Entering More Deeply into the Bath of God’s Mercy, Divine Mercy Sunday, April 19, 2020

Fr. Roger J. Landry
Divine Mercy Sunday
April 19, 2020
Acts 2:42-47, Ps 118, 2 Pet 1:3-9, Jn 20:19-31

To listen to an audio recording of today’s Mass, please click below:

The following text guided today’s homily: 

• Last Sunday, united with Christians all over the world, we celebrated with joy the Resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ. Jesus, as he himself told us during the Last Supper, had come into the world to give us his joy and make our joy complete (Jn 15:11) and today, as we conclude the Easter Octave, we see one of the most important ways Jesus established for us to enter into his risen joy: it’s through the experience of his merciful love that he gives us in the Sacrament of his Merciful Love.
• In the moving Gospel we just heard, we witness what Jesus did on the evening of the day he triumphantly rose from the dead. He walked through the closed doors of the Upper Room where the apostles were huddling together out of fear and he said to them, “Shalom!,” “Peace be with you!” Jesus had come down from heaven to earth and had sacrificed his life to give us peace, but it was a special kind of peace, one the world can’t give or take away. “Not as the world gives peace do I give it,” Jesus had said during the Last Supper. The peace Jesus leaves and gives us is not the mere absence of war or conflict, but harmony with God through the forgiveness of sins. Without this type of peace, no other form can endure, because it is sin that destroys interior peace, the peace of the home, the peace of friendship, the peace of communities, the peace of nations. And so Jesus, wasting absolutely no time to set the next stage of his peace plan in motion, on the night of his resurrection divinely empowered the apostles as his peacemakers to bring that gift, and the joy to which it leads, to the ends of the earth.
• It’s important for us to pay close attention to the various steps Jesus took in today’s Gospel so that we can understand better the divine foundation of the Sacrament of his Mercy, so that we can take better advantage of it and also explain it better to all those, Protestants and some Catholics alike, who say that they can confess their sins to God alone without the Sacrament. Jesus began by saying to the apostles, “Just as the Father sent me, so I send you!” We know that the Father had sent Jesus as the Lamb of God to take away the sins of the world and Jesus was sending his apostles to continue that saving mission of mercy. Since we know that only God can forgive sins against Him (see Mk 2:7), however, Jesus needed to impart to the apostles that divine power. So he breathed on them as he said, “Receive the Holy Spirit.” He gave them God the Holy Spirit so that they might forgive sins in God’s name, just as we hear every time the priest pronounces those beautiful words in the Sacrament of Penance, “God, the Father of Mercies, through the death and resurrection of his Son, has … sent the Holy Spirit among us for the forgiveness of sins.” And then Jesus did something that refers to the essential structure of the Sacrament of Reconciliation. He said, “Those whose sins you forgive, they are forgiven; those whose sins you retain, they are retained.” Since Jesus didn’t give the apostles the capacity to read hearts and souls, the only way they — and their successors and their priestly collaborators — would be able to know which sins to forgive or to retain would be if people told them. And that’s what happens in the Sacrament of Confession.
• It’s so fitting that Jesus established this Sacrament of his Mercy on Easter Sunday Evening because he wanted to link the joy of his resurrection to the joy of forgiveness. He had pointed to the connection between the two when he gave us the unforgettable Parable of the Prodigal Son. When the lost son returns to the Father to give his rehearsed speech of repentance, the Father erupts with happiness. He covers his son with the finest robe, adorns him with a ring and sandals, and kills the fattened calf. When the jealous older son asked why his dad was pulling out all the stops at the return of his brother, the Father replied, “We must celebrate with joy, because your brother was deadand has come to life again!” This Parable, which is about what happens in the Sacrament of Penance when we come back and say to our Father that we have sinned and he restores us to the full dignity as his beloved sons and daughters, points to the truth that every reconciliation is a resurrection! In every good confession, a son or daughter who was dead comes to life again, healed of sins both mortal and venial, and made fully alive once more in Christ Jesus!
• That’s why it’s so fitting today, as we conclude the Easter Octave, that we celebrate Divine Mercy Sunday. Twenty years ago, during the great Jubilee of 2000, St. John Paul II established this feast for the Second Sunday of Easter so that all of us could thank God for the gift of his merciful that led him to stop at nothing in order to save us from our sins and from the eternal death to which our sins lead. John Paul announced the establishment of this Feast during the canonization of St. Faustina Kowalska, the humble Polish sister to whom in a series of profound mystical experiences during the 1930s, Jesus revealed the depths of his merciful love for the human race and his desire for all people to recognize our need for his mercy, trust in it, come to receive it, and share it with others.
• One of the requests St. Faustina described in her Diary that Jesus made of her was about this Feast. She wrote, “The Lord said, ‘I want… the first Sunday after Easter … to be the Feast of Mercy. I desire that the Feast of Mercy be a refuge and a shelter for all souls, and especially for poor sinners. On that day, the very depths of my tender mercy are open. I pour out a whole ocean of graces upon those souls who approach the fount of my mercy. The soul that will go to Confession and receive Holy Communion shall obtain complete forgiveness of sins and punishment. On that day are open all the divine floodgates through which graces flow.”
• What’s the Divine Mercy devotion all about? It’s about doing for Jesus’ love for us in the Sacrament of Confession what Eucharistic adoration has done for Jesus’ love for us in the Sacrament of the Eucharist. With the Eucharist, it wasn’t enough for Jesus for us merely to know that he is really and substantially present body, blood, soul and divinity. Jesus himself came into the world, and through appearances to mystics and Eucharistic miracles, made clear his will that he wanted us to celebrate that gift with Eucharistic adoration, with Holy Hours, with processions with Him in the streets and more. Similarly, it’s not enough for us to know that Jesus has the power to forgive us our sins and does so through the Sacrament of Penance. He wants us to express our love and appreciation for it, because then, like with Eucharistic adoration, we will be better able to receive the infinite graces he wishes to give us through it. Toward both the Sacrament of the Eucharist and the Sacrament of Mercy, many Catholics are cold. Many take these sacraments for granted and sadly seldom receive them. Others receive them without passion. Jesus wants more. He wants us to grow in love of him loving us in this way. The Divine Mercy Devotion allows us to show our love and appreciation for this great gift of God’s merciful love and, as we do so, to be transformed by Him so that we might become, like God, rich in mercy and as merciful as our heavenly Father in merciful.
• When Jesus appeared to St. Faustina beginning in 1931, he sketched out for her as his “secretary” how he wanted us to trust in his mercy and ask for it, and how he wanted us to share his merciful love with others. Jesus didn’t teach us anything new about his merciful love; he just reiterated what he had taught us in the Gospel. What was new was that the Lord Jesus asked the Church, and that means each one of us, to grow in his Divine Mercy by engaging in five practices:

