Second Sunday of Easter (or Sunday of Divine Mercy)

Christ is Risen! He is Risen Indeed! Alleluia! How many of you remember a TV commercial where the loaves of bread talked? Let me take you back for a moment to 1972 and a commercial for Wonder Bread. The company promised that their bread was so fresh it even had a voice. That’s right. The modestly dressed housewife put her ear to the loaf of white bread, squeezed, and it talked back to her. How many children, while shopping with their parents, found the bread aisle and squeezed? ... and squeezed ... and squeezed. But ... alas … nothing. And then came the difficult lesson on the way home from the grocery store. Advertising tricks like this one often lead children to their first experience of disillusionment. However, more important than such disappointment is how children learn to explore reality and to discern truth from fiction.

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Entrance: 1 Pt 2:2 – “Like newborn infants, you must long for the pure, spiritual milk, that in Him you may grow to salvation, alleluia.”

First Reading: Acts 4:32-35 – “They were of one heart and mind.” 

Responsorial Psalm: Ps 118:2-4, 13-15, 22-24 – “Give thanks to the Lord for He is good, His love is everlasting.”

Second Reading: 1 Jn 5:1-6 – “Whoever is begotten by God conquers the world.” 

Alleluia: Jn 20:29 – “You believe in Me, Thomas, because you have seen Me, says the Lord; blessed are those who not seen Me, but still believe!” 

Gospel: Jn 20:19-31 – “Eight days later, Jesus came and stood in their midst.”

Communion: Jn 20:27 – “Bring your hand and feel the place of the nails, and do not be unbelieving but believing, alleluia.”

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Thomas was an explorer, too, and his curiosity regarding Jesus’ wounds suggests that faith and reason make good company. His firsthand experience of testing those wounds dramatically testifies to the truth. Jesus did in fact die and was in fact raised up. In September 1998, Pope Saint John Paul II wrote an encyclical entitled “Fides et Ratio” … “Faith and Reason.” His Holiness believed that faith and reason together allow people to know and to love God and explained that belief through his teaching.

There is hope for those who do not have access to the historical person of Jesus Christ and His resurrected body. Jesus Himself affirms those who come after Thomas as “blessed” because they have not seen, but they believe. The First Letter of Saint Peter testifies to the same when the author says that we have been given a “new birth” and “a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus” (1 Pt 1:3). It goes on to say that “Although you have not seen Him, you love Him; even though you do not see Him now, yet believe in Him, you rejoice with an indescribable and glorious joy” (1 Pt 1:8).

In a certain sense, all of us today, the contemporary Christian community, faces its own version of a locked room ... sealed because of our own fears. We live in isolation and disbelief. We want someone to tell us the truth because believing is too much of a risk. Yet consider what we commemorated ... consider what happened beginning a little over a week ago on Holy Thursday evening. Jesus gave us the Eucharist and the Priesthood … out of love for us, His Church. He went through His Passion, the Crucifixion, and Death … out of love for us, His Church. And today, as we assemble to worship, Christ appears to us once again as He did in the upper room … out of love for us, His Church. Yes, that makes this Sunday of Easter, “Divine Mercy Sunday,” because Jesus Christ has come among us ... in all of you “for where two or three are gathered together in My name, there I am in the midst of them” (Mt 18:20). Today, He is present in me ... the Priest ... He is present in the Word proclaimed, and He is present in the Sacrament we are about to receive from this altar. But when you truly think about it … doesn’t that happen every Sunday? … Don’t we do this every Sunday?  Every Sunday celebrates Divine Mercy, not just today, because we have been blessed with the continual presence of the Lord in the community gathered here to proclaim the Pascal Mystery ... “Christ is Risen! He is Risen Indeed! Alleluia!” 

On this Second Sunday of Easter, we are here to explore His wounds like Thomas ... the mystical wounds of Jesus Christ … hidden in one another … hidden in the poor ... hidden in the outcast. Are we all that different from Thomas ... seeking the Truth in the company of his friends? In a little while, when we hear, “Take this, all of you, and eat of it, for this is My Body …” and when we hear, “Take this, all of you, and drink from it, for this is the chalice of My Blood of the new and eternal covenant …” it’s our chance to explore anew the wounds of our risen Lord and to respond, “My Lord and my God.”