Second Sunday of Easter / Divine Mercy Sunday 2020 Message Celebrating new Life in the Risen Lord during the COVID-19 Crisis Gospel Reading: John 20: 19-31
Every Easter, the words ring out and true, “Christ is Risen!” The Resurrection of the Lord is a building block of our faith, of course, but is it any easier to comprehend year after year? After studies of theology and continued reading, I find that words can still be hard to assemble in clear and concise terms to describe such an important matter.
To be honest, I wonder if we go about such a task in the wrong manner. The Resurrection of the Lord can be difficult to comprehend, but not for Jesus. Today’s reading from the Gospel according to John, the familiar one each Second Sunday of Easter, Divine Mercy Sunday, gives us the best starting point. As is obvious in the Risen Lord’s appearance to the disciples, you can say that through the Resurrection, Christ returns.
However, his purpose is more: his first order of business is to give peace, to offer forgiveness, to give mercy as a gift that must also be shared by those who receive it. This should be our “Aha!” moment, by realizing that to understand the “what” of the Resurrection of our Lord, it is imperative to understand the “why” of it all.
The Resurrection occurred; Jesus was raised from the dead by the love of his Heavenly Father out of love for us and to bring to completion the promise of redemption. In other words, the Resurrection was the supreme fulfillment of our reconciliation with God; God’s way of showing us that not even death could separate us from him.
In his return, Christ shows no anger or frustration. He knows that it is hard for the disciples to understand and believe in him, now the Risen Lord. Their last view of Jesus was either dying on the cross or his dead body being laid in the tomb.
Christ also knew well that after such difficult experiences, they were slow to receive his peace and mercy and slow to forgive themselves and others. When they were slow to forgive and be forgiven
and when we are, too, Jesus simply responds by giving more peace and more forgiveness. Each appearance is announced with the same greeting of consolation and healing: “Peace be with you...”
Such a move by Christ demonstrates his constant ministry of reconciliation to us and the human race, even to those who persecuted him while he hung on the cross, by giving peace and forgiveness – mercy.
A helpful contemporary voice on the reconciling and healing mission of the Risen Christ and the significance of his wounds is Fr. Robert Schreiter, C.PP.S. The Risen Lord’s actions provide a new paradigm for our lives, “a spirituality of reconciliation,” which “involves finding our wounds and seeing if they can be a source of healing rather than of ever great misery.”
Following Schreiter’s insights, we can recognize the emergence of new possibilities when the cycles of vengeance and violence are broken by our refusal to brood over our wounds and instead be like Christ in not only seeking but offering reconciliation and being merciful. Like Christ, our suffering and wounds must link us to others – both near and far and in times of tranquility or crisis – who also bear the marks of suffering.
Jesus has no shame in revealing his wounds to the gathered disciples and his followers throughout history, nor does he want his wounds to bring shame on anyone. The cycle of violence had to be and has to be broken.
Christ’s wounds, and indeed his humanity, reveal God’s healing intervention in the human struggle; Resurrection demonstrates that our lives are not in vain or adrift, but find true fulfillment in union with him who has risen; with him who reconciles.
When we dwell on the Resurrection only as an event, we run the risk of not grasping the full weight of such a gesture of Divine Mercy. Cycles of sin and suffering seem to run on and on, but the mercy of God keeps coming to us in Christ. The Resurrection didn’t just happen, it continues. In Christ, life goes on because Mercy never ends.
Peace in the Risen Lord! Fr. Charles Johnson, O.P.