• • The first is Divine Mercy Sunday, which we’re celebrating today for the 20th time.
  • The second is to prepare for Divine Mercy Sunday by a novena beginning Good Friday. He gave St. Faustina an intention for each day of the novena. He said, “I desire that during these nine days you bring souls to the fount of my mercy, that they may draw from there strength and refreshment and whatever graces they need in the hardships of life and, especially, at the hour of death. On each day you will bring to my Heart a different group of souls, and you will immerse them in this ocean of my mercy, and I will bring all these souls into the house of my Father.” The groups, for each of the days, are all humanity, especially sinners; priests and religious; the pious and faithful; those who do not believe in Jesus and who don’t yet know him; our separated Christian brothers and sisters; the meek and humble and children; those who venerate the mercy of Jesus; those in Purgatory; and the lukewarm.
  • The third is to pray to the image of Divine Mercy — As we see in today’s Gospel, St. Thomas came to touch Christ’s wounds. The Lord revealed to St. Faustina that he desired an image to be made in which the power of his wounds would be prominent: “One night when I was in my cell, I perceived the presence of the Lord Jesus dressed in a white tunic. One hand was raised in blessing, the other rested on his chest. From an opening in the tunic in the chest, two great rays were coming out, one red and the other clear… After some time, Jesus said to me, “Paint an image in accordance with what you see, with the inscription, ‘Jesus, I trust in you.’ A little later, Our Lord explained to her the meaning of the two rays: ‘The two rays represent the Blood and the Water [that we hear about in today’s second reading]. The white ray represents the Water [baptism], that justifies souls; the red ray represents the Blood that is the life of souls [the Eucharist]. Both rays flow from the depths of my Mercy when, on the Cross, my Heart in agony was opened by the lance.’”
  • The fourth is to pray the Chaplet of Divine Mercy — This is something that people can pray on Rosary beads. St. Faustina heard an interior voice that taught her this prayer. On the larger beads of the Rosary, one says, “Eternal Father, I offer you the Body and Blood, Soul and Divinity of your dearly beloved Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, in atonement for our sins and for those of the whole world.” On the ten smaller beads, we pray, “For the sake of his sorrowful passion, have mercy on us and on the whole world.” You pray five “decades” in this way, after which, one prays three times the “Holy, Holy, Holy” from the Good Friday reproaches, “Holy God, Holy Mighty One, Holy Immortal One,” “have mercy on us and on the whole world.” What we’re doing in this beautiful prayer is offering Christ’s own sacrifice during the Triduum, to the Father. We’re lifting up the Eucharist — Christ’s body, blood, soul and divinity — and making Christ’s prayer our own. There is no more powerful prayer! Jesus promised, “It pleases me to grant everything they ask of me by saying the chaplet… if it be compatible with my Will.” This is especially true of the moment of death. Jesus specifically asked priests — and I’m obeying him right now — to “recommend it to sinners as their last hope of salvation. Even if there were a sinner most hardened, if he were to recite this chaplet only once [with an attitude of trust, humility and sorrow for sin], he would receive grace from my infinite mercy.”
  • The last and perhaps most important of all is to pray particularly at three in the afternoon, the time in which Jesus died on the Cross, invoking the Mercy of the Lord — Jesus said to St. Faustina, “At three in the afternoon, implore my Mercy, especially for sinners, or at least briefly reflect on my Passion, especially on the abandonment I felt at the moment of agony. This is the hour of great Mercy for the whole world. I will allow you to penetrate my mortal sadness. In that hour, I will deny nothing to the soul that asks me in the name of my Passion.” Jesus gave three indispensable conditions to hear prayers made at the hour of Mercy: the prayer has to be directed to Jesus, take place at three, and invoke the value and merits of his passion.
