Second Sunday of Easter or Sunday of Divine Mercy
Acts of the Apostles 2:42-47, 1 Peter 1:3-9, John 20:19-31
Dear sisters and brothers,
We can hear the enthusiasm of the early followers of Jesus in these readings today. The Acts of the Apostles in particular is filled with enthusiasm and joy and reflects at least one experience in the early Church. Everything seemed to be so good and to work so well together. But already in the Acts of the Apostles, the author starts to describe some of the early followers as withdrawing from the common understanding of the community.
Following Jesus has all the human dimensions of any movement. People get enthused and enter into the movement and then they get discouraged or scandalized by others and they withdraw. Sometimes the withdrawal takes the form of accusing the others of not being as fervent as they should be, sometimes it means starting a new church assembly, sometimes it means going away totally disillusioned and angry—and there are lots of other possibilities as well.
The First Letter of Peter also reminds us that we may have to suffer a bit in our following of the Lord Jesus.
The Gospel of John recounts to us the experience of Thomas, who is such a strong model for many of us present-day believers. We want to see, to touch, to feel. We want verifiable experience about this Jesus whom we follow. And Jesus responds to the request of Thomas and then embarrasses him.
We are celebrating the Octave of Easter today. The daily readings for Holy Mass have given us all kinds of Gospels and other readings during this previous week, meant to help us understand the resurrection of Jesus and what it means to follow Him.
We Christians of today seem to be the same type of humans as those earlier followers. We have enthusiasts who are totally committed to the Lord and whose energy wants to draw others to Him as well. We have other committed Christians who follow Christ but who want to remain in the background. We have people who belong to the Church but who don’t want to give a penny to help the Church. We have others who promise to help and then don’t carry through. We find in the Scriptures so many types of people because that is a true human community. And we find plenty of us who are like Thomas the Apostle in lots of ways.
The readings invite us to reflect more deeply about what it means to follow Jesus as our Lord. We should never be surprised by others with their faithfulness nor their lack of faithfulness. We should be surprised by our own failures. Instead, we are invited to keep our eyes on Christ with a realistic understanding of others and of ourselves. We can make a lasting commitment to follow Him and this will help us continue on the way when we meet the failures and brokenness of others or that same failure and brokenness in ourselves. Blessed are those who believe!
Peace and All good!
Fr. Valery Burusu
Parochial Administrator