OMELIE / Omelie EN

07 apr 2024

07/04/2024 – 2nd Sunday of Easter - B

07/04/2024 – 2^nd Sunday of Easter - B

Of Divine Mercy

Reading 1 ACTS 4,32-35 Psalm 117 Reading 2 1JN 5,1-6 Gospel JN 20,19-31

Jesus’s resurrection is truly something that subverts every expectation. The disciples, frightened and hopeless, are taken by a joy they have never experienced. The presence of the Risen Lord with his Word is making then rise too. They receive the peace from Him, a peace which is certainty of having reached the end of the race ready for starting again. The peace reconciles them with their Lord after they had abandoned Him and reassures them. In this peace they can receive a task, one they are entrusted with in a unusual way: “As the Father has sent me, so I send you”. They know now what is the reason for their life and being together as brethren: they will always try to remember Jesus, His obedience to the Father, His way of approaching men with mercy: that is their task.

Jesus breaths then on them to give them the Holy Spirit, the Spirit which will give them day after day the strength and the inspiration, the wisdom and the prudence to get on with the mission they have received.

The Spirit will help them also to recognise the men’s sins and to forgive them, as soon as the men themselves will humble themselves to ask for forgiveness, as someone had already done in front of Jesus. From this forgiveness, the disciples themselves will benefit, first and foremost : they are not free from sin, they can still doubt God’s power and the greatness of His love.

In fact, here is Thomas: he is publicly declaring his doubts. His behaviour is critical of the other ten: he is accusing them of being liers and cheats. Jesus came back the eighth day and, first thing, He wants to meet Thomas. Among the apostles there cannot be division, there cannot be sadness, not even doubts.

The Lord gives in to the disciple’s demands and shows him His wounds. He has to touch them.

It is Jesus’s great mercy we admire and we thank Him for. He has not been merciful only towards Thomas, but He is so every day towards us.

How many times the Lord has to give us signs of His presence, of His love, of His divinity, so we could believe Him and take seriously His teachings? Without this faith we would be defeated by the world, we would be prey of the evil which rules the world and instead, thanks to Jesus’s resurrection, we win against the world which keeps popping up in our heart. By giving testimony of Jesus’s resurrection the apostles have supported the believers’ faith and they have helped them to show that faith with a new love, never seen before on the face of the earth: “no one claimed that any of his possessions was his own, but they had everything in common”.

The mutual love among believers and their attention to the sufferings were the fruit and the sign that Jesus was among them with His divine power, a power of true and faithful love.

The love believers live and show each other is the proof that Jesus is alive and present here on earth, it is the sign that His kingdom is winning over the kingdoms of the world, which are the kingdoms of the enemy of men. In them there is no selfless love, the divine love, just unbridled selfishness.

But now in this world there is us with our faith in the risen Jesus, and with this faith we are making true the true love. In fact: «whoever is begotten by God conquers the world. And the victory that conquers the world is our faith». Saint John is giving us this certainty, a certainty we have already seen and lived every time we receive love from the brethren and every time we manage to give it joyfully to other brethren.

So we learn from the converted Thomas to always repeat the words he has addressed the risen Jesus to, when He had shown him His mercy: «My Lord and my God!». We will repeat this adoring sentence, we will repeat it with a renewed love towards Him. It will become a gift for the brethren too, who by this prayer of ours will feel loved and consoled, and encouraged to look at Jesus’s wounds as a source of salvation, the source from which our mutual love is coming, even when it will cost us. «My Lord and my God!».