Bound in Love

Today is the last day in the Octave of Easter. Like the last day in the Octave of Christmas, this day has taken on a larger title. Whereas on January 1^st we celebrate both the end of the Octave of Christmas and the feast of Mary Mother of God, today we celebrate both the end of the Octave of Easter and also the feast of Divine Mercy.

The gospel reading for this Sunday is always the same, even in the new lectionary which varies readings over a three year cycle. We always read the story of the doubting Thomas.

Let us admit that mercy is not natural. In the animal world, one generally does not see the leopard chase down the antelope and then decide to let him go. Human beings are made in the image and likeness of God. That means that while we are animals like a leopard or an antelope, we also have within us a touchpoint for the divine. God gave us intellect and will, the function of thinking and the function of choosing, which he did not give to the other animals. So we share some aspects of the animal world because we are animals, and we are meant to share some aspect of divinity because we are made in the image of the divine.

Without the divine mercy, we would most likely give in to those animalistic urges that we all feel within ourselves. We call them passions, and we are taught by good parents and teachers that our goal in life is to master those passions and direct them in accordance with our faith in God and his plan. But all of us struggle to master our passions because of the original sin committed by Adam and Eve at the beginning of time. Wounded by that original sin, we have trouble choosing mercy without divine assistance.

The feast of divine mercy is a reminder of the reality of God, an invitation to contemplate the reality of God, and a reassurance that he loves us beyond our ability to understand him.

The divine mercy was communicated to St. Faustina through a series of revelations from God which she wrote down in her diary in his voice. Let’s read from entry number 699:

The divine mercy is so great that no intellect whether it is human or angelic will ever be able to reach its ends. The divine mercy is therefore a gift which we are invited to receive in faith despite our limited understanding. The divine mercy is, in a word, God’s providence. Let’s trace God’s providence and his divine mercy.

The divine mercy starts in Genesis. After that original sin, the merciful and loving father promises to Adam and Eve that God’s son — also the son of the new Eve, Mary the mother of God — that son will be victorious over the serpent who brought death with his original deception in the garden.

The divine mercy is the theme of the Old Testament in which the loving father sends prophets and teachers and good kings to his children over the centuries to help them learn to live lives that fit his plan rather than to be stuck in lives that reject his providence and his kingship. In God’s divine mercy, he gave his children centuries and millennia to grow ever closer to his will.

The divine mercy entered into time at the incarnation. Suddenly there was a man whose mother was Mary and whose father was God. He lived the divine mercy through years of public ministry and finally a public sacrifice for all the sins committed by Adam and Eve and all their children throughout all time.

The divine mercy communicated its mystery at the resurrection, when the apostles received the good news that what died on Good Friday with Jesus was death and sin. Christians through their baptism rise to new life in Christ because of the divine mercy.

The divine mercy continues in the gospel story today. We don’t know where Thomas was when he missed that first appearance by Jesus in the upper room in the evening of Easter Sunday, but he refused to believe their witness, and he insisted on experiencing the reality of the risen Jesus in a physical sense as a condition of his faith.

Isn’t Thomas so many times us? We hear the good news of God’s love in our lives, and rather than accepting the gift we say, “prove it.” To his everlasting credit, Thomas committed himself completely when he finally did believe. He said, “my Lord and my God.” Thomas declared that Jesus was his Lord: the one whom he would obey and follow and serve. Thomas declared that Jesus was his God: the one whom he would adore and praise and worship. Let us be Thomas all the way through if we’re going to be Thomas and suffer doubt from time to time.

The divine mercy continues with the apostles sent by Jesus on a global mission. He tells them, “go and make disciples of all nations,” starting with the cleansing waters of baptism and also building them in knowledge of the faith, for he says, “teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you.” Through the Church, and through the sacraments of Confession and Eucharist, we continue to have access to the divine mercy.

We will never have the chance in our lifetimes to touch the side of Jesus and the wounds on his hands, but we will always have through the Church the chance to receive his divine mercy through the sacrament of reconciliation and to receive his divine essence through the sacrament of Holy Eucharist.

The divine mercy is a gift to us because what Satan promised turns out to be a lie. It turns out that we cannot fix things by ourselves. Because of the original sin, our sense of justice is wounded. Wounded justice leads to defective mercy. One cannot truly be merciful if one does not completely understand justice. So we need a divine mercy: one that fixes what we cannot fix by our own powers.

The divine mercy is the blessing of those who believe without having seen. We cannot escape our materialist foundation without God’s mercy. The Eucharistic presence is a divine mercy that lets us who have not seen really experience the body of Jesus. By divine mercy we do get to touch him. Maybe we don’t get to touch his physical body, but we touch him really in reception of Holy Communion.

Today, let us receive the divine mercy. Today, let us be St. Thomas and say, “My Lord and my God.”