II Sunday of Easter:[2012]:Acts 4,32-35; Psalm 118; 1 John 5, 1-6; John 20, 19-31

II Sunday of Easter:Divine Mercy:[2012]:Acts 4,32-35; Ps118; 1 Jn 5, 1-6; John 20,19-31

Anecdote 1: There is a true story in Ripley’s Believe It Or Not about a judge in Yugoslavia who had an unfortunate accident.  He was “electrocuted” when he reached up to turn on the light while standing in the bathtub.  His wife found his body sprawled on the bathroom floor.  She called for help--friends and neighbors, police--everyone showed up.  He was pronounced dead and taken to the funeral home.  The local radio picked up the story and broadcast it all over the air.  In the middle of the night, the judge regained consciousness.  When he realized where he was, he rushed over to alert the night watchman, who promptly ran off, terrified.  The first thought of the judge was to phone his wife and reassure her.  But he got no further than, "Hello darling, it’s me," when she screamed and fainted.  He tried calling a couple of the neighbors, but they all thought it was some sort of a sick prank.  He even went so far as to go to the homes of several friends, but they were all sure he was a ghost and slammed the door in his face.  Finally, he was able to call a friend in the next town who hadn't heard of his death.  This friend was able to convince his family and other friends that he really was alive. Today’s gospel tells us that Jesus had to convince the disciples that he wasn’t a ghost.  He had to dispel their doubts and their fears.  He showed them his hands and his feet.  He invited them to touch him and see that he was real.  And he even ate a piece of cooked fish with them--all to prove that he was alive and not a ghost or spirit.  He stood there before them, as real and alive as he had been over the past three years.

Doubting Thomas : Whenever you see a picture of St Thomas he is almost always represented as touching the wound in Christ’s side. But in fact the Gospel does not record this event.  Christ certainly showed him his wounds and invited him to put his finger into them but it seems that (doubting) Thomas never took up the offer. What he did instead was to make an extraordinary profession of faith with the words “My Lord and my God.

Thomas’ doubt in John 14:6, “Master, we do not know where you are going; how can we know the way?”  Jesus said to him, “I am the way and the truth and the life.  No one comes to the  Father except  through me.”   Clarification of Faith leads to realization of the truth. Interestingly, apart from this incident, Thomas is portrayed in the Gospels as being very brave. In St John’s account of the raising of Lazarus when Jesus gets the message of Lazarus’ illness and he decides to go up to Jerusalem we find Thomas saying, ‘Let us go too and die with him.’

These are not the words of a timid and fearful man; a man beset by doubts. And yet when the other Apostles tell him of their meeting in the Upper Room with the Risen Lord, which for some unknown reason he had missed, Thomas flatly refuses to believe them.  What Thomas had missed out on was an encounter with the Risen Christ. And, no matter what the other Apostles said, he refused to believe. He wasn’t open to persuasion or reasoning.  And I think we have to say, ‘Rightly so!’ After all, faith does not come from reasoning or from what anyone else tells us. Faith is a gift of God and it principally comes though an encounter with the Lord.

Exegesis : In Thomas’ case this was the actual presence of the Risen Jesus who showed him the wounds of his crucifixion. In the case of St Paul it was his Damascus experience.  In every case, let me suggest, faith comes through an encounter with the Lord. Mostly these are not physical encounters like that of Thomas, but they are just as real nonetheless.  Each one of us comes to faith by a different route. Things happen to us on life’s journey that helps us to see the hand of God at work in our lives.

As a child we might be brought up by our parents to believe in God and we grow up accustomed to pray each day. In this way prayer becomes a natural and even essential part of our lives.  But this is not merely the saying of prayers. What our parents have initiated us into is a dialogue with the Lord, with a person, with God himself. Each time we pray we are entering into an encounter with God.

At some point or other the young person faces the criticism of others and they question where this is a real dialogue or whether they are just talking to themselves.  We want realizations.  That’s human.  So we take the images and statues to have realizations.  That does not mean that we are idolaters. St Thomas was asking for real experiences.  And God permitted him.

Conclusion : If our prayers are more than merely superficial then they may well come to the realization that this is no empty dialogue but a real and meaningful conversation with the Lord. And through this insight their faith is strengthened and moves to a new and deeper level.  Its impact will be in being mercy towards the other.  On this Divine Mercy Sunday we recall the words of Saint Thomas Aquinas: “Mercy consists in bringing a thing out of non-being into being.”  We see this transpire concretely in the life of the early Church.  The community of believers “was of one heart and mind” and “they had everything in common.”  They were filled with awe; they were witnesses of wondrous signs; they dedicated themselves to the good of the other; they were selfless and generous.  They lived with the faith that” conquers the world.”  That is what the Apostle Thomas is looking for tin the Lord’s open side.  Saint Bernard says, “The secret of Christ’s heart is revealed to us through the clefts of his body”.

Second Sunday in Easter : Divine Mercy Sunday - Introduction

Message : Thomas believed because he saw the risen Jesus.  Although we have never seen him, we believe that Jesus is the Christ, begotten by god.  We give thanks to the Lord that he has formed us into a community of believers, united in the Spirit.

Saints in this Week: 21^st Saturday: Saint Anselm, bishop and doctor

Anselm, 1109; abbot of Bec in Normandy, later(1093) archbishop of Canterbury; twice exiled for defending the rights of the Church; theologian and philosopher: fides quaerens intellectum; authored Prosologion, Cur Deus Homo, and The Procession of the Holy Spirit; known as the “Father of Scholasticism.”