DIVINE MERCY SUNDAY

DIVINE MERCY SUNDAY : ACTS 5:12-16;: REV: 1:9-11, 12-13,17-19;: JN 20:19-31

A TIME magazine issue in 1984 presented a startling cover. It pictured a prison cell where two men sat on metal folding chairs, facing each other, up close and personal. They spoke quietly so as to keep others from hearing the conversation. The young man was Mehmet Ali Agca, the pope’s attempted assassin; the other man was Pope John Paul II, the intended victim. The pope held the hand that had held the gun and shot the bullet which tore into the pope’s body. John Paul wanted this scene to be shown around a world filled with nuclear arsenals and unforgiving hatreds. This was a living icon of mercy. The pope had been preaching forgiveness and reconciliation constantly. His deed with Ali Agca spoke a thousand words. He embraced his enemy and pardoned him. At the end of their 20-minute meeting, Ali Agca raised the pope’s hand to his forehead as a sign of respect. John Paul shook Ali Agca’s hand tenderly. When the pope left the cell he said, "I spoke to him as a brother whom I have pardoned and who has my complete trust." This is an example of God’s divine mercy, the same divine mercy to which St. Faustina bore obedient witness.
Today is divine mercy Sunday. And Pope John Paul II, the second-longest reigning pontiff in the history of the Catholic church after Pius IX, and a staunch promoter of Divine Mercy has been beatified; called Blessed today.
The readings for this Sunday are about mercy, trust and the forgiveness of sins. The opening prayer addresses the Father as "God of Mercy." In the Psalm we repeat several times, "His mercy endures forever." "Give thanks to the Lord, for He is good; for His mercy endures forever!" (Ps 118).
Besides mentioning the word, our readings illustrate mercy in action. How does God reveal His mercy? He does so, first and foremost, by sending His only-begotten Son to become our Savior and Lord by his suffering, death and resurrection. Divine mercy is given to us in the celebration of the sacraments. In today’s gospel, as we recall Jesus’ appearance to the disciples on that first Easter evening, we are vividly reminded of the Sacrament of Reconciliation – the power to forgive sins which Our Lord gave to his apostles. "Whose sins you forgive are forgiven them, and whose sins you retain are retained" (Jn 20-23).
On April 30, 2000, Pope John Paul II canonized the Polish nun who had received from Christ the amazing revelations of the Divine Mercy in the early years of the twentieth century, Saint Mary Faustina Kowalska. During that ceremony, the pope fulfilled one of the requests that Christ had made through those revelations: that the entire Church reserve the Second Sunday of the Easter Season to honor and commemorate God's infinite mercy.
Where do we see this mercy revealed in today's Readings?
First of all, we see it in the reaction Christ shows to those men, his chosen Apostles, who had abandoned him just two nights before. They had abandoned Jesus in his most difficult hour, but Jesus wasn't going to abandon them. He passes through the locked doors, passes through their fears, regret, and guilt, and appears to them. He hasn't given up on them. He brings them his peace. And he reaffirms his confidence in them by reaffirming their mission: "As the Father has sent me, so I send you." We also see God's mercy in Christ's reaction to the men who had crucified him. Does he crush them in revenge? No. Instead, he sends out his Apostles to tell them - and to tell the whole sinful world, the world that had crucified its God - that they can be redeemed, that God has not condemned them: "As the Father has sent me, so I send you." And then, just to make sure that the Church is fully armed to communicate this message, Jesus gives the ultimate revelation of God's mercy - he delegates to his Apostles his divine power to forgive sins: "Receive the Holy Spirit. Whose sins you forgive are forgiven them, and whose sins you retain are retained."
This is the explicit institution of the sacrament of Confession, the sacrament in which the limitless ocean of God's mercy overwhelms the puny ocean of our misery. It was the ultimate revelation of the Divine Mercy. In the revelations of his Divine Mercy, Jesus asked St Faustina to commission a painting. The painting would show Jesus standing, dressed in a white alb, with his right hand raised in blessing and his left hand opening his heart.
Out of his heart there were to be streaming two beams of light - one white and the other red. He explained what those rays symbolized:
The two rays denote Blood and Water. The pale ray stands for the Water which makes souls righteous [baptism]. The red ray stands for the Blood which is the life of souls [the Eucharist]. These two rays issued forth from the depths of My tender mercy when My agonized Heart was opened by a lance on the Cross ... Happy is the one who will dwell in their shelter, for the just hand of God shall not lay hold of him (Diary, 299).

Today Jesus is reminding us of the power and abundance of his mercy.
If our King and God has treated us with such overwhelming goodness, giving us much more than we deserve, we should strive to do the same for those around us. There are three simple ways we can do this, three ways we activate God's grace and be Christ's true followers by making ourselves into messengers of God's mercy. First, we can forgive people who offend, insult, or harm us, even when we think they don't deserve to be forgiven - just as Christ does every time we come to confession. Second, we can give others a gift, an opportunity, or a kindness, even when we think they have done nothing to deserve one - just as Christ will do for us today with Holy Communion. Third, we can patiently bear with the nerve-wracking foibles of those around us - just as Christ does with each one of us every single moment of every single day.
One way the Church celebrates God’s mercy throughout the year is through the Sacrament of Reconciliation. Finding time for Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament is another good way to receive Divine Mercy. The gospel command, "Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful," demands that we show mercy to our fellow human beings always and everywhere.
A priest was forced, by a traffic police, to pull over for speeding. As the cop was about to write the ticket, the priest said to him, "Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy." The cop handed the priest the ticket, and said, "Go, and sin no more."
We radiate God's mercy to others by our actions, our words, and our prayers. It is mainly through the corporal and spiritual works of mercy that we practice mercy in our daily lives and become eligible for God’s merciful judgment.
The more we become like Christ in his mercy, through the power of his grace, the more we will experience the "indescribable and glorious joy" that he died to win for us. Today, as Christ feeds us once again from the very fountain of mercy, Holy Communion, let's ask him for the grace to be living images, living paintings, of his mercy in this world so wounded by sin.