Divine Mercy Sunday, April 3, 2016
Remember what the angels said to the holy women last week, and what he says to you and to me. First, I have to suffer at the hands of sinners, die (at least to myself) and on the third day rise. If it is true for Jesus it has to be true for me, if I want to be a Christian. First you need to enter your sufferings, your cross and then you can experience the resurrection. When you have this experience it changes your life; you will tell the world that you touched Jesus, that you now have this sense of what the resurrection means for you today! You have a sense of what it must have been like to be a disciple of Christ. Also by experiencing the resurrection you will find healing for your wounds. The wounds do not go away, but they make more sense, you can see their meaning. When you are healed of your wounds, when you see the meaning of them, then you will help many other people around you. Often only by saying what has happened to you. It is not that you heal them, but God will. Jesus Christ can make you whole, not only for yourself but for many people who stand behind you: those who will be helped when you are helped. It is awesome.
i saw a documentary on the original painting of Divine Mercy at the Sheen Center down on Bleecker Street in Greenwich Village where my parents grew up. It is the image that Sister Faustina had commissioned to make an attempt of visualizing what God revealed to her. It is a beautiful painting and documentary and the DVD should be out in a few months. The painting, which has a very long history, was hanging for several years in a church that had been closed and used for storage by the Russians in Lithuania. Two nuns entered clandestinely into this abandoned church one night and took the original painting and replaced it with a copy. The locals thought someone must have cleaned the painting since it ‘looked fresh.’ The director of the movie said at times in life I feel like that painting, lost in an closed church, hanging from the ceiling, not knowing where i will go next. It is a good image of how life can be, at times. Everybody has a wound that they wish would go away, and only Christ can heal it. Bring it to him, speak to him about it, share it in your community, with a friend, in confession, and your wound, your suffering will become glorious.
The first reading this Sunday (Acts 5:12-16) says that the apostles and disciples were of one heart (and mind). And because of this they were growing like crazy; Luke, the author of Acts, is careful to note how much the church grew at various points of his book; it is impressive. This group of a few thousand Christians in Jerusalem were one body, one family, and for sure they were very different types of people, from different backgrounds and social positions, and yet belief and experience in the resurrection made them one. So much so that some of them (not as a law, but from an inspiration) sold their property and put the proceeds at the feet of the apostles, to help the poor. Imagine that happening at your local parish!
What Luke is describing is called fellowship or communion or koinonia in Greek. It is a gift from God who gives a group a sense that they are one, that there is a bond now between them that is very strong. No one in this group ever is alone or wanted for anything. I have seen this communion in small groups at times in the parish usually after a small Eucharist or after a penitential service, where the Word of God comes alive and people speak sincerely (not that they say their sins publicly). Communion, or fellowship, is always a gift from God and cannot be created by any one of us. I am sure it was something very noticeable to those who observed the early Christians. Luke is describing it at length in his Acts of the Apostles.
Communion is a manifestation of God’s mercy. Despite my sins and my messes I am at one with God, and with others. I need this mercy, and the Church wants us to experience it, in this Year of Mercy. I need also to go to one of the holy doors at designated churches in the Archdiocese and gain a plenary (a full) indulgence or forgiveness from the punishment due to my sins. (The sacrament of Reconciliation forgives the sins confessed but an indulgence takes away the punishment, normally remitted by acts of charity, alms giving, bringing people back to God or works of mercy, etc.) The conditions to receive an indulgence are that within a week or three I confess my sins, attend Mass and receive Communion, pray for the Pope and the Church, and be free from any deliberate attachment to sin, and then God through his church wipes away the punishment due to my sins. How merciful is that?
On this feast that St. John Paul II instituted in the Church and with mercy being the core of the teachings of Pope Francis you and I are reminded of our need for mercy. God is a forgiving God and never holds anything against you. Experience his mercy in the communion he wants to give your family and your parish. Experience it in the sacrament of Reconciliation, and through this you will touch the resurrection.