Homily
Divine Mercy Sunday
St. Lawrence Catholic Campus Center at the University of Kansas
7 April 2013
Daily Readings
Check this out on Chirbit
In the Easter season every Christian professes with all his heart and mind and strength that Jesus Christ is Risen. Jesus Christ is truly Risen. We profess a historical event that has changed history more than any other, a truth that has been passed down carefully and consistently for 2000 years so that it can reach our hearts and minds. Christ rose from the dead. There is confirmation of a love that is stronger than death. Christians profess the Resurrection as the thing they most know to be true out of all the things they know to be true.
Divine Mercy Sunday
St. Lawrence Catholic Campus Center at the University of Kansas
7 April 2013
Daily Readings
Check this out on Chirbit
In the Easter season every Christian professes with all his heart and mind and strength that Jesus Christ is Risen. Jesus Christ is truly Risen. We profess a historical event that has changed history more than any other, a truth that has been passed down carefully and consistently for 2000 years so that it can reach our hearts and minds. Christ rose from the dead. There is confirmation of a love that is stronger than death. Christians profess the Resurrection as the thing they most know to be true out of all the things they know to be true.
Yet this truth can of course be doubted. No matter how much evidence is passed down, the Resurrection is a truth that goes beyond reason, so it can always be doubted. Even Thomas after touching the wounds of the Risen Lord could have returned to his doubts the next day. Doubting is always available to us. Agnostics and atheists are the fasting growing segment of the religious landscape, and as many people are losing faith in Jesus as are encountering him through the Easter proclamation of the Church.
We can argue, of course, about how reasonable it is to believe the testimony of Thomas and those first apostles, who gave their lives to the truth of the Resurrection. We can and should proclaim that the more you try to live the paschal mystery, the more you discover it to be true - that in entering into the suffering and death of Christ, we discover a new a distinctively different kind of life on the other side of the cross that we call eternal. We can and should argue for this truth.
Yet many people will always have a hard time believing because Christianity is not at its core an argument. Whenever we shout - Jesus is Risen! Others can shout just as loud - no he isn't! And this kind of back and forth goes nowhere.
Christianity at its core is less of an argument and more of a relationship, less a dogma and more a dialogue. And in every relationship, human and divine, there is a critical and necessary interplay of faith and love, of trust and mercy. Therefore, we cannot dare to shout the truth that Jesus Christ is Risen - the truth we know most to be true out of everything we know to be true - without simultaneously proclaming God is love. God is mercy. So this second Sunday of Easter is not simply a crescendo of last week's Easter Proclamation He is Risen - it is also a contemplation of what it means to be visited by mercy itself - in the person of the Risen Christ.
For the Easter proclamation of the Church to grow stronger, what happens in tonight's Gospel is something that must happen personally and intimately, from the inside out, within each Christian. The Risen Christ, bringing with him his victory over sin and death, comes to visit his Church from the inside out. We see this in the story in his appearance in the upper room, where the apostles are gathered in fear. We see it intimately as Thomas places his doubts into the wounds of Christ, and experiences most personally what a broken human person redeemed completely by love really looks and feels like.
The experience of us receiving the Eucharist in the Easter season is no less intimate. For we take the Risen Christ deeply within us, into the inner recesses of those doubts and fears that still need to be healed, in those places where Christ's victory over sin and death has not yet been completed. When we receive the Eucharist, we are asking to be healed by divine mercy in the most perfect way possible - from the inside out, beginning from the weakest part of us, at that precise place where we cannot change ourselves.
The Risen Christ breaks through any remaining isolation within us with his mercy. Until we have this experience, and unless we have this experience, our profession of the Resurrection will limp. For it is only when we know we are loved that we respond with greater faith. When we are healed, we respond with trust. And vice versa, when we invite the Risen Christ to visit us with his unique and salvific power and victory and mercy, then the effect within us is perfect charity and greater mercy given, as the apostles were sent out to forgive the sins of others.
The celebration of Divine Mercy Sunday is a recent change to the Easter liturgical calendar. John Paul II forever renamed the 2nd Sunday of Easter Divine Mercy Sunday. He himself died on the eve of this Solemnity, after having allowed us to witness him at his weakest point, his closeness to death, giving further testimony of his trust in God's mercy. Let us not be afraid, as he was not, to be vulnerable and dependent before others and before God, for the redeemed wounds of Christ remind us that the way to the Resurrection is not escaping our humanity, but allowing the mercy of God to visit us at our weakest point. Amen.
Christianity at its core is less of an argument and more of a relationship, less a dogma and more a dialogue. And in every relationship, human and divine, there is a critical and necessary interplay of faith and love, of trust and mercy. Therefore, we cannot dare to shout the truth that Jesus Christ is Risen - the truth we know most to be true out of everything we know to be true - without simultaneously proclaming God is love. God is mercy. So this second Sunday of Easter is not simply a crescendo of last week's Easter Proclamation He is Risen - it is also a contemplation of what it means to be visited by mercy itself - in the person of the Risen Christ.
For the Easter proclamation of the Church to grow stronger, what happens in tonight's Gospel is something that must happen personally and intimately, from the inside out, within each Christian. The Risen Christ, bringing with him his victory over sin and death, comes to visit his Church from the inside out. We see this in the story in his appearance in the upper room, where the apostles are gathered in fear. We see it intimately as Thomas places his doubts into the wounds of Christ, and experiences most personally what a broken human person redeemed completely by love really looks and feels like.
The experience of us receiving the Eucharist in the Easter season is no less intimate. For we take the Risen Christ deeply within us, into the inner recesses of those doubts and fears that still need to be healed, in those places where Christ's victory over sin and death has not yet been completed. When we receive the Eucharist, we are asking to be healed by divine mercy in the most perfect way possible - from the inside out, beginning from the weakest part of us, at that precise place where we cannot change ourselves.
The Risen Christ breaks through any remaining isolation within us with his mercy. Until we have this experience, and unless we have this experience, our profession of the Resurrection will limp. For it is only when we know we are loved that we respond with greater faith. When we are healed, we respond with trust. And vice versa, when we invite the Risen Christ to visit us with his unique and salvific power and victory and mercy, then the effect within us is perfect charity and greater mercy given, as the apostles were sent out to forgive the sins of others.
The celebration of Divine Mercy Sunday is a recent change to the Easter liturgical calendar. John Paul II forever renamed the 2nd Sunday of Easter Divine Mercy Sunday. He himself died on the eve of this Solemnity, after having allowed us to witness him at his weakest point, his closeness to death, giving further testimony of his trust in God's mercy. Let us not be afraid, as he was not, to be vulnerable and dependent before others and before God, for the redeemed wounds of Christ remind us that the way to the Resurrection is not escaping our humanity, but allowing the mercy of God to visit us at our weakest point. Amen.
1 comment:
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