Divine Mercy Sunday
April 03, 2016
Acts 5:12 16 // Rv 1:9-11a, 12-13, 17-19 // Jn 20:19-31
This is the Second
Sunday of the Easter and we celebrate this weekend as Divine mercy Sunday. I
believe that this Sunday is worth to be celebrated not only because it is the
last day of the octave of Easter Season, but also we, our generation, are in a
desperate need of God’s Mercy. Putting in the words of Pope Francis, from the
book, The Name of God is Mercy, “at a time when “humanity is
wounded,” suffering from “the many slaveries of the third millennium” — not
just war and poverty and social exclusion, but also fatalism, hardheartedness
and self-righteousness”- we realizes that we have no other place to relay upon
except in God’s Mercy.
It
is interesting to me to reflect a little bit more on the wounds of Jesus and
along with that our own wounds. I know, we are now Easter People and we have a
joyful him, Alleluia, to chant. Yet, the Gospel makes me think that Faith in
Christ is roaming around the wounds of Christ. The Gospel gives me a picture
that there is a wounded Lord and there are also wounded disciples. And again,
it plays like an identity of each person: The Wounds of Jesus prove that he is
the Christ and he is risen from the dead. The wounds of the Apostles, which is
expressed through their fear, anguish and anxiety proves that they have
abandoned their master and they desperately need healing.
What
does it all mean about the wounds of Jesus? The wounds of Jesus are the
expression of God’s love for humanity. “He so loved the world that he gave his
only son to redeem them” from their fall, from their brokenness. When God’s
love meets the brokenness of humanity, we experience His Mercy. Today, as we
profess in this divine Mercy Sunday, Jesus I trust in you, remember that we are
wounded, broken and God will never abandon us alone, for his Mercy endures forever.
What
do we mean by the wounds of the Apostles and of ours? How are we wounded? The
Scripture gives us the picture that it is the price that we pay when we abandon
God in our life. This is very clear all throughout the salvation history- from
the life Adam, the first man to the life of that Apostle that we see in today’s
Gospel. When we decides that we are capable to do everything and we don’t want
a God to explain our wonder and explore our future, we are beginning to hurt
ourselves. Then, we end up in some kind of masochism, in which we find pleasure
in our own wounds. But it is an abnormality; a deviation from our original
identity which is given by God, His image and likeness. We are wounded and our society is wounded
for we abandoned our Lord in our life and the life of our society.
The
Feast of Divine Mercy invites us to explore His Mercy where God’s love encounter
our brokenness. It invites us to return to our original identity. We can no
longer live and enjoy the pleasures of our wounds, that is a perversion. A wound,
that is to be treated and healed. The wounds of Jesus have the power to heal
our wounds. So, like Thomas, who was healed by touching the Jesus’ wounds, let
us be healed by opening our wounds of the Risen Lord. Only he can heal our
wounds.
May
this celebration of this Eucharist, and various occasions of our sacrament of
Reconciliation be an occasion to open up our wounds to the Lord especially in
this year of Mercy.
Fr. Tony Vattaparambil OFMConv
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