Mass Readings for the 2nd Sunday of Easter (Divine Mercy):
Acts 2.42-47 Psalm 118.2-4, 13-15, 22-24 1 Peter 1.3-9 John 20.19-31
I always find myself defending doubting Thomas, because considering his situation, I understand his doubt. Those famous Apostles, excitedly telling him they had “seen the Lord” did not exactly have a lot of credibility. They all had been so cowardly in the face of Jesus’ arrest and execution; young John, perhaps the sole exception in being a little less so.
Remember what Thomas said before they set off that one last time into Judea where Jesus’ enemies were plenty. He had said he was prepared to go and die with his lord. And yet, in the moment of crisis, at the time of trial, he slunk away with the rest of them. The guilt at it, the shame, it preyed on his mind surely, and he would know how it must have been for the others. Perhaps, he thought, the grief of his brothers and sisters had overcome them, and they were caught up in a collective delusion that Jesus was alive; and that everything had been a bad dream.
I think many of us know this experience of loss, of emotional devastation. We’ve known someone whose gone through it; or we’ve gone through it ourselves. To go to bed in the aftermath of calamity, of loss, of the devastating bad news without any sense of hope, to be possessed by grief and anxiety; to at last fall asleep and then to wake in the morning and for a little time think, perhaps it was all a bad dream. Among some so traumatized, that waking fantasy does last longer until something or someone shakes one out of it.
I have spoken of my concern for those who are not among us – the baptized who don’t see any point to being here, to feeding a faith, nurturing a spiritual life that is rooted in a religion that increasingly to them looks dead; that is, it is of no relevance to them, its teachings are out of step with today’s “common sense” about morality; and the basis for all of it is an ancient book they don’t understand or read; and they don’t read it because they don’t understand it. What faith they have in a loving God hangs by a thread.
They see how so many Christians, Catholics have run for cover in recent years, chased from public life by accusations that we are the problem with society, that the gospel as handed down for nigh on two thousand years is false, corrupted, a message of intolerance, lacking in those new virtues pushed by, it would seem, every level of government, every school board, every large corporation, and institution. We know them: Diversity, Inclusivity and Equity. They sound beautiful until you look into what they are really about: the powerful enlisting the vulnerable to sow discord, division, resentment, leading to retribution, alienation; and for so many, an unrelievable burden of presumed guilt for which there is no absolution. If there is a twisted gospel abroad these days, I would say this is it.
The Church is not about that, but nor are we to deny the reality of sin. Indeed, we need to proclaim evermore loudly that at the root of the world’s troubles is sin, a turning away from God, the willful corruption of our selves, our souls and bodies, and the leading into sin of successive generations by our neglect of our duty to worship God, proclaim Christ, and to live a life of holiness through the power of the Holy Spirit.
The cost of cowering in the upper room is real; in the despair of young adults who see their prospects diminishing; in the confusion of the minds of our children and youth about their very identities; in the divisions being deepened in the name of racial justice; of the anxiety rising among those who, not that long ago, contemplated peaceful years of retirement.
How many walk past our doors; see the church from a distance, they might even hear our singing, our praying; they might even step inside for a while, come to mass at Christmas, or at Easter. They’ll be here for their kid’s first communion, their older child’s confirmation. And they will see things, and hear things, concerning Jesus, but it is not enough. Unless they can reach out and touch Christ, they really cannot believe.
How wonderful our Triduum celebration was this year. Still, not enough here through it all, but we’ll keep working on that. In those three days was a renewal as we came by mystery to live the days of our Lord’s Passion and experience the news of the Resurrection afresh. We prayed, we washed, first the feet of disciples, then in that sacred bath of the font, two more new disciples, and were showered by holy water in reminder of our day at the font; we listened to the story of Jesus suffering and death, and it touched us; it grieved us. And then we went to the garden with Mary Magdalene, and encountered our Lord, not recognizing him right away, but then knowing him; we did, I trust, the same in our Easter communion in the Blessed Sacrament of his body and blood.
But again, how many weren’t here…
And again, they will not believe, I think, because they cannot put their fingers in the wounds, and touch the mark of the nails. They will not believe until they can see and hear and touch the resurrected body of Christ.
But Jesus isn’t going to do that again, because he has commissioned us for this work of incarnating him, of being that wounded body at work in the world.
What do I mean by that? Well, let me start by saying what I don’t mean.
For fifty or sixty years we’ve had this idea of the wounded healer as the model for ministry, for pastors themselves. Henry Nouwen, wonderful priest, spoke of this idea that comes to us from Carl Jung.
The idea is that from our woundedness comes the motivation to heal the woundedness of others. So, the alcoholic, because of his experience, has a particularly strong motivation to rescue others from alcoholism. And there is some good theology, rooted in the writings of St. Paul, that tells us that our weakness is our strength. However, that shouldn’t be taken as a criteria for acceptance into ministry, ordained ministry or church leadership. The idea of the “wounded healer” is better understood as an explanation of the motivations of many who are in helping professions – why they have a passion for such work.
I’ve told you, for instance, that I suffer from depression; and that I’ve worked in the past in ministry specifically focussed on those with mental illness. Did my experience of depression make me a good minister? Not necessarily. It just explains why I was drawn to it.
The wounds of Christ were gained from the cross. These were not the consequences of personal sin, personal dysfunction, brokenness because Jesus was the son of God, without sin, and not a broken man, but the Son of Man who in his perfect love offers himself to be broken for our sin.
No, the wounds that we must show the world are to be those of Christ that we have shared in; and so to have them be a testimony to the power of the resurrection.
Remember the words of Saint Paul to the Romans, quoting the psalms: “we are being killed all day long…”
How many faithful have I now met who’ve lost jobs for their faith, been alienated from family, lost friends: nurses who won’t assist at abortions, teachers who won’t affirm false identities, ordinary people who are now confronted with statements of principles to be signed so as to continue in their professions, in their jobs; less formal challenges by family members to agree to the most preposterous notions as a condition of coming to a family Thanksgiving meal. These are scourgings, these are wounds.
Less dramatically, there are the sacrifices, the stresses, the financial pain, of homeschooling or sending one’s children to a private Christian school; there is the sense of being no longer a part of one’s culture and society as one finally says that’s it for subscribing to cable channels and streaming services that spew toxic messages into the minds of us all in the form of entertainment, that make immorality material for jokes, and bloody violence just so much amusement.
Our discipleship, our faithfulness costs us; and the world punishes us for it, it wounds, it scars, but all these are to be accounted badges of honour; they give glory to God and speak to our authenticity as people who have survived it, risen from it, and have joy in our lives nonetheless.
And authenticity is so key. People today are looking for authenticity. There is a growing sense we are being manipulated. We look to our t.v. and computer and phone screens for truth from news services, from commentators and politicians, people we cannot touch, cannot really know. We are becoming aware of Artificial Intelligence, and that’s a whole new level of fakery, of inauthenticity, of algorithms that have completely fake people telling us what we want to hear, but we soon find we’ve come into the uncanny valley, as dark a valley as that of the shadow of death, where we sense the unreality of it all, and are rightly scared.
For us the sacred wounds of Christ are the source of our strength; they tell us of the indestructibility we have in Christ. And as we remember this as Divine Mercy Sunday, they speak of an outpouring of love and mercy that we have found. May our own modest wounds in his name be a blessed channel of Christ’s peace and grace to others, showing them that as the world tries to disgrace us, we are honoured all the more in God’s eyes.
Amen.