2d Sunday of Easter
April 28, 2019
John 20: 19-31Collect
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).
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