Divine Mercy Sunday, Doubting Thomas and Our Vocation to the Mercy Mission

We are being invited to all become the missionaries of mercy to this moment in history.

This Divine Mercy Sunday is about much more than the beautiful encounter of Sister Faustina. It can become much more. It can become our own encounter with the Risen Lord Jesus Christ who reveals to us His wounded hands and side. The Risen Lord who invites us to come and live in His Sacred heart and then give our own lives for the work of His Body, the Church. The grace is available. The choice is ours.

CHESAPEAKE, VA (Catholic Online) - The Second Sunday of Easter is called Divine Mercy Sunday in the Roman Catholic Liturgical Calendar. The Gospel for the Liturgy (John 20: 19-31) recounts another one of the Post-Resurrection appearances of Jesus Christ to his disciples.

It also calls to our attention a man we often associate with doubt, the Apostle Thomas.However, Thomas actually reveals to us the very source of our hope and promotes a living faith, for those who choose to look more deeply and willingly open their hearts to what the Lord reveals through this encounter between Thomas and the Risen Savior..

The glorified Jesus appears to his disciples, coming through locked doors and says "Peace be with you." He then breathes upon them the Holy Spirit, creating them anew - and empowering them to continue His redemptive mission after He ascends. He communicates His authority to forgive sins to the Apostles who will continue to offer this beautiful gift through the Church, which is His Body.

However, Thomas was not present for this particular encounter. The Beloved disciple John records this exchange between the Risen Lord and Thomas which follows:

"Thomas, called Didymus, one of the Twelve, was not with them when Jesus came. So the other disciples said to him, "We have seen the Lord." But he said to them, "Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands and put my finger into the nailmarks and put my hand into his side, I will not believe."

"Now a week later his disciples were again inside and Thomas was with them. Jesus came, although the doors were locked, and stood in their midst and said, "Peace be with you." Then he said to Thomas, "Put your finger here and see my hands, and bring your hand and put it into my side, and do not be unbelieving, but believe."

Thomas answered and said to him, "My Lord and my God!" Jesus bore His Wounds, now glorified, in His Risen Body. Thomas touched those wounds - and so can we.

This encounter is what has led to Thomas being called "Doubting Thomas" by some. Yet the tradition tells us that this so called "doubting Thomas" died a martyr for his faith. He became a messenger of Mercy to India, a missionary who shed his own blood for the Master whom he encountered on that day. His insistence on touching the Holy Wounds presented the Disciple John another opportunity to explain for all of us the implications of the Bodily Resurrection of Jesus Christ.

Thomas´s response in his beautiful encounter with the Risen Lord, "My Lord and My God" reveals the heart of prayer. It also speaks to the essence of faith. His proclamation is a call to adoration and a living communion with God. His response has become the exclamation for millions, myself included, when faced with the Mystery of Mysteries, the Holy Eucharist, at the elevation during every Mass.

I suggest that Thomas was not a doubter, rather he was a model for all believers. And he is a model for each of us at every Eucharist. The Holy Mass, is always the Feast of Mercy. Pope St Gregory the Great who occupied the Chair of Peter between 590 and 604 preached a marvelous homily on this encounter between Thomas and the Risen Lord. In it he asked:

"What conclusion, dear brethren, do you come to? Surely it was not by chance that this chosen disciple, was missing in the first place? Or that on his return he heard, that hearing he doubted, that doubting he touched, and that touching he believed? It was by divine dispensation and not by chance that things so fell out. God´s Mercy worked wonderfully, for when that doubting disciple touched his Master´s wounded flesh he cured the wound of our disbelief. So this doubting disciple, who actually touched, became a witness to the reality of the resurrection"

We are invited to become living witnesses in our own day to the reality of the Resurrection of Jesus Christ. Thomas touched the wounded side of our beloved Savior to heal the wounds of our own disbelief.

This Sunday we are invited to join with Pope Francis and Catholic Christians throughout the whole world in celebrating the Feast of Divine Mercy. At the Vigil Liturgy of this beautiful commemoration, Francis issued Misericordiae Vultus (The Face Of Mercy) and began a Jubilee Year of Mercy. This beautiful teaching on Mercy begins with these words:

"Jesus Christ is the face of the Father's mercy. These words might well sum up the mystery of the Christian faith. Mercy has become living and visible in Jesus of Nazareth, reaching its culmination in him. The Father, "rich in mercy" (Eph 2:4), after having revealed his name to Moses as "a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness" (Ex 34:6), has never ceased to show, in various ways throughout history, his divine nature."

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"In the "fullness of time" (Gal 4:4), when everything had been arranged according to his plan of salvation, he sent his only Son into the world, born of the Virgin Mary, to reveal his love for us in a definitive way. Whoever sees Jesus sees the Father (cf. Jn 14:9). Jesus of Nazareth, by his words, his actions, and his entire person reveals the mercy of God. We need constantly to contemplate the mystery of mercy."

On this day, we also remember the great saint of Divine Mercy, the Polish nun named Faustina Kowalska. The Lord gave her that beautiful encounter with the Divine Mercy which gives rise to the popular images associated with the Feast. She recorded her wonderful encounters with the Lord in a Diary which is available for all who seek to grow in their understanding and experience of Divine Mercy. To Saint Faustina Our Lord said: "I desire that the Feast of Mercy be a refuge and 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".

