topleft05.jpg (18208 bytes)HOMILY
Second Sunday of Easter (A)
Divine Mercy Sunday
01 May 11
 


 

Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen once told his television audience about an experience he had as a young priest while serving at a parish in New York City.

“On duty” one day—which meant being available to respond to emergencies for twenty four hours—Fr. Sheen was called and asked to visit a young woman named Kitty, who was dying.  What Father Sheen didn’t know at the time was that Kitty hadn’t been bringing in enough money from “walking the streets,” so her husband poisoned Kitty.  She was now dying from the poison.

When Father Sheen arrived at Kitty’s apartment, what he beheld was one of the filthiest places he had ever seen.  Upon entering Kitty’s bedroom, Father Sheen asked Kitty if she wanted to make her peace with God.  Kitty told Father Sheen that she couldn’t.  Kitty was what she termed “the worst girl” in New York City.  Without skipping a beat, Father Sheen told Kitty she wasn’t the worst girl in New York City.  The “worst girl,” Father Sheen said, would believe she was the “best girl.”

After relating to Kitty some parables of Jesus’ love and forgiveness of sinners, she agreed to go to confession.  Following her confession, Father Sheen anointed Kitty.  Quite inexplicably, she recovered.

Yes, Archbishop Sheen noted, Kitty’s physical healing was miraculous.  But, even more importantly, he said, Kitty’s spiritual healing was miraculous.

Why?

Following Kitty’s recovery, she became an apostle to the people among whom she had previously worked—the prostitutes and their johns—and would send them to visit Father Sheen.  The young priest knew Kitty had sent them because they would come to him and say, “Father, I am the person Kitty told you about.”  That was “code” language for their sin and indicated their desire to “make their peace with God.”

Today’s “code” word is “mercy.”

In Latin and for the Church, misericordia begins with an experience of “miseria” or “the condition of great sorrow or distress” of the “cordia” or heart.  This “pain in the heart” then impels the individual who experiences it to have the “disposition to show compassion or to forgive.”

Understood this way, mercy is not simply something someone receives.  It also is something someone gives.  Or, to use the words of Blessed Pope John Paul II, “you cannot give what you have not experienced yourself.”

In today’s gospel, Jesus appears to his disciples twice, offering them the gift of peace: “Peace be with you,” Jesus said.

Upon hearing that statement, we oftentimes focus upon Jesus’ soothing words.  But, in doing so, we overlook what the disciples feared upon seeing the Risen Lord.  Remember, they had just three days earlier “dumped and ran” for fear they might have to suffer the same fate they knew was awaiting Jesus.  Imagine what surely must have been going through their minds when Jesus broke through those doors which had been barred shut, namely, the judgment Jesus could levy against each and every one of them for their cowardice and betrayal!

Yet, instead of rendering a judgment and exacting a humiliating price—a matter of justice—but because his heart was filled with the “condition of one in great sorrow or distress”—a matter of mercy—Jesus said, “Peace be with you.”  And, with that statement, Jesus freed his disciples of their sins of cowardice and betrayal.

It shouldn’t be difficult for any one of us to imagine the sense of relief the disciples experienced upon hearing those words, because each of us knows exactly what the disciples were experiencing before Jesus spoke those words.  In one way or another, all of us have been cowards and all of us have betrayed other people, perhaps a spouse, a family member, friend, employer, and the like.  Rather than do what courage demanded, we folded up like cheap tents in a storm’s raging winds.  Rather than state the truth, we gave excuses so as to avoid having to “take the medicine” or “face the music.”

In doing so, all of us have personally experienced and know what it means to live in fear of “being found out.” Or, worse yet, when we have been found out, the painful and humiliating shame that comes when they suddenly appeared before us.  Bad enough is knowing that we have been found out; worse yet is knowing that someone else knows the truth.

Or, so we wrongly think.

Reflecting back on that scene in the upper room, Jesus teaches his disciples a radically different way of life that has the power of “make straight all of those crooked ways” we’ve made of our lives.  Because Jesus loved his disciples, he knew the state of their souls.  Yes, they had acted in a cowardly way and had betrayed him as well.  But, Jesus knew his disciples weren’t really cowards nor were they really betrayers.  What had happened is that the disciples allowed fear to seize hold of them and to imprison them within its strong grip.  The disciples needed to be released from their sin if they were to become the people Jesus knew each of them to really be.

That is why Jesus said “Peace be with you.”