• Each of these five practices is meant to help us grow in love of the Lord’s mercy, to seek it, receive it, live in it and share it. It’s important for us to take advantage of these means to grow in holy appreciation of the immensity of the gift Jesus gives us. The joy that we have at Easter  — and in life — is directly proportional to our entering into this mystery, because it’s through this devotion we become more like Christ and share his love and mercy.
• It’s a devotion that ought to have a powerful application during this time of the coronavirus pandemic. There are essentially three things we should be praying for right now — the end of the pandemic, for those who have died and are dying, and for those who are caring for those suffering. The Divine Mercy devotion is a response to all three needs.
• First, with regard to the praying for the end of Covid-19, we ought to pray with Jesus’ extraordinary promise about the hour of mercy in mind. “In that hour,” he said, “I will deny nothing to the soul that asks me in the name of my Passion.”Just like New Yorkers stop at 7 pm now to cheer on health care works, Catholics should stop at 3 pm to turn to Jesus and, on account of the merits of his suffering, death and resurrection, entreat him to free the world of this pandemic and to help those who have contracted the virus.
• Second, concerning those who are dying, we need to pray remembering what Jesus says to us about the chaplet. “Even if there were a sinner most hardened, if he were to recite this chaplet only once,” with an attitude of trust, humility and sorrow for sin, “he would receive grace from my infinite mercy.” Many priests have seen conversions at deathbeds during or after praying the chaplet. We’ve heard several similar stories during the pandemic.
• Third, regarding health care workers, who are courageously and generously caring for those who are sick, we can regularly be asking Jesus in the Divine Mercy image to pour out his mercy upon them and through them — and to help them entrust themselves, and their patients, to his merciful care.
• While in the Divine Mercy devotion we normally celebrate God’s mercy understood principally as forgiveness of sin, we know that Jesus’ mercy was similarly extended in healing the sick, which was a quasi-sacramental corporeal sign of what Jesus wishes to do for our souls. And therefore we should celebrate both expressions of mercy on this Divine Mercy Sunday and we ought to be inspired to make together a perpetual novena of Divine Mercy for the three intentions I’ve just outlined, that all concerned “draw from [the fount of his mercy] strength and refreshment and whatever graces they need in the hardships of life and, especially, at the hour of death.”
• Today I would want to thank God for one other aspect of his divine mercy, in my life and in yours. Today is the fiftieth anniversary of my receiving God’s mercy for the first time, the day I was baptized. Fifty years ago today, my parents took my twin brother Scot and me to St. Michael’s Parish in Lowell, where Father Richard L. Mahoney, OMI, opened the wideness of God’s mercy for both of us and we bathed in the ocean of that love flowing from his pierced side. Baptism is where we die in Christ and rise with him, as St. Paul says. And hence the Church has us remember our Baptism on this day. We prayed at the beginning of Mass that the “God of everlasting mercy” will help us “grasp and rightly understand in what font they have been washed, by whose Spirit they have been reborn and by whose Blood they have been redeemed.” Today we thank God for the holy font of Baptism by which he has washed me, my brother, and each of us and given us new life, as we will renew once again in a few minutes our baptismal promises.
• As we prepare in this Mass, to offer the Eternal Father in heaven Jesus’ body, blood, soul and divinity, we exult, as prayed in the Psalm, that “God’s mercy endures forever,” and ask God Father, who is Rich in Mercy, to grant us the courage never to tire of receiving what He never tires of giving. We ask Jesus, God the Son, for the grace to receive that gift so profoundly that we might, like him, become as “merciful as our Father in heaven is merciful” (Lk 6:36). And as we prepare in just a few minutes to look upon the “Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world,” we ask God the Holy Spirit to help us say with all our mind, heart, soul and strength, “Jesus, I trust in you!”

The readings for today’s Mass were: