Year A / Eastertide / 2nd Sunday (Divine Mercy Sunday)
Readings: Acts 2.42-47/ Psalm 118 (R/v 1) / 1 Peter 1.3-9 / John 20. 19-31
Easter reveals to us the beautiful truth of who we are in the risen Jesus. You and I are God’s beloved. And as God’s own, we can live as God’s Easter people. You might say that we are called to be “eastering” all the days of our Christian life.
What is “eastering”? We can catch a glimpse of what it is about by paying attention to our 1st Reading at every Sunday Mass from Easter to Pentecost. These readings from the Acts of the Apostles tell us of how the first disciples live their faith; they live in the Spirit of the risen Jesus. This is what Easter living is about.
Our 1st Reading describes what Easter living entails. The Christians listened to the apostles’ teachings about living in Jesus’ ways. They practiced them by living in community, and by sharing everything in common. They prayed to God through Jesus. They worshipped at Eucharist together. More importantly, they live in Jesus’ Spirit of joy that praises God, in his Spirit of sincerity of heart that follows God’s ways and in his Spirit of generosity that fulfilled God’s will to serve all peoples.
Indeed, Easter is God’s invitation for you and me to live like them, in Jesus’ Spirit.
In our gospel passage, the risen Jesus shows us how to "easter" in the daily life we share with one another. He brings peace and joy to his disciples who are in sadness because they think him dead. He brings them love when they feel abandoned because he is no longer with them. He brings them fellowship by coming among them when they feel alone. And, he brings them certain hope when they are fearful and doubtful about how to live as he taught them.
Indeed, in Jesus we can live as an Easter people. He is our hope to accomplish this. Our 2nd Reading reminds us of this. According to Peter, we are can live this Easter life because of our love for Jesus: “although you have not seen him you love him.”
But you and I know how challenging—even difficult—it can be for us to live out our love for Jesus fully and happily. Perhaps, when we struggle with living the Christian life and see how we fail to do this well, we say, “O Lord, will I ever get it right?” Or, when we find ourselves committing the same sins this past week, even after a good Lenten confession for Easter, we might have cried out. “Lord, this is too hard; why should I bother?”
But we can take comfort that none of us is alone in this struggle. You and I are struggling together. The good news is that Jesus is faithfully keeping company with us in this struggle. And, because we are all walking together on the road of Christian life with Jesus, we can support one another. The even better news is that God’s Spirit is already and always at work in us; it is this Spirit that helps us to love Jesus and to follow him.
Consider how true this is for us today: we have come again to hear Jesus' words that teaches us and to be fed by his body and bread that nourishes us. Why do we keep coming to Jesus? Why do we continue loving him? Why does his memory not fade away from us?
A good Jesuit friend answered these questions in this way: “If we love Jesus it is because he is still with us. Humans beings do not love old memories. We may be curious, even passionate, about old historical facts, but we do not change our lives because of them. We love Jesus not as a vague memory, but as someone who is our contemporary. We are not neurotic people: we love Jesus because he lives with us today.”
And, we find Jesus most especially with us when we gather, like we do now as the church. Jesus is present here with us, loving us and allowing us to love him, and as we love one another by worshipping together.
Today’s gospel reminds us that we will always find Jesus in our midst; he comes to be present to us. This is the experience Thomas had. He was not with the community of disciples on Easter Sunday. Hence, he did not experience meeting the risen Jesus. Thomas’ doubt was not because he didn’t believe in Jesus; it was because he had not yet seen the risen Jesus. The next Sunday, Thomas was with the disciples, and when Jesus came, he immediately recognised him, and cried out, "My Lord and my God."
John’s message in today’s gospel is clear: our Sunday gathering is where we will encounter Jesus most fully. This is where we too cray our, "Our Lord and our God." To be sure, Jesus does not appear to us here as he appeared to the disciples then. This does not mean, however, that Jesus is absent. It does not mean, either, that our faith is blind. It simply means that Jesus is not anymore visible in his historical body. But he is present, not absent. We know this from the fact we are loving him and that we continue to experience the abundant life that flows from him. Indeed, we know Jesus is with us because it is in our loving Jesus that we experience him loving us. This is the truth of how Jesus is in us and we are in Jesus. This truthful reality is what can enable us to live as an Easter people. And because we can live it, Jesus refers to us when he says to Thomas, "Blessed those who believe without seeing."
The place where we best can be with Jesus is when we are one with the Church, the body of Christ. I’d like to suggest that it is when we participate more fully in the life of the Church, in the life of the body of the Christ, that we can touch Jesus: the sacraments make him visible; the Word of God make his voice audible; our living together as his body make his touch, his embrace, his lifting us up palpable.
Indeed, it is in our coming together to pray, to worship, to care, to forgive, to lift up one another that we keep the memory of Jesus alive for us and living in our midst. When we do this, we make God’s Easter love for us real, this love of God that saves us and gives us fullness of life. Indeed, when we do for this with grateful rejoicing, especially for others to know God, we are in fact “eastering.”
Some of us may be disappointed or even angry with the Church, disfigured as she is by human sinfulness. Yet, it is in the Church, in our coming together as a Christian community that we can always live as an Easter people. Why? Because Jesus keeps calling us to come together to live more fully in his risen Spirit. No matter how sinful and broken we might be, or how saintly and whole we are, Jesus keeps calling us to become one with him, so that we can know the love of God in him and so live God’s love with and for one another. This is how we are to live we as an Easter people.
Let us live like this, then. And as we do so, let us join the Jesuit poet, Gerard Manley Hopkins in praying this simple but hope-filled prayer for Christian living he once wrote: “Let Jesus easter in us, and let him be a Dayspring to the dimness of us.”
Preached at St Peter’s Parish, Dorchester, Boston
photo: easter vigil from www.christchurch.org
Add a comment