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Divine Mercy Sunday - April 24, 2022

Hope you all had a wonderful Easter.  Well, it’s not over.  We celebrate the Resurrection of the Lord for fifty days.  Today the second Sunday of Easter is also referred to as Divine Mercy Sunday.  Divine Mercy is like the wind, invisible but with effects that can be sensed.  We may feel the lifting of a burden off our shoulders as a fresh breeze on a new day and a new chance to do good.  We hear in John’s gospel an account of the coming of the Holy Spirit.

Jesus breathes on his disciples, and in that holy breath they each receive his Spirit.  Considering what we have been through in the last two years with the Covid epidemic, the idea of breathing on people inside a locked room is more than a little unsettling.  Besides germs and viruses, one’s breath contains the very force of life.  God blew the breath of life into Adam’s nostrils.  So, too in an emergency can we breathe life back into a person who has stopped breathing.  We can imagine the disciples holding their collective breath in the days after Jesus’ burial.  He was no longer in the tomb.  What could have happened?  Then he stood before them, wounds and all.  Realizing he was alive, they let our their breath in relief and rejoiced.  Then he breathed on them, they received new life, new life in the Spirit and a mission to forgive sin in His name.

When Jesus appeared to the disciples after his death and resurrection, Thomas was missing.  And so the following week the Good Shepherd returns finding Thomas, whose doubts had led him astray, to restore him to the fold.  Our Lord urges him, “do not be unbelieving, but believe.”  Thomas responds with a most definitive confession possible, “My Lord and my God.”

The community of believers is the Body of Christ.  So in a sense when Jesus invites us to put our hands in his wounds, he is asking us to probe the wounds of the community.  We are asked to make our wounded brothers and sisters whole, as the wounded Body of Christ was made whole.  What a wonderful thought to behold as we celebrate Divine Mercy Sunday, our Lord’s great healing, compassion, and forgiveness.

Love, Peace, Joy,

Fr. Bob

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