As Newborn Babes

Second Sunday of Easter
Divine Mercy Sunday

It can be a real challenge to wrap your head around the fact that this Sunday goes by many names. Some would argue – way too many. Today is the Second Sunday of Easter but it is also known as the Sunday within the Octave of Easter. In the extraordinary form and in the pre-1969 calendar, it was also called Low Sunday (in relation to last Sunday, Easter). And since the pontificate of St John Paul II, it has received this eponymous title - Divine Mercy Sunday. As we continue to pray for Pope Francis of happy memory, we too remember how mercy had been one of the major lietmotifs of his pontificate. 

But my favourite name for this Sunday is derived from the incipit of the entrance antiphon for this Sunday. Quasimodo Sunday. It is taken from 1 Peter 2:2 and in Latin, it begins with these words: “quasi modo geniti infantes” or in English, “like newborn infants.” This is the full text of the antiphon: “As newborn babes, desire the rational milk without guile, that thereby you may grow unto salvation: If so, be you have tasted that the Lord is sweet.”

The name Quasimodo Sunday may not be familiar to many of you, but the name is not unfamiliar. Sounds like an oxymoron, right? Well, if you recall Victor Hugo’s novel, “The Hunchback of Notre Dame,” (or the Disney animated version) you will remember that the main protagonist’s name is Quasimodo, the eponymous Hunchback of the story. For those not familiar with the storyline, this tale of love, chivalry and strange beauty is about this unlikely hero, the severely deformed hunchback, with a pristinely beautiful and innocent heart and soul, who lived in the rafters of Paris’ famous Cathedral of Notre Dame.

In Hugo’s novel, Quasimodo, rejected by his parents for his deformities, is abandoned inside Notre Dame Cathedral, at a place where orphans and unwanted children were dropped off. Monseigneur Claude Frollo, the Archdeacon, finds the child on “Quasimodo Sunday” and “called him Quasimodo; whether it was that he chose thereby to commemorate the day when he had found him, or that he meant to mark by that name how incomplete and imperfectly moulded the poor little creature was,” Hugo wrote.

In a strange way, the character Quasimodo, who risked his own life to save another whom he loves, is a type of Christ. And like Quasimodo, Christ also appears before His disciples today, arrayed not in gold and resplendent garments, but carrying the trophies of His victory on the cross - His wounds, His deformities. But unlike Quasimodo, our Lord was not born with these deformities, for He is the unblemished Paschal Lamb. These are the scars of the torture He endured for our sake. Instead of an unscarred and unblemished appearance, He chooses to retain His ugly wounds as a sign, not of His failure, but of His victory over sin and death. His wounds are supremely beautiful because they are visible marks of His love for us, the receipt for the price He had paid for us, the booty of a cosmic battle which He had fought and won for us.

Yes, in a way, all of us are incomplete and imperfectly moulded. We desire and hunger for the sacramental milk which only our Mother, the Church, can give. We have been deformed by sin, poor orphans abandoned and languishing in this Valley of Tears, waiting to be picked up by our Heavenly Father and to be adopted by Him. In His mercy, He has given us His only begotten Son, the Divine Mercy, not only to be our companion but to exchange places with us. Our Lord Jesus, the sinless and perfect Son of God, Beauty ever ancient ever new, chose to take our ugliness upon Himself in order to confer upon us the beauty of sanctifying grace. He took our sentence of death, in order to grant us the repeal of life. He has done this through the Sacraments of Baptism and the Eucharist, symbolised by the water and blood which flowed out through His wounded side, the source being His Most Sacred Heart beating in love for us.

But St Faustina also saw in that gushing spring of water and blood something else - grace and mercy. This is what she wrote: “All grace flows from mercy, and the last hour abounds with mercy for us. Let no one doubt concerning the goodness of God; even if a person’s sins were as dark as night, God’s mercy is stronger than our misery.” (Diary of St. Faustina, number 1507) Even the ugliest Quasimodos in this world can be potentially the most beautiful beings seen through the lenses of grace and mercy because “God’s mercy is stronger than misery!”

