GOD OF EVERLASTING MERCY.
April 11, 2021
Second Sunday of Easter - B.
Sunday of Divine Mercy
A Sicilian proverb says, “God plays seriously, but He is a
merciful father.” And a Bajan proverb adds, “It is he who got milk that is
merciful.”
There is a popular saying that vengeance is human, mercy
divine. This saying is always proved true with the way we react in front of an
offense. When someone is offended, it asks for great self-control for him to
not dream of retaliation. May we be Christians or pagans, it is human to feel
bad after an offense but it becomes divine to not wish or plan to repay offense
with an offense. The Wiseman Gandhi in that sense had the hollow nose saying,
“An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind.” For, if we keep punishing
those we deem cruel, then we are no better than the bad guys ourselves. What
makes the difference between bad and good people is the ability to forgive and
to give a new opportunity.
We are celebrating today what sets our difference with God:
his Mercy. The opening prayer says it with one expression: He is a God of
everlasting mercy.
To be Christian consists of giving Christ to others. It is
about giving witness to what we ourselves have experienced and lived with him.
The Catechism of the Catholic Church states, “The transmission of the Christian
faith consists primarily in proclaiming Jesus Christ in order to lead others to
faith in him. From the beginning, the first disciples burned with the desire to
proclaim Christ: "We cannot but speak of what we have seen and
heard." And they invite people of every era to enter into the joy of their
communion with Christ…” CCC. 425.
The first and greatest thing the Apostles, without any
exception, have experienced with Christ was his love, a love that went until
forgiving them for having escaped and left him alone at the hour of his
passion. The Lord showed himself to them after his resurrection and made them
experience his mercy. It is filled with that merciful love that they could
witness to him as we read in today's first reading.
The first Christian community, as described in the extract
of the Acts is a community of love. It is love that made them one heart and
mind. And because they were gathered by that love, they killed from within all
marks of selfishness and egoism. Could we say the same about our today's
communities? Are they animated and led by love? It is all the contrary instead.
All that we see in our churches and associations are about egoism,
self-centeredness, narcissism, and the worship of the personality. We are
invaded by worldliness and we transport that consumerism into the Church. What
the politicians do outside brutally, that is almost the same we do in some communities,
though with softness, for sure, but all the same: Corruption, abuse of power or
authoritarianism, materialism…
All these things happen simply because we do not truly love
God as we ought to love him. Though we pretend to believe in him; our faith is
volatile. St. John, as a good pastor addresses these words: “Everyone who
believes that Jesus is the Christ is begotten by God, and everyone who loves
the Father loves also the one begotten by him.” Are we truly begotten by God
and do we love him? That means we should do away with worldliness. For, says
the Apostle John, “whoever is begotten by God conquers the world.” How then is
it that, even though we sing our faith every Sunday, we gather at every
Eucharistic celebration to revive the victory of Christ over the world, we are
still trapped into the grips of this world and its seductions? Are we really
for Christ? Are our communities and Sundays' assemblies truly Christians? If
so, then we should set the first Christian community as a model to reach.
That goal will, however, be possible only when we will
cultivate sincere love and mercy, the two greatest attributes of our God.
Jesus, after His resurrection, would have had all the
possible reasons to punish his followers, especially the twelve, but instead,
he teaches them mercy and compassion and even made them instruments of mercy:
“As the Father has sent me, so I send you… Receive the Holy Spirit. Whose sins
you forgive are forgiven them, and whose sins you retain are retained.” To
Thomas, known as the doubtful and unbeliever, the Risen Lord gave the special
grace to experience quite closely his mercy, “Put your finger here and see my
hands, and bring your hand and put it into my side, and do not be unbelieving,
but believe.”
Now is the best time for us brothers and sisters to learn
who is the God in whom we believe, in order to imitate him and truly be his
disciples. Mercy, love and compassion are what the Risen Lord brings to his
disciples. It is from these attributes that true peace flows. Our world will
never know true and lasting peace if we are not ready to be merciful like our
Father. Obviously, forgiveness or mercy is the hardest thing to do after an
offense. But difficult does not mean impossible. The Lord did the humanly
impossible by resurrecting Jesus, whom our sins put to death, to new life. May we
always thus open ourselves to the possibilities of God and learn from his mercy
and his love to be ourselves merciful.
Let us conclude our meditation with this prayer: “Eternal
God, in whom mercy is endless and the treasury of compassion inexhaustible,
look kindly upon us and increase Your mercy in us, that in difficult moments we
might not despair nor become despondent, but with great confidence submit
ourselves to Your holy will, which is Love and Mercy itself.” (Cf. Divine Mercy
Rosary).
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