Homily for 2d Sunday of Easter

Homily for the
2d Sunday of Easter

April 28, 2019

John 20: 19-31
Collect
Nativity, Washington, D.C.                                               

“Jesus came and stood in their midst and said to them, ‘Peace be with you’” (John 20: 19).

As most of you know, this 2d Sunday of Easter has become known as Divine Mercy Sunday, a celebration of God’s great gift to us in Christ:  the ready availability of his forgiveness, his mercy, his grace.  That’s noted immediately in today’s Collect, in which we address the “God of everlasting mercy” and pray that “the grace [he has] bestowed” be increased.

The Collect pointed to 3 aspects of the merciful grace that the Father has bestowed on us thru Christ:  we’ve been washed in the baptismal font, we’ve been reborn by the Holy Spirit, and we’ve been redeemed by Christ’s blood.  There’s a unity in these 3 aspects, e.g., shortly after Jesus breathed his last; we can say that he breathed out his Spirit, as he does explicitly in today’s gospel—“He breathed on them and said, ‘Receive the Holy Spirit’” (20:22); shortly after he expired, blood and water poured out of his pierced side, a historical, physical fact rich in sacramental meaning:  the water of Baptism, the blood of the Eucharist.

The water, the blood, and the Spirit are our points of contact with God’s mercy.  Thru them, thru Christ’s sacrifice and his continued, living presence, our sins are washed away, we’re re-created or given a new birth, we’re saved by his grace.

Incredulity of St. Thomas - Hendrick Ter Brugghen

St. John recounts for us how Jesus appeared to 10 of the apostles in the upper room—10 because Judas was dead and Thomas was AWOL.  This was the same room in which they’d celebrated a last supper with Jesus, in which he instructed them to remember him in his body and blood consecrated out of bread and wine.  “He came and stood in their midst,” the very man who’d died and been laid bloody and stone cold in a tomb; “he showed them his hands and his side” (20:20), the very wounds that doubting Thomas would probe in their reality a week later.  As the Book of Revelation proclaims, he “holds the keys of death and the netherworld”; he is “alive forever and ever” (1:18).  Fully alive by divine power, he has opened up the world of the dead, opened up the prison gates of death—not only for himself but for all who have been reborn by the gift of his Holy Spirit, who have been washed in Baptism and redeemed by the blood of his sacrifice.  This is why Christians celebrate funerals:  Christ is alive and he has the keys to set all of us free from death.

All of that is, of course, by the mercy of God.  The divine mercy doesn’t stop with Baptism—very fortunate for us, sinners that we are.  As we heard in the gospel, Jesus gave the apostles the Holy Spirit as a permanent gift for the forgiveness of sins (John 20:22-23), and the apostolic power of forgiveness continues to be exercised in the Church in the waters of Baptism and in the sacrament of Reconciliation (or Penance, or confession).  God’s mercy remains available to us sinners day in and day out if we’ll come to receive it; for the successors of the apostles hold and exercise that power of the Holy Spirit, hold “the keys to death and the netherworld” to release sinners and open for all of us the doors to eternal life.  What a great mercy is ours to have our sins forgiven when we come to the Lord in repentance for whatever we’ve done (or failed to do), and Jesus gives us the peace that only he can give, the peace of reconciliation with the Holy Trinity and with all of our sisters and brothers in faith.

“Be not unbelieving, but believe” (John 20:27).