HOMILY EASTER SUNDAY 02 – A
Faith to Proclaim “My Lord and My God”
(Acts 2:42-47; 1 Pt 1:3-9; Jn 20:19-31)
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Two pastors who did not see eye to eye on many things were invited to share the same stage one day. The one who spoke first mentioned that, as all knew, they often had different views, but more important, “We are both doing God’s will, he in his own way, and me in God’s way!”
St. John gives us the main message of this liturgy: believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, that through believing we may have life in his name.
The Gospel focuses mainly on the first part of that message – belief and unbelief, manifested by the apostle that we now call the “Doubting Thomas.”
At the outset we are reminded that the resurrection of Jesus has brought about a new creation by the words, “It was evening on the day Jesus rose from the dead, the first day of the week.” The second part of the gospel repeats that refrain: “After eight days the disciples were again in the house.” Part of our belief is not just that Jesus rose from the dead, but that in so doing, he has changed everything. There is now a whole new economy of salvation. Eternal life is now available to those who believe in Jesus.
The attention in the second part of the Gospel focuses on Thomas, who refused to believe unless he saw and touched the wounds of Jesus. Jesus takes him at his word, addresses him, and offers him his wounds. We don’t know if Thomas actually dares to touch the wounds, but we do know that he comes to believe at a deeper level perhaps than the other apostles who might have been chiding him for his lack of faith. It is Thomas who blurts out that magnificent act of faith in Jesus: “My Lord and my God!”
There are many titles that Jesus applied to himself while on earth: the Word made flesh; the Way, the Truth, the Life; the Bread of Life; Son of God, Son of Man, Son of David, the Good Shepherd, and that other people called him: Master, Teacher, Rabbi, Rabouni. What Thomas was able to do is to single out the two greatest titles of all and address Jesus by those two titles that arch over all the rest – my Lord and my God. May his faith be also our faith, as we also pray and relate to Jesus as our Lord and our God.
The rest of the readings spell out what “life in his name” looks like. It begins with the Gospel that revolves around peace, joy and forgiveness. Peace is what Jesus offers to his disciples, even as he forgives them their betrayal, denial and abandonment. Peace is not a passing emotion – it is a gift of the Holy Spirit that is ours to claim through faith in Jesus. The joy the disciples felt is also not just a passing emotion. It too is a gift of the Holy Spirit that we can claim through our faith in Jesus.
Then Jesus, having forgiven them, confers on them that tremendous blessing and gift and responsibility to forgive sinners in his name – the genesis of the sacrament of reconciliation, in which sins are loosed or bound by the Church in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. Truly, the experience of forgiveness is at the root of the new life in Jesus.
St. Peter in the second reading tries his best to describe that new life as well. By his great mercy, “God has given us a new birth into a living hope, a birth into an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled and unfading, to be fully revealed at the end of time.” We are given the ability to even suffer joyfully for the sake of the Gospel because of our deep faith. This is Divine Mercy Sunday, and St. Peter calls on that mercy as the source of new life in Christ.
St. Luke, for his part in the first reading from Acts, describes the transformation of the disciples into the early Church, that community of believers, which was a direct result of the resurrection of Jesus and the imparting of his Spirit on the disciples at Pentecost. They were united in heart and mind, sharing all things in common, and dedicated to the prayers, the teachings of the apostles, the fellowship and the breaking of the bread. Prayer, scripture, the Eucharist and community were basic elements and building blocks of this new life in Christ. May it be so for us.
This Sunday also marks the canonization of two new Saints, Pope John XXIII and Pope John Paul II. Both lived out in their pontificate, this new life in Christ, each in their own way. John XXIII displayed tremendous love and courage in saving hundreds of Jews from the Nazis when he was nuncio to Turkey, and displayed great prudence in healing tensions between Pope Pius XII and Charles de Gaulle after the war. Convoking the Second Vatican Council had to be a striking sign of the Holy Spirit at work in his life.
For his part now Saint Pope John Paul II showed great courage in resisting first the Nazi occupation of Poland, and then the communist threat to the country which he helped to bring down by his outspoken manner and charismatic appeal. He crisscrossed the world appealing for justice and human rights, and showed the depths of Christian love in forgiving his would-be assassin. It is to him that the church owes the fairly recent devotion to the Divine Mercy of God centered on Sr. Faustina Kowalska of Poland.
Sr. Faustina was canonized by Pope JP II on April 30th, 2000, the second Sunday of Easter, which he also declared Divine Mercy Sunday. In doing so, he linked her with the 20th century and the message of mercy that Jesus entrusted to her between two wars. She felt the pain of the world and carried it in her heart. It is this degree of compassion that also asserts the value of every human life that is at the heart of the devotion to the divine Mercy of God.
The Eucharist we celebrate today was a great part of the lives of these two new saints and Sr. Faustina, and is also at the center of the new life in Christ that we are called to live.
May our celebration today deepen our faith in the Risen Lord, and help us to experience the new life in his name, as with Thomas we cry out, “My Lord and My God.”
