Roman Rite – Second Sunday of Easter or of Divine Mercy – Year B – April 1st 2018
Acts 4,32-35; Ps 118, 1 Jn 5.1: 6; Jn 20.19-31
Ambrosian Rite
Acts 4.8-24; Ps 118; Col 2.8-15; Jn 20.19-31
Second Easter Sunday and of Divine Mercy
1) Peace and forgiveness.
The liturgy of this Second Sunday of Easter celebrates the risen Christ who gives peace and forgiveness. In fact, today’s Gospel tells us that, on the evening of his Passover, Jesus enters the Upper Room, where the Apostles were locked up, and tells them: “Peace be with you”. With the offering of the gift of his peace, Christ fills the heart of the apostles with his mercy. The traditional Jewish greeting shalom, that is peace, on the mouth of the Risen Lord is not only a wish but a gift: the gift of the peace that only He can give and which is the fruit of his radical victory over evil. The “peace” that Jesus offers to his friends is the fruit of God’s merciful love for men. This immeasurable love has led Christ to die on the cross and to shed all his blood as a meek and humble Lamb “full of grace and truth” (Jn 1:14).
This explains why St. John Paul II wished to name “Sunday of Divine Mercy” this Sunday after Easter, which celebrates Christ as the Lamb who has been sacrificed for our sins and who has risen by defeating death and sin. The love of God is stronger than evil and death, and in the risen Christ love and mercy have won.
On this Feast of Divine Mercy, let us fill our hearts with the mercy of God who freely loves, forgives and gives peace.
Indeed, this peace is the fruit of the victory of God’s love over evil; it is the fruit of forgiveness. True peace, profound peace, comes from experiencing God’s mercy.
Today, to us, as about two thousand years ago to the Apostles, Jesus gives, along with his peace, the Holy Spirit so that we may spread in the world his mercy that forgives and gives new and true life.
Today, it is to us that Christ gives the mandate to bring to men the remission of sins. Consequently, the Kingdom of love will grow and peace in hearts will be sown so that it may also be affirmed in our relationships in the family and in society.
2) Missionaries without fear
Today, the Spirit of the Risen Christ drives out fear from our hearts. Jesus urges us to leave the “Cenacle” that the fear has transformed into a locked place. His Spirit pushes us to be an “outgoing Church” (Pope Francis): “As the Father has sent me, I send you” (Jn 20, 21). During the last supper the Cenacle was the place where Jesus had given the bread, but, after the passion and death of the Messiah, for the Apostles, that hall had become as a sepulcher. They lived there in fear, and in fear of death.
But the fear of the Apostles and of all of us does not stop Christ. In the same way as the great stone that sealed his tomb was not an obstacle to him, so our fear is not an obstacle for him. He comes in this sepulcher, full of fear and with locked doors. The bolted doors were not an obstacle for him, as the sepulcher stone was not. Above all, it was not difficult for him to come to these people whom He had chosen and of whom one had betrayed him, the other denied him, the others fled and abandoned him. In the same way, as he then entered the place where his Apostles had taken refuge, so today he comes to meet us driving away our fears. It is there that He makes us rise.
After Christ’s encounter with Mary Magdalene in love and in desire, this meeting in the Cenacle is important because it makes us understand that the risen Christ meets us there, where we died in our fears, in our frailties, in our sins, and in our selfishness, to make us rise through joy and peace.
Today, it is to us that the Risen One says: “Peace be with you” (Jn 20, 19.21.26). It is evident that it is not just a greeting. It is a gift, the gift that the Risen Lord gives us, his friends. It is a gift to share. Therefore, this peace, purchased by Christ with his blood, is also a task. It is not just for us, it is for everyone, and we, the disciples of today, must take it everywhere in the world.
In this way, we participate in the peaceful battle begun by the Easter of Christ, helping him to affirm his victory with his own weapons: those of justice and truth, of mercy, of forgiveness and of love. These weapons do not kill but give life and peace.
3) Witnesses of joy.
In today’s Gospel Jesus says many times: “Peace be with you” and the disciples “rejoiced”. Joy and peace are the sign of the presence of the risen Christ.
Why is the experience of the risen Jesus who stands among us and shows us his hands and his side, an experience of peace and joy? Because we know who we are for Christ and who Christ is for us. He is the one who carries those nailed hands and that pierced side for us. He is infinite love who gives himself. And we, who are we for him? We are a finite, limited love that expands in his Love.
The pierced side shows the heart that loves infinitely and totally. The nailed hands show that the power of God is to wash the feet and to be nailed to the service of love for man. That is where we recognize the Lord. In these hands, we see the whole life of Jesus, all that He has done at the service of love, with a Love so extreme as to die for it to give life.
We are all called to respond to this resurrected Love. How? Witnessing Christ with joy.
Let us take as example the Consecrated Virgins to whom – on the day of consecration – it is said: “Christ, Son of the Virgin and husband of virgins, will be your joy and crown on earth until he will lead you to the eternal wedding in his kingdom, where, singing the new song, you will follow the Lamb wherever he goes “(RCV, homily project No. 38).
To respond to Christ’s love these women offer themselves totally and joyfully to him. In fact, joy does not consist in having many things, but in feeling loved by the Lord, in giving oneself to God and the neighbor, and in loving one another in God. Joy comes from the experience of being loved and becoming missionaries of this Love in a total way.
Totality is a profound requirement of consecrated virginity, which does not admit mediocrity. Consecration is by its very nature a generous and total act of love that carries the consecrated woman up, on the cross and therefore elevated and in the deep of the heart of Christ.
Thanks to her consecration, the virgin engages in four “duties”: that of praising God with more sweetness, that of hoping in God with more joy, that of loving God with more ardor, and that of being a missionary of mercy becoming a perseverant witness of the joy to be loved and to love in a pure and free way. It is as St. Augustine taught already in De sacra virginitate: “Therefore go on, Saints of God, boys and girls, males and females, unmarried men, and women; go on and persevere unto the end. Praise more sweetly the Lord, Whom ye think on more richly: hope more happily in Him, Whom ye serve more instantly: love more ardently Him, whom you please more attentively.”