Second Sunday of Easter
Acts 2:42-47; 1 Peter 1:3-9; John 20:19-31
With deep faith and faith-filled excitement, the church continues the celebration it began a week and a day ago of Easter, the Lord’s resurrection and final victory over death and sin.
As is the case in almost every Mass of this season, the first reading this weekend comes from the Acts of the Apostles. Acts originally was seen to be a continuation of St. Luke’s Gospel, and still these books should be considered as being in sequence.
Together they tell an uninterrupted story of salvation in Jesus, from Mary’s conception to a time years after the Ascension.
This continuing story is a lesson. The redemption of humanity from the effects of its sin did not end when the Lord returned to the glory of heaven. It has not ceased. It brought the mercy of God to the first Christians, mentioned in Acts, and to every generation thereafter, including our own.
The first Christians, most of whom likely knew Jesus, reverently follow the apostles and their example of being together in a most realistic sense of community, of eagerly caring for the needy, of praying and of “breaking the bread,” a term referring to the Eucharist. Clearly Peter was the chief of the Twelve Apostles. He was special.
Most importantly, through the apostles and in the church, Jesus lived and acted. The sick were cured. The deaf heard. The blind saw. No one was beyond the apostles’ concern.
For its second reading this weekend, the church offers us a passage from the First Epistle of Peter.
Obvious and inspiring in this reading is the early church’s intense love for, and faith in, the Lord. It was a faith that hardly went unchallenged. The culture in which Christianity was born and grew in almost every respect either rejected the ideals of the Gospel or held them in outright contempt.
John’s Gospel provides the last reading. It is the story of the reluctance of the apostle Thomas to accept that Jesus indeed had risen from the tomb. Then, as all recall, dramatically Jesus appears on the scene. He invites Thomas to believe.
In awe and in the utmost faith, Thomas declares that Jesus not only is teacher and redeemer, but indeed that Jesus is God. The Lord then confers upon the apostles that most divine of powers, the power to judge what is sinful and to forgive sin.
Reflection
This weekend is Divine Mercy Sunday, a refreshing thought. We are all sinners, but all is not lost. God’s love, expressed in divine mercy, in granting us forgiveness, endures.
Jews, and the people in Israel, remember the millions who died in Adolf Hitler’s savage persecution of Jews. As years pass, persons other than Jews forget that horrific time. We cannot forget.
Atrocities remind us of how terrible is a life lived without the Gospel. Acts reminds us that the Gospel lives. The gift of the Gospel is God’s greatest gift of mercy, to individuals, to societies and to humankind.
The apostles and their successors in the church still bring us this mercy, faithfully and truly connecting us with Jesus, with God and with the hope of being forgiven — just as they brought it to Christians recorded in Acts.
In mercy, God sent the Lord Jesus. Christ’s humanity, life, death and triumph over death provided our access to divine mercy.
Goodness is not imposed upon us. No one drags us into heaven. The choice to accept these gifts, or not, belongs to us individually.
Always, the church gathers around the apostles. We become part of the church by modeling in our hearts the faith of the first Christians, and of Thomas. Through this faith, in the church, with the apostles, we experience the mercy of God.