesus’ day-to-day thoughts and movements. They are not history in the modern understanding of the word.   We can never interpret the gospels solely through the lenses of journalism, anthropology, or science without frustration and the risk of faithlessness. 

 

The Gospels proclaims one essential truth, that Jesus of Nazareth, of whom it speaks, is the Lord.  Thus, the fullness of Easter joy is contained in Thomas’ faith-filled, startled, and ultimately joyous proclamation. That is why we too

can gaze upon the True Body and Blood of Christ, from which flows the Divine Mercy, and say with Thomas and all the Church,“My Lord and My God.” 

 

Confitemini Domino quoniam bonus,

quoniam in saeculum misericordia eius

 

Alleluia, Alleluia, Alleluia

 

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The photos are from the Divine Mercy celebration in Ljubljana, Slovnia in 2017 when I was living at the church.  The liturgy, without Mass, went on for three hours with rosary, adoration, procession, and long lines at the confessional.  

 

From underneath and behind the altar

 Fr. Jack, SJ, MD

Blessing the Baskets

 

Święconka, the blessing of the Easter baskets, remains one of my favorite traditions from growing up in Plymouth, PA where most of my high school class had last names ending in -ski or -wicz.  Polish, Lithuanian, Slovak, Ukrainian.  We all felt sorry for the Irish Catholic kids because they got oatmeal for breakfast on Easter Sunday.  We feasted on kielbasa, bread, horseradish, roast pork, ham, butter (frequently pounded into the shape of a lamb), salt (important), hardboiled eggs,  nut roll, poppy seed roll, and frequently enough some chocolate slipped in there.   Mom always included an orange or two as well.  I suspect each family had its customs and even only-once-a-year foods and secret cake recipes for the basket.  One  year mom was cooking the ham, kielbasa, pork, and so on for the basket on Good Friday.  Dad came out of the office and asked, “Eleanor, are you trying to kill me?”  The house was redolent and the salivary glands were in overdrive.  It was a special kind of suffering while fasting. 

 

I have memories as a kid of Father Malinowski, among others, coming to the house, to bless the baskets on mom’s kitchen table.  I note Fr. Malinowski as he taught me how to be an altar boy in third grade at St. Mary’s School .  Fifty years later he was primary concelebrant at my Mass of Thanksgiving in Plymouth fifty years later.  Great man and a tremendous priest both when young (he was newly ordained) and when we reconnected after I entered the Society. 

 

For several years, particularly when mom was still living,  I was able to get to Plymouth to bless the baskets.  The first year I used the prayers from the “Book of Blessings.”  I was sorely disappointed in them.  They were as bland as room temperature water when dying of thirst.  The following year I wrote to a Polish Jesuit who sent the prayers used in Poland.  They will be included below in English.  If anyone wants the Polish send a message.  Of course mom did not have to go to the church to get her basket blessed after I was ordained.  Nor did any of the neighbors.  They just brought them to the house.  The Polish prayers include four separate blessings for the bread, the kielbasa, the salt, and the egg. 

 

The photo below is the table from  a few years ago when I was able to have the typical easter breakfast, including two Polish Jesuits.  It was a fun morning.  I wore the stole to bless the food immediately before we ate.  It was an ordination gift a Vietnamese Jesuit had made for me by Vietnamese Carmelite nuns.  There was of course a lot more food in the pantry.  The bread came from a monastery while the kielbasa, poppyseed, and apricot roll came from home (Tarnowski’s and Buttonwood Bakery).

 

Have a most Blessed Easter. 

 

 

Fr Jack, SJ, MD

Homily for the Easter Vigil

 

All Seven Old Testament Readings

Rom 6:3-11

Lk 24:1-12

 

The liturgy speaks for itself in multiple ways.  The prayers, the readings, and the actions all have multiple meanings while simultaneously indicating the same truth.  The liturgy speaks for itself most eloquently on this most joyful night when we celebrate Jesus’ resurrection at the vigil Mass.  It announces this most glorious night in unequivocal terms with the magnificent Exsultet where we hear:

 

‘Hæc nox est,

in qua, destrúctis vínculis mortis,

Christus ab ínferis victor ascéndit.’

 

‘This is the night

when Christ broke the prison-bars of death

and rose victorious from the underworld.’

