06 April 2024 – Divine Mercy Sunday (Year B) (Sunset Mass)

by Fr Fabian Dicom

Jesus demonstrated forgiveness to the disciples in a remarkable way. They are seeing him and he is seeing them. We have got many resurrection stories but here again they don’t know it is him, or he comes in and he meets them, perhaps for the first time. Despite their abandonment of him in the moment of greatest need, Jesus greeted them with peace, showing no resentment or accusation. They fled, they left him, they denied him. But instead of confronting them about their actions, he offered them forgiveness and reconciliation.

Now this act of mercy where Jesus, having no desire to punish or to blame, exemplifies God’s boundless love and forgiveness through Jesus. It is this profound display of forgiveness that inspires this whole spirituality, this whole concept of the Divine Mercy Sunday, underscoring the ocean of mercy that flows from Jesus to all who seek it. Our response to God’s mercy should be to love God. Here I turn to the words from John in our Second Reading:
For the love of God there is this, that we keep His commandments. And His commandments are not burdensome.

Even God’s commandments are based on His mercy. The commandments are not a burden, they are an aid. They guide us to live a good life, a peaceful live, a loving life. It is in mercy that God directs us to do what is good. And so our response to God’s mercy is to love God. And we are also called to love one another.

And we see this in the First Reading, in the Acts. The community of believers was one of one heart and one mind. They were not just a bunch of individuals believing on their own. They came together as a community. They became of one heart and mind. But the one was not of human heart and mind but that of God. They were there for one another because God was there for them. God treated them with mercy and they did the same to others. We hear these words in the Reading:
There was no needy person among them for they had shared everything in common, distributing what each one needed.

And we are not talking about socialism. We are talking about faith, we are talking about mercy. Before I move on, what this entails, what does this mean in our community today that ‘there was no needy person among them?. For that community during the Acts of the Apostles, they depended on each other, they were not wealthy, they were poor, they shared all their resources and they helped each other grow.

But today, when we hear ‘there was no needy person among them‘, what is our situation? What are our needs today? Our needs are not only physical and material. There are emotional needs, there are psychological needs and of course, spiritual needs. Can we say ‘there was no needy person among us today‘?

And this very specifically goes out to all of you who are in ministry in this parish, which includes me. All heads, everyone doing service here. In all our ministry, are we taking care of the needs of this community? Can we say that there is no needy person among us? Does our ministry take care of everyone?

There has been this cry to be inclusive in everything we do. Have we already started in our ministry to be inclusive so that all the needs of the people are taken care of?

As we reflect on that for ourselves, let us look at what does it entail to love this way? We require a heart after our Lord, the Lord of the Divine Mercy. And for that, I invite you to go back to the Gospel and focus on Thomas. Poor Thomas, branded forever with the adjective ‘doubting‘, in a story that scholars agreed is a creation of John the Evangelist.

Thomas is made to characterise the doubts, the scepticism and hesitation that plagued all of the early witnesses to the Risen Jesus. They were going through a hard time. Now popular interpretation puts him in a bad light. But this however is not the movement of the text which culminates in Thomas’ amiable act of faith, the most explicit in the New Testament: My Lord and my God.

Now, we are more in accord with the spirit of this text. Therefore, when we look at Thomas as a model of faith, he was right to insist that before he could believe in Jesus, before he could believe in that resurrection, he must see the holes the nail made in his hands and put his finger into the holes and the hand into the great wound made by the centurion’s lance.

Thomas teaches us the important lesson that we must not separate the resurrection from the cross since we are all called to be followers of Jesus. He also teaches us the truth of the church and our individual spiritual growth. We cannot live the life of grace, the risen life authentically unless we bear in our bodies the wounds of the cross.

I repeat: We cannot live the life of grace, the risen life authentically unless we bear in our bodies the wounds of the cross.
And I don’t want to sound like a sadist, neither do I mean this is a physical sense like a stigmata or such. I don’t mean that. 

This means being conscious that we develop the capacity to love and to be loved only by dying to ourselves. Emptying us from ourselves form everything that prevents us from loving as we are called to. And that is bearing the wounds of the cross.

Our wounds are also a constant reminder of our frailty and our vulnerability and that it is in God’s grace that raises us up to new life. Personally I think this is liberation. To embrace our wounds yet knowing God’s grace is ever-present, and in this process, die to ourselves so that we can love totally. That is the way we do ministry.

In conclusion, the interwoven narratives of Jesus’ forgiveness, the communal love among believers and Thomas’ journey from doubt to profound faith revealed the essence of the love we are called to embody. It is a love that transcends human frailty, embraces vulnerability, mirroring the boundless mercy of God.

Like Thomas, we are challenged to confront our doubts and to bear the wounds of the cross, recognising that it is through our brokenness, through emptying of ourselves that we become vessels of divine love.

This is the love we are called to nurture within ourselves and nurture in our work, in our ministry, in our calling and to extend to others. A love that transforms, the love that heals, the love that binds us together, love that includes everyone as one community, reflecting the heart and mind of a loving and merciful God.

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