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The following text guided the homily:\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n\n- At this time when the United States has been led into in an undeclared war with Iran, in a week after our President threatened, contrary to Just War principles and international law that he was prepared to annihilate Iranian civilization and blow up all of its power plants and energy facilities if it didn\u2019t capitulate to his demands, after so many have been killed within Iran by the Iranian regime and many others by US and Israeli bombs, after more than 1,000 have died in Lebanon, after more attacks on Christians in Nigeria, after more suffering in Ukraine from Russian attacks on power plants such that Ukranians have no electricity and heat, Jesus\u2019 words in today\u2019s Gospel are somehow more compelling than they perennially are. Three times the Risen Lord Jesus says, \u201cShalom!\u201d \u201cPeace be with you!\u201d Peace, as we know, is not the absence of war. Peace in the Jewish understanding is the fullness of every good thing. St. Augustine would call it the tranquility of order, when everything is in its proper place. Jesus, after having signed the definitive peace treaty between the human race and God through his blood on Calvary was wishing us that fullness, that order, that peace. He had said, three days earlier during the Last Supper on Holy Thursday, \u201cPeace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. Not as the world gives do I give it to you\u201d (Jn 14:27). He wants us to have that peace, to dwell in that gift, and then he wants to send us out as peacemakers to share that gift with the world. Today, on Divine Mercy Sunday, he shows us how.<\/li>\n
- But, before we get there, I want to pause on this subject of peace. Last night, the vicar on earth of the Prince of Peace, led a Rosary for Peace prayer service in St. Peter\u2019s Basilica. I want to share some of his words. He began by addressing the importance of Christians praying for peace, like we do at today\u2019s Mass and in every Mass. Prayer, he said, is needed \u201cin order to face this dramatic hour in history together \u2014 as humanity and alongside humanity. Prayer is not a refuge in which to hide from our responsibilities, nor an anesthetic to numb the pain provoked by so much injustice. Rather, it is the most selfless, universal and transformative response to death: we are a people who are already risen! Within each of us, within every human being, the interior Teacher teaches peace, urges us toward encounter and inspires us to make supplication. Let us rise from the rubble!\u201d<\/li>\n
- He continued, with words that are easily applied to the protagonists and antagonists in the present conflict, \u201cPrayer teaches us how to act. In prayer, our limited human possibilities are joined to the infinite possibilities of God. Thoughts, words and deeds then break the demonic cycle of evil and are placed at the service of the Kingdom of God. A Kingdom in which there is no sword, no drone, no vengeance, no trivialization of evil, no unjust profit, but only dignity, understanding and forgiveness.\u00a0It is here that we find a bulwark against that delusion of omnipotence that surrounds us and is becoming increasingly unpredictable and aggressive. \u00a0The balance within the human family has been severely destabilized. \u00a0Even the holy Name of God, the God of life, is being dragged into discourses of death. \u00a0A world of brothers and sisters with one heavenly Father vanishes, as in a nightmare, giving way to a reality populated by enemies. We are met by threats, rather than the invitation to listen and to come together. Brothers and sisters, those who pray are aware of their own limitations; they do not kill or threaten with death. Instead, death enslaves those who have turned their backs on the living God, turning themselves and their own power into a mute, blind and deaf idol (cf.\u00a0Ps<\/em>115:4\u20138), to which they sacrifice every value, demanding that the whole world bend its knee.\u201d<\/li>\n
