Homily - Sunday
Deacon David Lewis
Saint Charles Catholic Church, Imperial Beach / San Diego, CA
We are celebrating two things
today, first, we are still celebrating Easter, living through the “happily ever
after” part of the story of the Passion of Christ and Easter Resurrection. We
were in Lent for forty days leading up to the death of Jesus, and then last
Sunday we celebrated his glorious resurrection! The readings over the last
week, have all been about life after the Resurrection: The spreading of the
news of the empty tomb, and the readings of the resurrected Jesus appearing at multiple
times to the disciples: as He appeared to Mary Magdalene outside the tomb, also
to the disciples on the road to Emmaus, and to today’s Gospel of the apostles
gathered at table in the locked room.
The second thing we are celebrating
was instituted by Saint Pope John Paul II as he canonized the first Saint of
the new millennium in 2000, a young nun, named Sister Maria Faustina Kowalska,
Saint Faustina had an apparition of Jesus in 1931, where Jesus himself appeared
to this simple nun and shared a message of mercy with her, a message of His
Divine Mercy, which is what we celebrate today as we do every second Sunday
Easter, Divine Mercy Sunday.
If you have ever experienced mercy,
you understand the gift that it is. How you were deserving and expecting one
outcome, and somehow, whether divinely of through the kindness of others,
receive a much less challenging outcome. It is greatly relieving and usually
accompanied by great comfort that the full brunt of the situation has been relieved.
I remember the relief I felt just one
of the times I received the Divine Mercy of God. I was helping with a
fundraiser at my previous parish, and had the responsibility of collecting the
pledges for a putt-a-thon. Ahead of the event we had collected several hundred
dollars in checks and cash which I had tallied in an excel sheet so that we
could collect on the remaining pledges, and during the event had collected quite
a bit more. At the end of the evening, I sat down at a table and tallied the
results and was pleased to have over $750. When I went back home and finished
entering the new transactions into the Excel sheet, a horror sank in as I
realized that all of the checks that I had previously entered were missing, and
that this could mean only one thing: I had misplaced all of the original
pledges, not just the checks, but hundreds in cash included. As I relived the
evening over and over in my mind, I could only hope that the envelope with all
that money and checks was picked up and thrown away with the table cloths at
the end of the night.
I would have to wait until the next
day to go searching for the missing envelope. As I woke the next morning and
went to Sunday Mass, I got the keys to the property where the event was the
night before. While listening to the weather reports of record high temperatures,
the thought of digging through a dumpster-full of rotting food, and left-over
drinks haunted my imagination. I drove over after Mass, backed my pickup to the
dumpster with the intent unloading bags of trash into my truck and sorting
through them one by one searching for that elusive envelope.
I jumped in to the back of my
truck, reached over into the dumpster, grabbed that first bag full of trash,
dreadfully reached in and pulled out the first tablecloth, and unrolled it, and
onto the bed of my truck falls an envelope. THANKS BE TO GOD! The first bag,
the first tablecloth. As relief surged through me, I said a prayer of thanks to
God, and realized just how blessed I was.
Now, I realize that you may have a
story of Mercy that may be much more significant than this, perhaps a
miraculous healing, the forgiveness and healing from of a substantial sin, the
walking away from a major accident without injury, or even something as simple
as a misplaced item that was found.
But often in life, people
experience Divine Mercy, especially those without faith and don’t credit that
merciful act to God, they write it off as coincidence or luck. They have
trouble recognizing the presence of God and His act of mercy.
We as Catholics, as Christians,
should be the first to recognize Christ, and his works of mercy, both to others,
and through others. But we only need to look as far the apostles, that walked
with Jesus, to realize that even they had trouble recognizing the post-resurrection
Jesus. It was during the breaking of bread, during the sharing of meals that Jesus
was recognized. As it here at Mass, as we gather around the meal table that we
are most likely to recognize Jesus.
But Jesus is with us, always and
everywhere, not just here at church. We may not see him in the day to day
happenings, yet that doesn’t mean he is not there. There are many small acts that
have Jesus’ fingerprints all over them. They might even be acts of mercy that
YOU carry out to others. From letting people pull in front of us on the road,
to opening doors for others as we enter the store, each of these undeserved
acts are small ways of bringing mercy into other people’s lives.
We can also experience God’s Mercy in
the confessional, as we approach Jesus and ask for his forgiveness. And through
the priest in-persona-Christi, speaking as the person of Christ, your sins will
mercifully be forgiven. God’s mercy doesn’t stop there, and we just need to
remain vigilant to see it playing a role in our lives.
So as we celebrate the Second
Sunday of Easter, celebrating both the resurrection of Jesus, and God’s Divine
Mercy, let us remember the eternal life mercifully offered to us by Jesus
through his death on the cross, and his defeat of death shown by the
resurrection. Let us not demand evidence of Christ’s presence in our lives, but
let us seek to recognize Jesus, and his acts of Divine Mercy through others,
and seek opportunities to offer mercy to those we encounter. And in living out
a life of mercy let experience the Peace of Christ that only he can offer.