In Victor Hugo’s novel, as a group of old women hunkered over to examine the little monstrosity that had been left near the vestibule of the Cathedral, one of them remarked, “I'm not learned in the matter of children ...but it must be a sin to look at this one." Could this remark be referring to us too? This is who we were, inheritors of Original Sin, prisoners and victims of our own sinful misdeeds, deformed by our iniquities, that it would be a sin for anyone to look at us. But then, God looked upon us, not with vile disgust or hatred but with love and mercy, and His “mercy is stronger than misery.” God offered us atonement and pardon for our sins. God offered us His incalculable mercy by offering us His son to take our place on the cross. As Saint Paul assures us, “God made Him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in Him we might become the righteousness of God” (2 Cor 5:21). We have seen this God, we have tasted Him, we have been redeemed and saved through His grace and mercy, and we can proudly acclaim that we have tasted the Lord and can testify that He is sweet!

Does God have favourites

Sixth Sunday of Easter
Lithuania-Poland Pilgrimage

Church of St Casimir, Swinice Warckie

We are in the spiritual hometown of St Faustina. It is technically not her hometown of birth as she was born and lived in the nearby village of Głogowiec. If you think this place is small, you should see Głogowiec. This is the very church in which she was baptised and where she received her first holy communion. If it were not for her, this little town would have been ignored by many world travellers and even by most people in Poland. It’s not Paris or New York, it has no fancy restaurants or buzzing night life, or must-see tourist attractions. But it has this singular honour of being the place where little Helena Kowalska was reborn, entered the church and became an adopted daughter of God. This alone would be the envy of many. Who said that God has no favourites?

Today’s readings force us to reconsider this burning question which would have troubled many: how come some people seem more privileged than others? The question actually avoids a more fundamental question which would appear to sound blasphemous if we were brave enough to ask it: Does God have favourites? Does He love some more than others.

We are assured by our Lord in His own Words, that He loves us to the same degree and manner as the Father loves Him. This is the extent of His love that He would send “His Son to be the sacrifice that takes our sins away.” Could we ask for more? But what is the true nature of this love? Does God’s love demand nothing from us? When we speak of God’s love as unconditional, we must understand that His love is not something which can be bought. It is not given to us as a quid pro quo, a reward for good behaviour, or payment for some devotion or sacrifice which we have made to earn that love. St John asserts that God loved us while we were still sinners. His love for us is not dependent on us being righteous or worthy. No sacrifice or price we are willing to pay would be sufficient to purchase it.

But it is not true to say that God’s love makes no demands on us. In fact, a great deal is demanded of us. And here we have it in both the second reading and the gospel that God’s love challenges us to a new way of life that makes certain demands of us.

Firstly, we are required to obey and keep His commandments. His commandments are an expression of His will and our refusal to obey those commandments (and we know that God’s commandments are always good and just) is rebellion against His will. To claim that we love God and yet oppose His will would be a lie.

Secondly, principal among God’s commandments is the commandment to love others: “love one another, as I have loved you.” This is the benchmark by which all love is to be measured. We do not just love those who have been good to us, who have treated us well, whom we are indebted to. Love extends even to those who have done nothing to deserve it, those outside our circle of friends and family, and even those whom we consider enemies. Of course, we are not commanded to “like” as “liking” or “not liking” someone is purely subjective. True love is never subjective. To love, instead, is to intend the wellbeing of the other person. And this is something which can be accomplished and measured objectively. This is why St John can argue that “Anyone who fails to love can never have known God, because God is love.”

So, back to our question: does God have favourites? In the first reading, St Peter says: “God does not have favourites, but that anybody of any nationality who fears God and does what is right is acceptable to him.” On the one hand, God does not have favourites. But like any good Catholic answer, there is always a “but,” which means the second part is quite the opposite of the first proposition. God does seem to favour “anybody of any nationality who fears God and does what is right is acceptable to him.” How do we understand this seeming paradox?

We know that God loves every single one of us, but does He love some more than others? If that were the case, it would mean that God has a limited amount of love, so to speak, which He has to portion out in chunks according to His preferences. 10% for you, 20% for Susan and Bob, and 50% for His favourite, Faustina! But God is infinite, and His love is infinite – no limits, no portions, no measuring sticks. God is love (1 John 4:8); His very nature is love. God loves everyone 100% which means that His love is total, absolute, unlimited for each of us.

