what's too good to be true?

 

what's too good to be true?

Homily

2nd Sunday of Easter B2

Divine Mercy Sunday

7 April 2024

St. Lawrence Catholic Campus Center at the University of Kansas

AMDG

What's too good to be true?  Well, it's the Resurrection - obviously!

Now don't freak out.  I haven't lost my Easter faith in one week. The Resurrection is still the one thing I know to be true out of everything I know to be true.  On this truth I am happy to bet all that I am and ever will be.

Yet the Resurrection is also the thing I most doubt.  It's also the one thing that's too good to be true.

Is there a contradiction here?  Yea, maybe.  Is there a paradox? Yes, more likely!  Is the Resurrection a huge risk of faith - pray God, I hope so!

It makes sense actually that my deepest truth will always be found where I have made the biggest risk of faith.  Don't take my word for it. Take the words of the holy martyrs, who are willing to risk death even today for the truth of the Resurrection.

So I say it again.  My deepest truth will always be where I make the biggest risk of faith.  That is what faith is for!  Faith never goes against my reason, but always goes beyond it, seeking to receive and understand truths that are beyond what my mind can figure out, manage or control.

That's exactly why my deepest faith in the strange, mysterious, profound, dramatic, and yes most true event in human history - the Resurrection of Jesus indeed from the dead as he said - is also the thing I most doubt.

On Divine Mercy Sunday, the Risen Christ greets the doubts of Thomas, and my doubts, not with disdain but with peace.  Three times He says to us doubters - peace be with you!  Then he invites us his disciples not to put away out fears and doubts, but to let them be penetrated by his forgiveness.  Jesus appears in the upper room not to condemn, but to show mercy.  The disciples discover that in penetrating the open wounds of Jesus with their own hands, that their own interior wounds, especially the deepest wounds of fear and doubt, are healed and forgiven.

Is Thomas a skeptic, a pessimist, and a doubter?  Maybe so, but so am I.  Yet his honesty led Him to have a dramatic encounter with the Resurrection.  With his own doubts and fears healed, the Resurrection will never be something he wishes or pretends to be true, but the one thing he knows to be true.

What he most doubted, becomes his firmest conviction.  St. John says the one who is indeed victor over the world is the one who testifies with Thomas that Jesus is my Lord and my God. Thomas ended up a martyr, emerging victorious through confession of this faith that he once doubted.

You too are victor over the world with a good confession during Easter.  Yes, you heard me right. Confession is an Easter sacrament, given by the Risen Christ to the Church on Divine Mercy Sunday.  You can go to confession during Lent all you want, but the best confessions are Easter ones, when not only sins are wiped away but the ways in which we do not trust God are healed by a rich experience of Divine Mercy that makes us new from the inside out.

Jesus is not put off by your doubts.  He invites you to a deeper experience of His mercy, so that the one thing that's too good to be true becomes the one thing you most know to be true.

The victory that conquers the world is our faith in Jesus Christ Risen indeed from the dead as He said - my Lord and my God!. Alleluia!

+mj