Merciful Love Manifest
Dear Parish Family,
This Sunday has several names: Dominica in Albis, Low Sunday, the Second Sunday of Easter, and Divine Mercy Sunday. Easter is such a big and rich feast that we celebrate it all week - the Octave of Easter. The churches in the East use the word: bright. Bright Monday, Bright Tuesday, etc., to emphasize how light wins over darkness. These days are bright because Jesus is alive. Jesus - the one who is Love incarnate - shows Himself to be fully alive, in a new and more radical way than we could ever imagine.
Last week, His enemies put Him to death. It looked like love had failed because love died that day on the cross. It looked like love had lost. But then something happened – something that no one expected. Jesus did not stay dead. Jesus conquered death. On Easter Sunday, Jesus emerged from the grave victorious over sin, death, and darkness.
In our Gospel today, we find ourselves between two Sundays - between Easter Sunday in the evening and eight days later (which would be the following Sunday, or today.) Jesus shows Himself to be fully alive. He steps into the Upper Room, although the doors were locked in fear of the Jews, and Jesus wishes them: peace.
Peace, a powerful word, especially given what they have been through, and even more so since they abandoned Him in His hour of darkness, in His time of greatest need. Only the three faithful women and John the beloved remained at the Cross. The rest could not stomach it. They lacked the courage or the faith. Perhaps their fear of suffering the same fate overcame them. So often our fears cause us to be less than we hope to be: that is right.
Yet Jesus comes to meet them and to wish them peace. He is living proof that love lives. He is love in action; in this moment offering them something they do not deserve. More than peace and reconciliation with Him, Jesus extends to them the power to forgive sins: whose sins you forgive are forgiven them and whose sins you retain are retained. To grant this gift, privilege, and responsibility just hours after they could not remain faithful is a great showing of mercy, and a model for all confessors to follow.
One of the powerful things that Jesus teaches His disciples just hours before the Passion, gathered in the same upper room where they meet again today, is the command to love: “Love one another as I love you!” (Jn 15:12). It is that example of loving even when we are wronged, slighted, left in the dark, that is so powerful. A model for forgiveness powerfully emerges and we see what merciful love looks like and the kind of mercy Jesus expects us to show one another, especially if we hope to receive it ourselves.
John teaches us that “God is love” (1 Jn 4:8). Love is not a dimension God has or some action God exhibits but love goes to the heart of God’s identity. Saint John Paul II related this beautiful truth to mercy, “Believing in this love means believing in mercy. For mercy is an indispensable dimension of love; it is as it were love's second name.” Mercy is love’s second name - I love that!
So, if love lives, may mercy also triumph in our hearts and lives!
Happy Divine Mercy Sunday!
Fr. Wilson
