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Friday, March 29, 2024

The Gospels of Easter

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Over the next few weeks, I will continue to share my spiritual reflections and this time focusing on the Gospels of Easter. This is a special season and it comes at a time of great uncertainty for the world and the country. Using the lens that everything is grace and that hope abounds will be helpful to many of my reasons.

For instance, last Sunday was a special day. On this day, we celebrate both the Second Sunday of Easter and the Divine Mercy Sunday. What used to be called Low Sunday—a time to relax from the strict regimen of Lent and the intensity of Holy Week—we now celebrate, a day when God showers special graces of forgiveness and mercy to whosoever asks.

Fr. Jeffrey Kirby, in an article on crux.com, explains how this happened: “In asking why we lost our Low Sunday, therefore, the response is painfully obvious. The human family is still in tremendous need of healing and hope, of both receiving mercy and sharing compassion with one another.” According to Kirby, “Low Sunday now bows to the Divine Mercy Sunday so that forgiveness and tenderness are proclaimed and the world hears a different message than one of emptiness or hate and is shown a path to reconciliation and peace.”

St. Faustina, a humble polish nun, sparked this great movement when in the 1930s she received extraordinary revelations which she recorded in her diary. Our Lord told her, “In the Old Covenant I sent prophets wielding thunderbolts to My people. Today I am sending you with My mercy to the people of the whole world. I do not want to punish aching mankind, but I desire to heal it, pressing it to My Merciful Heart.”

The essence of Christ’s message to St. Faustina is that we are living in a time of mercy. The present age, more than any other in history, calls for a great outpouring of the mercy of God. Surely, we need only to see what is happening all around us to realize that we are indeed living in the age of mercy. Wars, famines, killings, broken families, hunger and all sorts of pestilence hover all over us. The horrible civil war in Syria and other corners of the globe, the scourge of terrorism that seem to visit every corner of the world and even locally, the thousands of unresolved killings seem to have become so rampant to the point that we have become so morally desensitized and callous to all these happenings. The value of human life has become so degraded that one life taken away is just another statistic. In the midst of all these, we tend to seek consolation and answers in all sorts of mundane contrivances and devices yet tribulations persist and even seem to worsen. Truly, Jesus told Sr. Faustina: “Humanity will not find peace until it turns trustfully to divine mercy (Diary, 300).”

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Yet in all these troubles, God never sleeps. He sees the suffering of his people. We only need to be humble and with a contrite heart acknowledge the kingship of Christ. As Jesus said to St. Faustina, “Let no sinner be afraid to approach Me.” According to Faustina’s Diary, Jesus invites each one of us to yield to His infinite mercy, to trust in His compassion and forgiveness. Great graces are promised to those who proclaim His great mercy: “I shall protect them Myself at the hour of death, as My own glory. And even if the sins of the soul are as dark as night, when the sinner turns to My mercy, he renders Me the greatest praise, and becomes the glory of My Passion. When a soul praises My goodness, Satan trembles before it and flees to the very bottom of hell” (Diary, 378). Surely, this is the day that God will bestow extraordinary graces to even the foulest of sinners, the vilest of his creatures.”

In last Sunday’s Gospel, divine mercy is also emphasized. In his appearance to the apostles, the resurrected Jesus gave the power to forgive sins to the apostles: “Receive the holy Spirit. Whose sins you forgive are forgiven them, and whose sins you retain are retained.” This authority has been passed on to the priests that minister to us.

The second part of Sunday’s Gospel tells us about Apostle Thomas who, in his uncompromising honesty, demands a personal vision of, and physical contact with, the risen Jesus as a condition for his belief. Only when Jesus, the risen Lord, appeared to Thomas that he was able to overcome his unbelief and his doubts. When is why the Lord said: “Blessed are those who have not seen but have believed.”

Today, there is an almost an overpowering temptation not to believe in God. Cardinal Chito Tagle, in his Easter Vigil homily, pointed to the tombs we bury ourselves in: “How many people have been enticed to enter pearly gates which are really tombs? Tombs of vices. Tombs of illegal drugs. Tombs of corruption. Tombs of abuse of women, children, the helpless. Tombs of consumerism, materialism, human trafficking. All of these, new tombs, but they are presented like they are mansions, promising a good life, a good life, a successful life—but tombs.” 

But the good Cardinal reminds us: “Please do not get discouraged. We know that the tomb is empty. We know that Jesus is alive, and he will not be touched by death again. We have to believe in that. We have to search for him, we have to see him, and we have to proclaim him. As guns and bombs make noise in the world, sing your alleluia! Don’t let the bombs and the gunfire dominate our alleluia.

By the grace of God, the Gospels of Easter where the Risen Christ appears to his disciples in different ways and emphasizing diverse messages, will remind us of this. Like in the case of the doubting Thomas, in all these appearances, Christ only asks of us to believe in order to see. For it is not doubt but faith that makes his presence become more palpable in our lives. He who depends on him like a child, and obeys him without question will be guided by his spirit that will make his spiritual presence felt as much as his physical presence. The key that would unlock God’s heart is humility in acknowledging our sins and wholehearted faith in him. If we have these, we will see that Cardinal Tagle is right:

“Love prevails. Hope prevails. The Risen Lord bears the marks of his wounds, and through those wounds, a person, that with pain, knows there is meaning to what I’m going through. 

Jesus is truly risen. Let us search for him. We will find him. He will find us, and go to the rest of the world telling the Good News. Let us pause and welcome Jesus, who bears the life, the power of God. He comes to us.”

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