But, this Divine Mercy Sunday is about much more than the beautiful encounter of Sister Faustina. It can become much more. It can become our own encounter with the Risen Lord Jesus Christ who reveals to us His wounded hands and side. The Risen Lord who invites us to come and live in His Sacred heart and then give our own lives for the work of His Body, the Church. The grace is available. The choice is ours.

We were invited on this Sunday, and indeed every day, to approach the throne of Mercy and cry out with St. Thomas: My Lord and My God. (Jn 20:28). Those who do so can be  forever changed in that encounter.

Peter became a messenger of mercy through his encounter with the Risen Lord. He was so filled with the Spirit of the Risen Lord that the Lord could continue His redemptive mission through him, accomplishing miraculous deeds.

In the Acts of the Apostles, which is the story of the early Church on mission, we read that even the shadow of Peter would effect merciful healing .(Acts 5 12-16) Those who encounter the Risen Jesus are still being changed, transformed by Mercy made manifest. They then become bearers of mercy for others.We are called to continue the work recounted in the Acts of the Apostles.

The beloved Disciple John was imprisoned on the Island of Patmos. We can read of his encounter with the Lord in the Spirit in the last book of the Bible. (Rev. 1) He received a merciful vision from the Risen Lord which became the Book of Revelation.In this encounter with the Risen Lord He heard these words: "Do not be afraid. I am the first and the last, the one who lives. Once I was dead, but now I am alive forever and ever. I hold the keys to death and the netherworld."

And then there was Thomas. Jesus turned Thomas´s doubt into an event of Mercy for generations to come. Out of a true repentance born from seeing Mercy Incarnate, touching the wounds of His Divine love, came those wonderful words that have formed the most profound of personal prayers for millennia. "My Lord and My God" Pope St Gregory was right, "Thomas´ doubt healed the wounds of all of our doubts". At the Liturgy of Canonization for Sister Mary Faustina Kowalski, Sunday, April 30, 2000, Pope St. John Paul II proclaimed:

"Before speaking these words, Jesus shows his hands and his side. He points, that is, to the wounds of the Passion, especially the wound in his heart, the source from which flows the great wave of mercy poured out on humanity. From that heart Sr Faustina Kowalska, the blessed whom from now on we will call a saint, will see two rays of light shining from that heart and illuminating the world: "The two rays", Jesus himself explained to her one day, "represent blood and water" Divine Mercy reaches human beings through the heart of Christ crucified and Risen.

"My daughter, say that I am love and mercy personified", Jesus asked of Sr Faustina. Christ pours out this mercy on humanity though the sending of the Spirit who, in the Trinity, is the Person-Love. And is not mercy love's "second name" understood in its deepest and most tender aspect, in its ability to take upon itself the burden of any need and, especially, in its immense capacity for forgiveness? Jesus told St. Faustina: "Humanity will not find peace until it turns trustfully to divine mercy"

St. Faustina Kowalska also wrote in her Diary, "I feel tremendous pain when I see the sufferings of my neighbors. All my neighbors' sufferings reverberate in my own heart; I carry their anguish in my heart in such a way that it even physically destroys me. I would like all their sorrows to fall upon me, in order to relieve my neighbor."
 
At every Eucharist we should echo these beautiful words of Thomas, "My Lord and My God". Let us ask the Lord of Mercy for the grace to become true messengers of Mercy to this age which is so desperately in need of it. The older I get, the more ardently I thank God for 'Doubting Thomas'. His doubts healed the wounds of our own disbelief. They also open up, for all who see with the eyes of living faith, a deeper understanding of the redemptive effect of the wounds of Jesus. They show us the role our own wounds have in our continuing call to conversion -  as we join them to His.

Thomas the doubter became the Thomas the model believer, an example for each one of us. On every Feast of Divine Mercy we should echo his marvelous proclamation "My Lord and My God". We should also ask that through the intercession of Saint Faustina, that the Lord of Mercy give us each the graces we need to become true messengers of Mercy to an age filled with despair and disbelief.

Among the many gifts we have been given during the current Year if Mercy are the priests who are especially set aside and sent out to the world as Missionaries of Mercy, charged with promoting the Sacrament of Mercy, Reconciliation. They are called Missionaries of Mercy for good reason. Repentance - and the Sacrament associated with it, called Penance, Confession or Reconciliation, is the Sacrament of New Beginnings. It can liberate the world. It is a Sacrament of Encountering the Risen Jesus and placing our hand in His wounded side; our heart in His Heart. 

We are living in a new missionary age. We must not focus on the problems or simply join the chorus of those who bemoan the obvious collapse around us. Rather, as Christians we must focus on the Risen Lord - and allow Him to live His life and continue His mission through us. We are a part of God's loving answer, His Mercy manifest for a world waiting to be born anew.

We are all being invited to all become the missionaries of mercy to this moment in history. This is true for all Christians, in every state of life and vocation. The Gospel is the Good News of Mercy for every man, woman and child on the face of the earth. Let us proclaim it to the ends of the earth, in word and deed.
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Deacon Keith Fournier is an ordained Christian minister, a Deacon of the Roman Catholic Church.He and his wife Laurine have been married for forty years. They raised five grown children and have seven grandchildren. Deacon Fournier ministers across Christian confessional lines and is engaged in evangelization, apologetics, ministry and Christian action at the intersection of faith and culture as a constitutional lawyer, author, activist and missionary to a Pre-Christian West.

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