Homily for 2d Sunday of Easter

Homily for the
2d Sunday of Easter

April 16, 2023
Collect
John 20: 19-31
Ursulines, The Fountains, Tuckahoe
St. Francis Xavier, Bronx

“God of everlasting mercy, … increase the grace you have bestowed” (Collect).

Since the time of St. John Paul II, this Sunday, the Octave Day of Easter, has been designated Divine Mercy Sunday—a day to recognize specially that God has chosen to touch us with his mercy thru the life and ministry, and the passion, death, and resurrection of his Son Jesus Christ.

The Church has always known that Jesus embodies divine mercy.  We’ve often expressed this our belief, e.g., in devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus.

During the 8 days of the Easter Octave we read each day of one of the resurrection appearances of Jesus to his disciples.  The gospel for today is always used on this 2d Sunday of Easter.  Altho the Easter nite appearance isn’t the last recorded instance of a resurrection appearance, and the appearance a week later isn’t either, in a sense they’re the culminating appearances.  We hear Jesus 3 times bestow peace upon his disciples.  This is the peace of divine mercy:  of forgiveness for their abandoning him and their reluctance to believe that he’s risen, and for Peter’s denials.

Jesus makes his peace-wish and his forgiveness concrete by bestowing on the gathered disciples his gift of the Holy Spirit.  Thru the Spirit they’re empowered to share his peace and forgiveness, and the full mercy of God, with all believers.  This is Christ’s commissioning of the Church to continue his own work of offering the divine mercy to all of humanity.

This the Church does by baptizing believers for the forgiveness of sins, incorporating them into the sacred mystery of his passion, death, and resurrection.  And since we remain, even so, sinful people, the Church extends Christ’s forgiveness in another sacrament, which we call Reconciliation.  The God of everlasting mercy thus increases the grace he has bestowed upon us in Christ:  the graces of being washed clean, of being reborn in the Holy Spirit, of being redeemed by the precious blood of Jesus.  How gracious, how forgiving, how madly in love with us is our God, the Father of Jesus Christ.