We’ve all had times in our lives when EVERYTHING CHANGES. Someone very close to us dies. A child is born. We take a new job or lose one we’ve had for years. If you’ve lived very long at all, you can count several times when something happened and life was forever different.
When that happens, we go through a period of disorientation. It is especially clear when the change includes grief. We sit and stare—a lot. Sometimes we lose time—hours pass and we can’t account for what we’ve thought or done. Appetite diminishes. Sleep is disturbed. We cry. We sigh. Our minds both wander and review again and again.
All these symptoms of the need to process change disturb us. “I’ve got to snap out of this!” we say. But we don’t. We can’t. There is nothing to do but to keep on keeping on until time reorients us to a new normal.
The Sunday Readings
Remembering times of disorientation from change is a good lens for viewing this Sunday’s readings. It can help us appreciate how hard it was for the disciples to truly BELIEVE Jesus rose from the dead or to be at peace with change. Life has radically changed for them, and they are in a state of disorientation. Even though they believed that Jesus was the Messiah and even though he had told them again and again that he would suffer, die, and rise again, the piece of information they were missing was that Jesus was and IS God. They did not interpret “Son of God” to mean God Himself. They did not expect him to be able to conquer death.
John 20:19-21
EVERY year on the second Sunday of Easter we have this Gospel. We know it represents when Jesus instituted the Sacrament of Penance as he gave the disciples-becoming-apostles the gift of the Holy Spirit and the ability to forgive sins. We know Jesus came to the disciples and said, “Peace be with you.”
We know this Gospel also tells of Thomas’ doubting as a way to help us see that doubts need not trouble us; God can use them to bring us to deeper faith, for from his doubts Thomas came to say, “My Lord and my God!”
Yet, for me today, there is something more personal. If I put myself in that upper room with my 21st century ordinary lay life, already believing in the Resurrection of the body, there is another message.
Jesus says: “Peace be with you.” This is not a “ six o’clock and all’s well” kind of peace. It is the peace of knowing no matter where we are in life, God comes through the locked doors of our fears and finds us to let us know he has gifts of himself for us. His mercy finds, then sends us.
Jesus, through the Divine Mercy this Sunday celebrates, finds us and gives us his Presence, which carries with it his Peace.
And God gives us the Holy Spirit, too. He marked our souls with it the day we were baptized. It is an eternal flame of God’s love that never goes out. We can separate ourselves from it through sin, but we are marked with the indelible mark of God’s life in us. God’s life in us IS the Holy Spirit.
Revelation 1:9-11a, 12-13, 17-19
In Cycle C, the second reading during the Easter season comes from Revelation. Here we have the beginning. It is about the year 90 AD, a time of persecution of Christians. John, the apostle, has been exiled to the island of Patmos. He is living in a cave. God sends him a vision. Today’s reading is the beginning of that vision.
It is easy to get lost in the images of Revelation or in its prophecies and predictions. We can say, “That was for Christians under persecution years ago” or “This is a puzzle to decipher about what the end of the world will be like.”
Commentators and scholars encourage us not to get lost in all that. It seems better to see this as a picture of Jesus in his Glory. This is a God’s eye view of the world he saved and loves to this day. The picture of Jesus here is not a comfortable one. The voice is commanding, “Write what you see.” Even the reassurance has a strong tone of authority, “Do not be afraid. I am the first and the last, the one who lives. Once I was dead, but now I am alive forever and ever. I hold the keys to death and the netherworld.”
This passage was written about a third of the way between the time of Jesus’ Resurrection (33 AD) and the Council of Nicea (325 AD, when when the Church officially said, “We understand that the Jesus who was raised from the dead was both God and human.” For us, today, it is a reminder that this great Truth of our faith emerged over time. The sweet and gentle Jesus of Divine Mercy is also the Alpha and the Omega. His words of mercy have the power of God–as do his calls to his disciples.
Acts 5: 12-16
The first reading from Acts takes place three of four months after Jesus’ Resurrection. It is shortly after Pentecost. If you’ve followed the story all Easter week of how Peter said to the lame man lying by the Beautiful Gate, “Silver and gold have I none, but, in the name of Jesus Christ, get up and walk,” it is easy to understand why, in today’s passage, people are carrying their sick out into the street in hopes that Peter’s shadow will fall on them—and cure them. The scene here is a simple description of what began to happen in Jerusalem, once the disciples-now-become-apostles start to let the Holy Spirit flow through them. It reminds us that the Resurrected Jesus lives and acts through his followers.
Mission Statement of the Risen Christ
Jean Vanier, in his book, Drawn Into the Mystery of Jesus Through the Gospel of John, especially speaks to me today:
“The author of this gospel reveals to us the mission statement of the risen Jesus: ‘Peace to you. As the Father sent me, I send you.’ He then breathed upon them, ‘Receive the Holy Spirit. Those whose sins you forgive, are forgiven; those whose sins you retain, are retained.’
In this short encounter, Jesus transforms the group of frightened and confused individuals into a community of love…They are called to become like Jesus and to continue together the mission given him by the Father: to reveal the merciful face of God, the compassionate and forgiving God, and to give life, eternal life, to all who accept him….
Jesus is showing his disciples their responsibility, something that is both terrible and beautiful. They are to be transformed by the Holy Spirit and sent out into the world to love people as Jesus loves them and to give their lives for them because each person in the world is precious and beautiful to God, even if that beauty is hidden behind layers of fear, chaos, and sin.”
That mission includes ordinary me and ordinary you. As we also sit in prayer in the upper room, aware of Jesus in his glory and the history of the mission of the Church, Jesus still says, “Peace be with you.”
Peace be with you, with me,—and, through us, peace come to the world. Divine Mercy.
Prayer:
Lord, this Divine Mercy that reaches out to me and through me to others, help me to understand it and live it. Yes, it is good to say Divine Mercy chaplets for those who are dying or away from you. I do it. And it is likewise good to receive your capacity to forgive and love beyond fear or hurt. Yes, Lord, give me your Peace. Give me the grace to forgive more readily than I do, and, by following You, the resurrected Christ, to continue your mission in the little part of the world in which I live.
