Sunday of Divine Mercy
When Jesus appears in the locked room to the Eleven to show His victory over sin and death in bodily Resurrection, He brings about a re-creation. Notice what He does: He imparts His peace, breathes the Holy Spirit upon them, and then sends them in peace. Often in John’s gospel, we’re meant to see parallels to the book of Genesis. Think of the Creation Story in which the Spirit hovered over the abyss to make order out of nothingness, and how, after God formed Adam from clay, He breathed life into His nostrils. Now Jesus breathes new life into the Apostles by the power of the Spirit. We are re-created to bestow Christ’s peace on the world.
Christ bestows on them peace. Remember, He said He would give peace not as the world gives it. How does the world give it? Man’s peace is actually an absence. Man’s peace is the absence of conflict. But we’ll always try to get out from under man’s peace. The divine peace of Jesus is a gift. The traditional Jewish formula for announcing forgiveness of sin was, “Go in peace.” We’ve likely heard the Hebrew word shalom, which we translate as “peace,” but it’s more like “restoration to wholeness.” Now, even better than the material creation that God Himself called good, we have the re-creation of humanity in God’s life of holiness.
Peace as mercy brings into existence what did not yet exist. What could be a greater gift? Stones into bread? Momentary world peace? Or unmerited Divine Mercy? Once the Disciples receive the gift of peace, then they are sent to announce the Good News and sacramentally administer God’s forgiveness.
Still, this mission doesn’t come about before the story of Doubting Thomas. If anyone wants to reduce Jesus to a non-judgmental man instead of God-as-judge who commutes wrath to mercy, he need only hear Christ’s rebuke to Thomas’ tardy Resurrection belief. Nonetheless, the Doubter’s demands of Jesus and Christ’s response to them tell us much about how Divine Mercy works. He will do everything to lead us up to belief in Him or in His power over sin, and yet he cannot force us to believe. And so we see the both/and of Divine Mercy—He is calling out to us but will not impose Himself. He has oceans of mercy to bestow on us if we come to Him.
Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI says, “This is part of the mystery of the Risen Jesus, or the humility of God: he asks men and women for their contribution. He needs their assent…. His Cross on which he gave himself is the miraculous multiplication of loaves, the divine overcoming of the attempt by the devil to catch people with bread and dramatics. Only love can bring about the true multiplication of bread. Material gifts, what is quantitative, always diminish through being divided. Love however increases the more it gives itself.”
Reflection by Fr. Pachomius Meade, OSB, Dean of Students
Posted in Article for Easter, Daily Reflections