ARCHDIOCESE OF PHILADELPHIA

Dear Friends in Christ,

Today we celebrate the Second Sunday of Easter or Divine Mercy Sunday, and the Church is still filled with the joy of the Resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ. But there is a very special aspect to our celebration today which is revealed in the Resurrection of Christ: it is the great mercy of God. Our texts in the Mass today speak about God’s love—about His mercy. The Psalm tells us: "Give thanks to the Lord for he is good, for his mercy endures forever."

In our First Reading today from the Acts of the Apostles we see how, in the community of the early Church, mercy was exercised by the members of the community through their loving solicitude for one another: "There was no needy person among them, for those who owned property or houses would sell them, bring the proceeds of the sale, and put them at the feet of the apostles, and they were distributed to each according to need." We see that mercy toward others is something that the Church herself has always exercised in so many ways. Today we have a beautiful example in the reading from the Acts of the Apostles.

But, above all, in the Gospel today we have the full story of God’s mercy. This Gospel takes us back to the first Easter Sunday. Saint John uses the phrase: "On the evening of the first day of the week…." And then Saint John recounts for us what happened. The disciples were gathered in the Upper Room—the disciples who had undergone a tremendous trauma. Jesus their Lord and Master had been crucified on Good Friday. The disciples had acted in a very cowardly way. All of them, except John, had abandoned Jesus, and their leader, Peter, had denied Him.

We must keep in mind, as we reflect on this Gospel, which takes us back to Easter evening, that this is the first time that the group of the Apostles, after the events of Holy Week, are face to face with Jesus, the Risen Lord. It is their first meeting as the apostolic college with Jesus, who comes into their midst. The doors are locked because the disciples are full of fear—they are fearful for the future—and Jesus stands in their midst and He has that beautiful message for them. He says: "Peace be with you." And then He says it again: "Peace be with you."

We must remember that those words of greeting are something very special. After Jesus was born, the very first message of the angel to the shepherds was peace—glory to God in the highest and peace to His people on earth. And now, Jesus repeats that message of peace, and He extends peace to His Apostles, these men who are filled with fear, these men who are conscious of their sin. They are conscious of the fact that they had abandoned Jesus and had denied him; now they are filled with shame and guilt at this their first encounter with Jesus after His Resurrection from the dead. They were slow, as Jesus Himself says in another part of the Gospels, to believe that He was going to conquer death and sin by rising from the dead. But now He is present with them. He could have chosen this moment to blame them, to reproach them, to point out how their relationship with Him had completely broken down, but Jesus says only: "Peace be with you." And, in this Mass, we will say: "Lord Jesus Christ, you said to your apostles: I leave you peace, my peace I give you."

This Gospel is spectacular as it goes on to tell us what Jesus does then at this moment of supreme shame and supreme guilt for His Apostles. What does He do? He breathes on them and says: "Receive the Holy Spirit. Whose sins you forgive are forgiven them, and whose sins you retain are retained." This is the moment when Jesus chooses these weak and sinful men, who are conscious of their misery, their weakness and their sins, and gives them the power to forgive sins in His name. This is the moment when He gives them the power to act in His person. And this power Christ intends to transmit to the Church as the great gift of His mercy. His mercy is simply His love in the face of our sins, in the face of our needs, in the face of our weaknesses. And Jesus chooses this moment as being the most appropriate moment psychologically to reveal mercy to the world. He does it through men who have sinned, who are conscious of great sin, and who, now repentant, are called upon to accept forgiveness and pardon and extend it to others.

What a magnificent message this is to the whole Church and what a magnificent gift this is—the Sacrament of Penance, the Sacrament of Reconciliation, the Sacrament of Confession, the Sacrament of Mercy. This is Christ’s Easter gift! It is the gift that Jesus gives us on Easter day. Why? Because His Resurrection is the seal of the Father’s love and acceptance of His Death on Calvary, and it is through His Death and Resurrection that all the sins of the world are taken away. And so today, on this Second Sunday of Easter or Divine Mercy Sunday, the Church speaks about the forgiveness of sins as the manifestation of God’s mercy, the manifestation of His power, and the victory of His Resurrection.

It is very interesting that all during Easter week the Church has spoken so often, about sin, in order to magnify the mercy of God. Today, as we continue to celebrate Easter, the Church continues to speak about sin, because she wants to speak about the forgiveness of sins through divine mercy.

Six years ago on this day in Rome, on the steps of Saint Peter’s Basilica before thousands and thousands of people assembled, Pope John Paul II canonized as a saint Blessed Faustina Kowalska. She was a Polish nun who came from Krakow and her mission in life was to propagate devotion to the mercy of Jesus and His Father. And the picture that we see here in the Sanctuary of our Cathedral Basilica is the picture of Divine Mercy which portrays Jesus with the rays of light that come from His heart to signify His merciful love. This is the image of Jesus as He appeared to Saint Faustina Kowalska. Her mission in life was to emphasize God’s mercy for His people. But it is not on the basis of a private revelation that we honor God’s mercy today. Rather, a private revelation, strengthened by the canonization of the Church, confirms the message of the Sacred Scriptures. It is because of God’s public revelation that we believe in His great mercy and pardon. For each one of us, this means that forgiveness is always possible. Today, according to the devotion of the Church, we celebrate this great act of God’s mercy whereby He is always willing and ready to forgive us.

We extol the mercy of God and turn to Him and ask for mercy. And the beautiful prayer that Saint Faustina prayed was a prayer that, according to her diary, Jesus Himself had taught her to say: "Jesus, I trust in you!"

This devotion corresponds to the most authentic revelation of the Scriptures. As Christian people we trust in Jesus because we are convinced that He is our Savior. We are convinced that the mercy of His Father passes through His Sacred Heart and reaches each one of us.

Today, then, in union with the whole Church, we celebrate the Second Sunday of Easter or Divine Mercy Sunday. We celebrate and magnify the mercy of God our Father and His Son Jesus Christ. Just as the Psalm says: "Give thanks to the Lord for he is good, for his mercy endures forever."

And if, therefore, we are ourselves candidates for mercy, if we are recipients of God’s merciful love, then we know what this demands of us: that we in turn show pardon and exercise mercy. The fact that we have been forgiven and that forgiveness is always available to us through God’s mercy is an unrelenting challenge for us to understand others, to forgive them, to help them, and to exercise mercy ourselves.

Today we open our hearts to receive divine mercy in all its power, but we also commit ourselves, in the community of the Church, to deeds of mercy.

"Give thanks to the Lord for he is good, for his mercy endures forever."