 

God's first words in the first verse of Genesis, the first book of the Old Testament are:  “Let there be light.”  Thus, we begin the vigil with light, blessing the fire and paschal candle that is carried into the church with the words,

 

Lumen Christi

Christ our Light. 

 

Each of us holds that  New Light as it is passed from worshipper to worshipper inside the church. 

 

From the Exsultet again.

 

‘Hæc nox est, de qua scriptum est:

Et nox sicut dies illuminábitur:

et nox illuminátio mea in delíciis meis.’

 

‘This is the night

that is as bright as day,

dazzling is the night

and full of gladness’

 

Then the water is blessed.  We will recall in ritual form the parting of the waters at the creation. We will recall the new life we were given in baptism, a recollection augmented by renewing our baptismal promises.

 

Luke’s Gospel is cinematic in its detail.  We know what the women were carrying. 

We know dawn was just breaking.  We can imagine the amazed looks on their faces when they saw that the stone had been rolled away. 

 

Insert yourself into that scene.  Stand with those amazed, frightened, and confused women.  Had the grave been robbed?  Where was Jesus?

Who were the men in dazzling garments? 

What would you have felt? 

What would you have thought? 

What would you have said?

 

With the final blessing a continuous liturgy of more than fifty hours comes to an end. We go forth to rejoice in the resurrection of  Christ our Lord

 

The formula intoned while the paschal candle is being inscribed at the beginning of Mass explains everything about this night and about our ffaith.

 

"Christ

yesterday and today

the beginning and the end.

Alpha and Omega;

all time belongs to him,

and all the ages;

to him be glory and power,

through every age for ever."

 

We can only add:

 

Thanks be to God.

Alleluia.  Alleluia.  Alleluia.

 

 

Fr. Jack, SJ, MD

Good Friday

 

Good Friday

 

Immediately following the proclamation of the passion,  the liturgy of the veneration of the cross begins with a triple chant as the cross is brought from the back of the church to the altar.  The chant begins on a low tone and is sung higher with each repetition.

 

“Ecce lignum Crucis, in quo salus mundi pependit.”

“Behold the wood of the cross, on which hung the savior of the world.

 

The congregation responds:

“Venite Adoremus”

Come let us worship.

 

The cross is not meant to be a fashion statement around the neck of an aging rock singer or a gang sign.  The cross  is the instrument of our salvation on which Jesus, fully God and fully man, was put to a painful death at the hands of Roman soldiers who perfected the means of maximizing both the degree of agony and the amount of time the victim hung there before finally dying. 

 

Jesus’ death on the cross brought us from death to eternal life.  There is only one possible response when we gaze upon the cross on which hung the Savior of the world.  

 

Come let us worship.

“Venite Adoremus”

 

________________________________

Holy Thursday

 

Tonight we celebrate a night unlike any other in the history of the universe.

 

Paul described the reason for that uniqueness in his First Letter to the Corinthians

when he wrote of how Jesus took bread, broke it, and said, “This is my body that is for you. Do this in remembrance of me.”  And how He then took the cup and said:
“This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this in remembrance of me.”

 

Hoc facite in meam commemorationem

 

“Do this in memory of me.”

 

We will hear those words this evening at the end of the consecration recalling, in a particular way, that Passover meal two millennia in the past. 

 

With Holy Thursday Mass we begin an unbroken liturgy of fifty hours during which the sign of the cross, the sign that signifies the beginning and end of all liturgies, will not be made again until the final blessing at the vigil Mass on Saturday night. 

 

During these three days we enter into a liturgy of silence, a unique and special silence, that is more than simply the absence of external sound. It is a silence that is, in fact,  enhanced and deepened by sound.  The chant. The prayers. The sounds of movement as we stand, sit, and even the occasional cough, create the silence of this triduum. 

 

During these three days we ideally enter into an internal silence as well, a silence in which we push the gotta’, wanna’, haveta’, internal conversations to the side.  We enter into a silence of not thinking ahead or behind but a silence of remaining in the present moment. It is a Triduum of silence:  the silence following Jesus’ agony in the garden, the silence of the sealed tomb, and the silence described in Holy Saturday’s second reading in the breviary which begins:

 

“Something strange is happening—there is a great silence on earth today, a great silence and stillness. The whole earth keeps silence because the King is asleep.”

