Mercy, Resurrection, and Reconciliation

Today is Divine Mercy Sunday, the Second Sunday of Easter. We will pray the Divine Mercy Chaplet as a family for the first time. Today is a good day to reflect on mercy, on reconciliation, on resurrection.

Yesterday my daughter and I went to confession. I have been trying to get to confession more often - every 2 to 4 weeks or so. Going to confession more often has helped relieve the anxiety that I have long felt about confession ever since I was a child. Fortunately, my daughter has almost no anxiety about confession. As I was waiting in line for confession, I realized that the One who waits for me in the tabernacle to be with me is the same One who waits in the confessional to show me mercy. That connection between the Eucharist and Reconciliation helped me to both be less anxious about confession and to see more clearly the connection of the two sacraments.

We attend a couples Bible study each month which I lead. We have been studying the Acts of the Apostles since September. We read from Acts when Paul is before King Agrippa, testifying that he lived as a Pharisee, which was the sect of Judaism that believed in the resurrection of the dead, as opposed to other sects of Judaism, such as the Sadducees:

And now I stand here on trial for hope in the promise made by God to our fathers, to which our twelve tribes hope to attain, as they earnestly worship night and day. And for this hope I am accused by Jews, O king! Why is it thought incredible by any of you that God raises the dead? (Acts 26: 6-8).

Old Testament references to the hope to which Paul refers can be found in Ezekial 37:1-14 ("I will open your graves and have you rise from them") and Hosea 6:1-2 ("He will revive us after two days; on the third day he will raise us up, to live in his presence").

In his work, The Resurrection of the Dead (210 A.D.), Tertullian links resurrection and reconciliation:

Therefore, the flesh shall rise again; certainly of every man, certainly the same flesh, and certainly its entirety. Wherever it is, in the safekeeping with God through that most faithful agent between God and man, Jesus Christ, who shall reconcile both God to man and man to God, [and]the spirit of the flesh and the flesh to the spirit (63:1).

The resurrection reconciles the body with the soul. Confession reconciles people with God. On this Divine Mercy Sunday, let us remember that Jesus, who conquered Death, waits for us to go to the Sacrament of Reconciliation to receive His mercy so that we may be united with Him in the life of the Trinity through grace.

Divine Mercy Sunday

Today is the Second Sunday of Easter. In 2000, the second Sunday of Easter received the second name of "Divine Mercy Sunday." Emphasizing the message of mercy explicit in the Paschal Mystery and the Easter season, and finding a particular expression in the private revelations of St. Faustina Kowalska, Divine Mercy Sunday is a wonderful celebration of the Lord's infinite love and his restorative forgiveness.

You can find a very helpful document from the John Paul II Institute of Divine Mercy
(an apostolate of the Congregation of Marians of the Immaculate Conception, based at the National Shrine of The Divine Mercy, Eden Hill, Stockbridge, MA) which discusses Divine Mercy here. Let me highlight one portion of that document that deals with the Eucharist:

Rev. Seraphim Michalenko, MIC, explains to us clearly in his booklet The
Divine Mercy: Message and Devotion another, pastoral intention that the Lord
seems to have had in promising extraordinary graces on this Feast day:

Our Lord is also emphasizing, through this promise, the infinite value of Confession and Communion as miracles of mercy. He wants us to realize that since the Eucharist is His own Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity, it is the “Fountain of Life” (Diary, 300). The Eucharist is Jesus, Himself, the Living God, longing to pour Himself as Mercy into our hearts.

Why would Our Lord feel the need to emphasize this? Because so many people do
not really understand it. They either see no need to receive Holy Communion, or
they receive it simply out of habit. As St. Paul explains in his letter to the Corinthians, they eat the bread or drink the cup of the Lord unworthily, “without recognizing the body of the Lord” (1 Cor 11:27-29).

In His revelations to St. Faustina Our Lord makes it very clear what He is
offering us in Holy Communion and how much it hurts Him when we treat His
presence with indifference:

My great delight is to unite Myself with souls. … When I come to
a human heart in Holy Communion, My hands are full of all kinds of graces which I want to give to the soul. But souls do not even pay any attention to Me; they leave Me to Myself and busy themselves with other things. Oh, how sad I am that souls do not recognize Love! They treat Me as a dead object (1385; also see 1288 and 1447).

So, Our Lord’s promise of complete forgiveness is both a reminder and a call.
It is a reminder that He is truly present and truly alive in the Eucharist, filled with
love for us and waiting for us to turn to Him with trust. And it is a call for us all
to be washed clean in His Love through Confession and Holy Communion — no matter how terrible our sins — and begin our lives again. He is offering us a new start.

There is much here, but the part that most grabs my attention is: "But souls do not even pay any attention to Me; they leave Me to Myself and busy themselves with other things. Oh, how sad I am that souls do not recognize Love! They treat Me as a dead object." How true this is, for myself as well as others. I find many things to busy myself with during my days rather drawing closer to the Lord. Often times when I think about going to Eucharistic adoration I don't go because I think "I have too much to do." This is especially true when I am work. I try to get to adoration periodically on my lunch hour, but too often I don't go because I feel that there are more pressing things to do. It is also frighteningly true that we do not recognize love. Think of how often we look for love in all the wrong places, as the country song goes. And most penetrating to me is the comment that we treat him as a dead object. If only we could see him with eyes of faith. So hard to do, yet so essential.

The Gospel reading for today is taken from John. It speaks of mercy, since it includes Jesus' giving the apostles the ability to forgive sins (John 20:21-23). It also contains the passage about Thomas' refusal to believe that Jesus has risen from the dead "without putting my finger in the nail-marks and my hand into his side" (John 20:25). When Jesus comes a week later and Thomas finally sees him, Thomas gives the response that we give silently at mass during the elevation of the body and blood during the consecration: "My Lord and my God!" (John 20:28). Jesus is pleased with Thomas' act of faith, but he lets Thomas and us know that we are asked to have a still deeper faith: "Jesus said to him, 'Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet believe.'" (John 20:29).

So hard to do, yet so essential.