That’s one dimension of mercy, misericordia, a heart filled with the “condition of one in great sorrow or distress” that has the power to liberate people from the fear in which they live due to sin.  It’s an experience we all know in a very personal way which explains why so many of us don’t like to go to confession as well as why so many of us don’t go to confession or haven’t gone for years and perhaps even decades.  Instead, we live imprisoned by fear, namely, the fear of being known and judged by others for the bad choices we have made.

But, the story in today’s gospel didn’t end there because Jesus also taught his disciples about the second dimension of mercy when he said: “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.”  The “pain in the heart” that is the hallmark of mercy impels the individual who experiences it to have the “disposition to show compassion or to forgive.”

For a disciple, then, mercy is not simply something one receives.  It also is something one must give to others.

That scene in the upper room when Jesus first confronts his disciples reminds all of us that—like the disciples who were gathered in that room—we wrongly believe that “being found out” and that others will know the bad choices we have made is the most difficult aspect being forgiven.  No, the most difficult aspect of being forgiven is to be as lavishly generous in forgiving others as Jesus was lavishly generous in forgiving his disciples.  How hypocritical it would be to desire and to receive forgiveness only to turn around and not be equally generous in giving that gift to others!

Jesus gave his disciples the power to perform what the philosopher Hannah Arendt called the only miracle that human beings are capable of performing: the power to forgive sins.  This great gift that Jesus entrusted to his disciples—the freedom to offer Divine Mercy to others—is not simply to be used to free others from the grip of fear which is the consequence of sin.  It is also given for the good of the community because, as we free others from sin, they now possess the freedom to become the person we know them to be.  That is why we experience that “pain in the heart.”  Lavishly forgiving others can only strengthen the community that is friendship, the community that is marriage, the community that is family life, the community that is the school and workplace, and, ultimately, the community that is the Kingdom of God that we can make present here and now, “on Earth, as it is in heaven,” by offering others the gift of Divine Mercy.

Jesus’ mission involved reconciling all of us to God our Father.  The experience of Divine Mercy which Jesus lavished so generously upon his disciples in the upper room—a heart filled with the “condition of great sorrow or distress”—requires his disciples to show Divine Mercy as they forgive others.  As Jesus’ disciples in this generation, we continue Jesus’ saving mission not simply as we experience Divine Mercy, but more importantly, as we lavish it generously upon others.

 

 

How your family might celebrate the Easter Season:

Easter is so important that it cannot be celebrated in just one, single day.  To celebrate Easter appropriately, the Church takes fifty days (forty days leading to the Ascension and ten days leading to Pentecost Sunday, fifty days that culminate on what used to be called "Quinquagesimea Sunday").  These are the days that constitute the entire "Easter Season."

Here are four simple ways you might celebrate the entire Easter Season with your family:

    1.   Place a white pillar candle in the center of your kitchen table.  Each night before dinner, assign a member of your family to light the candle and to recall what a person said or did that day to reveal the Risen Lord.  As part of the blessing prayer, give thanks to the Lord for the gift of that person.

    2.  Take a daily walk around the neighborhood.  Identify one sign of new life each day.  After completing the walk, sit down together as a family in the living room or family room and relate each sign to the new life that God has given all of us in the resurrection of His only begotten Son.

    3.   Invite an estranged family member, relative, or friend (or a family member, relative, or friend who hasn't been to visit for a while) to dinner each of the Sundays of the Easter season.  Before the prayer of blessing over the food, read a resurrection appearance where Jesus says to his disciples, "Peace be with you."  Following the blessing of the food, offer one another the sign of peace before partaking of the meal.

    4.   In preparation for the Solemnity of Pentecost, have each member of the family on Easter Sunday write down on a piece of paper a gift of the Holy Spirit that he or she needs in order to become a more faithful disciple.  Fold and place these pieces of paper in a bowl in the center of the kitchen table.  At dinner each evening, pray the "Prayer of the Holy Spirit" to send for these gifts upon the members of the family so that your family will become a light to the world.  Then, before the prayer of blessing over the dinner on Pentecost Sunday, burn the pieces of paper to call to mind that the gifts have already been given in the Sacrament of Confirmation.  The challenge is now to live out those gifts in the ordinary time of our daily lives.

 

Easter is an event that happens each and every day.  During the fifty days of the Easter season, in particular, you and your family can prepare to make Easter happen each and every day of your lives by "practicing" these simple exercises which connect Jesus' risen life to yours as well.

 

 

 

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