 

Enter into the silence.  Embrace it.  Allow it to envelop you.  It is the silence described  by Robert Cardinal Sarah of Guinea who wrote in his book, The Power of Silence,  "Silence is not an absence.  On the contrary, it is the manifestation of a presence, the most intense of all presences." Remain with that presence over the next three days. Remain there to prepare for the great celebration of Our Lord’s Resurrection.

Palm Sunday

 

 

The Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ.

The most horrifying words ever written.

 

The Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ

The most consoling words ever proclaimed.

 

On Thursday we will commemorate the institution of the great gift of the Eucharist.

 

On Friday the Passion will be proclaimed again. 

Afterwards we will venerate the cross.

 

But then follows the wild joy of the Easter Vigil. 

 

But today we leave this church weighed down by the echo of the words:

 

The Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ. 

 

We sit in stunned silence . . . . .

 

and inexpressible thanksgiving.    

 

____________________________________________________________________________

 

 

 Fr. Jack, SJ, MD

A Homily for Passiontide

 

Isaiah 43:15-21

Ps 126:1-6

Phil 3:8-14

Jn 8:1-11

 

We are rapidly approaching the singular event in Jesus’ life. It is the sole reason

for His Incarnation that we celebrated a few weeks ago on the Solemnity of the Annunciation.  Next Sunday we will bless and distribute palms to commemorate His triumphant entry into Jerusalem.  We will hear the chilling introduction: “The Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ according to Luke.” 

 

Throughout the rest of Holy Week we will recall the most important events in the history of the world.  On Holy Thursday the Church will commemorate the institution of the Eucharist. We will be reminded of the Passover in the first reading from the Book of Exodus. The second reading from Paul’s First Letter to the Corinthians includes the words of the formula for the consecration of the bread and wine at Mass.

 

The Good Friday liturgy does not include Mass. Following the reading of the Passion According to John, the cross is venerated in solemn fashion. We will then receive communion using the bread consecrated at Mass the night before. 

 

Holy Saturday is marked by a peculiar emptiness. That emptiness is highlighted by a reading in the breviary that begins: “Something strange is happening—there is a great silence on earth, a great silence and stillness.  The whole earth keeps silence because the King is asleep . . . God has fallen asleep in the flesh and he has raised up all who have slept ever since the world began. God has died in the flesh and hell trembles with fear.”

 

During the vigil Mass of Easter we will be reminded of the forging of the Old Covenant

and will sing Alleluia, He is Risen, in celebration of the New Covenant. 

 

The covenant God formed with His people was not and is not a pact between equals. 

It was not, is not, and never will be a democracy.  God decided in freedom to grant His allegiance to Israel.  He dictated His own conditions.  Similarly Jesus dictated the conditions of the new covenant. We are free to accept or reject those conditions.  We are not free to negotiate them to suit our taste or current social trends.

 

God chose Israel without any merit on her part.  Similarly, God has chosen us. Like Ancient Israel we are sinners.  Like the Ancient Israelites we are sinners loved by God,

a love that God gave freely.  The parable of the woman caught in adultery is well-known and extraordinarily complex. The motif of the adulterous woman is used throughout the Old Testament as a metaphor for Israel’s recurrent infidelity to the covenant. But there is one question that will never be answered. What did Jesus’ write in the dirt?  There is no indication.  We will never know

 

During these last weeks of Lent we hear much about how the authorities tried to trap Jesus into saying something that could be used against him in a charge of blasphemy. 

The question about what to do about the woman presented Jesus with a choice: Contradict the law that deemed stoning the penalty for adultery or make an exception to God’s law, a very popular activity today.

 

Either of these arguments could have been against Jesus. Yet, once again, the authorities could not trap Him.  The interrogation continued for a bit whereupon Jesus said what has almost become a figure of speech in English, “He who is without sin cast the first stone.”

 

The accusers dispersed slowly until only Jesus and the woman were left at the scene.

 

Jesus chose not to condemn the woman caught in her sin and told her to go.  But then he added an important condition: “sin no more.”  Important advice, particularly during this Passiontide. 

 

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Two photos taken during Lent 2011 while our tertian class was on the thirty day retreat.  It ended on Palm Sunday. After a day in Adelaide half of us made the two-day drive back to Sydney.  The Outback is very different.  We made the retreat at the Sevenhill retreat house.  Both photos were taken there.  

 

 

 Fr. Jack, SJ, MD