Second Sunday of Easter
The great Easter feast of last Sunday began the Church’s fifty-day celebration of the Resurrection The Gospel of each Sunday is a meditation on Jesus as the resurrected Christ, made known in the scriptures and the breaking of the bread, the bearer of life in all its fullness, our way, truth and life, pledge of God’s love. Many people think that Easter begins and ends on Easter Sunday but it doesn’t stop there, the celebration of the season of Easter goes on for 50 days and ends on Pentecost Sunday. I wonder what the Apostles would think if they were to come down to us these days and find that we are celebrating the Death and Resurrection of Jesus that took place 2020 years ago, they would be amazed especially as they thought everything was over with the Crucifixion on Good Friday. In this Sundays Gospel reading the Apostles were still huddled together behind locked doors, mulling over the shocking experience from the week before when all seemed to be lost but as we know all was not lost.
Then Jesus appeared to them and assured them that He was alive. His message must have troubled them as well when he told them: “As the Father has sent me, so I am sending you.” In the same way as the apostles were sent out we are sent out to bring his message of mercy and love to other people. Then of course there is doubting Thomas who heard the witness of the those who saw Jesus but, like so many of us today he wanted more proof. Jesus says to Thomas, “Have you come to believe because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and have believed.” That is a great quote for us, who have not “seen” the risen Christ in person as the disciples did. We have come to believe though we have not seen him in the flesh but he is with us in the midst of our communities. When Jesus says to the Apostles Peace be with you the Peace he is talking about is much more than the lack of conflict. True peace, gives us happiness, since it is built on trust in God and one another. The gospel tells us how Jesus gave his followers peace because they trusted him.
In spite of the scepticism of Thomas and so many others, throughout history Jesus offers us the same peace of heart mind and soul. The terror of Gethsemane and Calvary were necessary to defeat the terror of every person, the terror of the emptiness, isolation, and alienation that is the effect of death. With the crucifixion and the resurrection death is not an abyss of emptiness, uncertainty, or alienation from truth, goodness, and beauty. After Jesus’ masterful work by taking on suffering, terror, and death itself, death is transformed into a way from life on earth to eternal life. Jesus’ life death and resurrection encourage us and give us the energy through the Holy Spirit to be a community of people who have unconditional love for one another and other people. As Christians we live in the world and are commissioned to lift it up from death into resurrected life here and now by what we do and say. In that work as Christians we grow, we become complete, we discover and amplify our own and our communities relationship with the Lord. As we celebrate Divine Mercy Sunday we remember the joy, the hope, the grief and the anxieties of the people in our time those we know and those unknown to us and we bring them to the merciful Lord. Let us not give up on our efforts, as small as they seem, to bring peace into our families, workplace, classroom and community. May all of us be witnesses to the love and mercy of the Gospel as we try to bring the caring face of God’s mercy to the people wherever we are today.
Fullerton T 