- The Holy Father said, \u201cThe Church is a great people at the service of reconciliation and peace.\u00a0 She advances without hesitation, even when rejecting the logic of war may lead to misunderstanding and scorn.\u00a0 She proclaims the Gospel of peace and instills obedience to God rather than any human authority, especially when the inherent dignity of other human beings is threatened by continuous violations of international law.\u201d He finished by reiterating the words of Christ from today\u2019s Gospel, the first words he said when he emerged on the balcony of St. Peter\u2019s Basilica last May 8 after his election: \u201cDear friends, peace be with you all! \u00a0It is the peace of the Risen Christ, the fruit of his sacrifice of love on the cross.\u201d And then he led us all in a powerful prayer for peace to the Risen Lord, God-with-us still with us in the world. \u201cLord Jesus, you conquered death without weapons or violence: you shattered its power with the strength of peace. Grant us your peace, as you did to the women filled with doubt on Easter morning, as you did to the disciples who were hiding in fear. Send forth your Spirit, the breath that gives life and reconciles, that turns adversaries and enemies into brothers and sisters. Inspire in us to trust in Mary, your mother, who stood at the foot of your cross with a broken heart, firm in the faith that you would rise again. May the madness of war cease and the Earth be cared for and cultivated by those who still know how to bring forth, protect and love life. Hear us, Lord of life!\u201d<\/li>\n
- Today, on Divine Mercy Sunday, we are able to see how Jesus wanted to bring his peace to the world. It would be through extending his mercy. The absence of peace is ultimately and always a result of sin and so the remedy is not just stopping to sin against each other, but receiving mercy from God that can be paid forward to others. Without peace with God, there will never be the fullness of every blessing or the tranquility of order because sin destroys peace. So, on the night of his resurrection, Jesus said to the apostles, \u201cJust as the Father sent me, so I send you!\u201d God the Father had sent Jesus ultimately to save us from our sins \u2014 and the consequence of our sins, death \u2014 by his life, passion, death and resurrection. \u201cJust as the Father sent me [to forgive sins], so I send you!\u201d So immediately after offering them peace, Jesus was going to send out the apostles to forgive sins in his name and bring peace to the world. But since no one can forgive sins but God alone (Mk 2:7), Jesus breathed on them and said, \u201cReceive the Holy Spirit.\u201d He gave them God the Holy Spirit so that they might forgive sins, just as we hear every time the priest pronounces those beautiful words in confession, \u201cGod, the Father of Mercies\u2026 has poured out the Holy Spirit for the forgiveness of sins.\u201d And then he said words that point clearly to the Sacrament of Penance: \u201cThose whose sins you forgive, they are forgiven; those whose sins you retain, they are retained.\u201d Jesus was making them his ministers, his ambassadors. Just as through them, Jesus himself says, \u201cThis is my body. \u2026\u00a0This is the chalice of my blood\u201d in the Mass, so through them Jesus was going to say, \u201cYour sins are forgiven; go in peace!\u201d This was going to be the apostles\u2019 most important mission, the mission in which he involved them intimately as his first action upon rising from the dead. The only way that they would know which sins to forgive and which to retain would be if penitents told them their sins in confession. If we want peace for ourselves and for the world, then Jesus gives us the means and wants us to take Him and those means seriously. Jesus says that the most important factor in peace is not the number of diplomats or the strength of the United Nations. It\u2019s not the elimination of Iran\u2019s capacity to make nuclear weapons, or stopping our President from threatening war crimes, or getting the Israelis and the Palestinians to reach a two-state agreement, or persuading Russia to cease its hostilities toward its neighbor and return what it has stolen. Jesus says that real peace is based recognizing we\u2019ve sinned against him and others and asking for and coming to receive his mercy. Jesus says that real peace is based ultimately on the Sacrament of Confession he instituted and whether we use it. In other words, the most important person in the world if we want real peace is not Donald Trump, Benjamin Netanyahu, Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei, Vladimir Putin, Antonio Guterres or any other world leader. It\u2019s actually a priest acting in Christ\u2019s name, so that we can receive the peace that the world can\u2019t give or rob.<\/li>\n
- Today\u2019s celebration of Divine Mercy brings us to the heart of this mystery. Jesus said to Saint Faustina Kowalska, the Polish sister through whom he revealed his Divine Mercy in the 1930s in Krakow, \u201cHumanity will not find peace until it turns trustfully to divine mercy.\u201d And hence Jesus wanted to help us to turn with trust to that mercy. Through this devotion, he wanted us to recognize our need for his mercy, to trust in it, to ask for it, to come to receive it, and to share it with others. He revealed to her five different practices to help us to do so.\n