Divine Mercy Sunday (2nd Sunday of Easter)

 

Acts 2:42-47

Ps 118:2-3, 13-15, 22-24

1 Pt 1:3-9

Jn 20:19-31

 

Seven years ago I was in Slovenia for Divine Mercy Sunday.  It is a major celebration there. The church was packed for three hours during which there was adoration, rosary,

Mass with a homily by the Archbishop of LJ, ending with a procession of the Blessed Sacrament.  Had I spoken Slovenian I’d probably still be sitting in a confessional.  The lines were huge.  My job was to take photos. By the time the day was over I’d taken some 700 and walked 3 ½ miles in the huge church.

 

It is fascinating that the writings of Faustina Kowalska, a poorly educated visionary religious sister, writings which were suppressed for a number of years, became a worldwide devotion. That devotion resulted in fellow Pole St. John Paul II designating the second Sunday of Easter as  Divine Mercy Sunday at her canonization, on May 5, 2000, a mere 62 years after her death.  

 

Saint Thomas Aquinas defined mercy as "the compassion in our hearts for another person's misery, a compassion which drives us to do what we can to help him" John Paul II defined mercy in his 1981 encyclical Dives in Misericordia (Rich in Mercy,) in which he wrote:  "Mercy is love's second name" and mercy is "the greatest attribute of God."  Divine Mercy is the form that God's eternal love takes when He reaches out to us in the midst of our need and our brokenness, always ready to pour out His merciful

and compassionate love for us

to help in time of need.

Over the next weeks we will hear of the beginnings of the Church, particularly from Acts.

And we will hear a great deal from the Gospel of John.  It is important to remember that

neither John’s Gospel nor the synoptic gospels are, or were meant to be, albums with verbal snapshots of detailed scenes from Jesus' life.   The gospels are not a log book

that trace Jesus' daily movements or a diary of Jesus’ day-to-day thoughts. They are not history in the modern sense of the word. Any attempt to read them through the lens of modern historical conventions is doomed to failure and perhaps high comedy. 

 

We can never interpret the gospels in the light of the modern concepts of history, journalism, and science without frustration and faithlessness. Nor can we interpret or rewrite them through the lenses of modern ‘isms’ and ‘ists,  especially the modern isms and ists. The less said about novels such as The da Vinci Code the better. 

 

The last sentences of today’s Gospel puts things 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 Gospel proclaims one, and only 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:  "My Lord and My God." 

 

It is why we too can gaze upon the True Body and Blood of Christ at the consecration in a few minutes and say with Thomas and all the Church, “My Lord and My God.”  

 

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 The photos are from Divine Mercy Sunday in Ljubljana, Slovenia in 2017. 

 

 

The congregation shot from under and behind the altar.

The rosary being recited

Mass

The image of Divine Mercy with the candles placed by the congregants

Fr. Jack, SJ, MD