So, God doesn’t dish out His love in different portions according to who He likes better. And yet, there is a difference involved. The difference isn’t with God, but with us. Each one of us is a unique creation, a unique person. My relationship with God will never be the same as yours, and yours will never be the same as anyone else’s. This is because we are spiritual beings, and each spiritual being is truly individual. Just as you and I can be very close friends with the same person, my friendship with that person will necessarily be different than yours, because you and I are different. God respects our individuality, and He rejoices in it (after all, that’s how He made us – unique!). And so, every person’s relationship with God will be unique. In heaven, we will all be saints, but no two saints will be just alike.

God calls each of us to follow Him, but in different ways, with different natural talents, with different gifts. As our Lord assured us of this in the gospel: “I chose you; and I commissioned you to go out and to bear fruit, fruit that will last.” Notice, He chose you, all of you and not just some of you! And each of us will respond with different degrees of generosity and faithfulness, so that His grace will bear more fruit, or less fruit in our lives.

So, should we be jealous if someone seems to have greater gifts than us? Should we be envious of St Faustina for her special relationship with the Lord and her mystical visions? It is not a sin to desire complete communion with God, but it is a foolish distraction to become discouraged or envious of someone else’s progress in holiness! When we run into other people or read about saints who experience a deep, intimate relationship with God, we are faced with a choice. We can either envy them this intimacy – becoming angry and vindictive towards them because they have achieved a degree of holiness that we have not achieved. Or we can emulate them – we can acknowledge the beauty of the holiness they have achieved and use their experience as a spur to our own efforts pursuing spiritual maturity. As we travel and visit the homes of the saints in this country whose landscape is rich with saints, may we choose to imitate the saints even as we admire and honour them. Let your discouragement be driven out by hope; let your frustration be banished by faith; and, let your frown be erased by love.

Mercy and Peace

Second Sunday of Easter Year B
Divine Mercy Sunday

NATO has become a household acronym that almost everyone in Malaysia knows and understands. I’m not talking about the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation but the stinging indictment against so many, especially targeted at leaders: “no action, talk only.” It’s the Malaysian equivalent of the English expression “Be all talk (but no action).” The acronym NATO, however, sounds much catchier than BAT. When it comes to mercy, our theme for today, words alone do not make one a Christian. If we wish to talk about mercy, it cannot just remain at the level of words and good wishes. It must be translated into action. We must back our words with action.

We can be certain that there is One who has not and will never fall under this description of NATO! According to St. Paul, this is the One who, "emptied himself, taking the form of a slave … obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross" (Phil 2:8). Our Lord Jesus Christ did not merely speak about love and humility. He did not merely show us mercy as He pitied us and sympathised with our plight. He was not all talk but no action. No! Our Lord, the Divine Mercy, speaks works of mercy to us. But He does not only speak. He acts. This Word became flesh - He became man. He did not merely do His Father's will. He perfected it. His WORD took ACTION - He let us nail Him to a Cross, so that He might take upon Himself the guilt of our own sins. He has the scars to show for it, even after His resurrection.

As His blood dripped down the sides of the tree from which He hung, He thought of us in our sinfulness. And from His side, flowed water and blood as the visible sign of His mercy, a mercy that would take concrete shape and form in the sacraments of the Church, especially in the form of Baptism and the Eucharist. In the Upper Room, behind the closed doors of fear and regret, He did not speak words of condemnation to His disciples who had betrayed Him, denied Him and abandoned Him, but instead, words of forgiveness “Peace be with you!” Our Lord, the Divine Mercy walked the talk and lived His words of mercy.

Divine mercy is the reason why humans can face up to their sin and accept full responsibility. Precisely because God is merciful, we can entrust ourselves wholly to Him, faults and all. We can accept whatever discipline He deems just and we can own our mistakes with the hope of redemption. Today, however, divine mercy often occasions a kind of quest to discover all the excuses humans have for not living the moral standard and to elaborate human inculpability. Divine mercy now seems to be about how humans can’t be blamed.

Today, we do live in an age where mercy is demanded but little appreciated. It is a false sort of mercy that demands nothing from the one who feels entitled to it. In other words, today many perceive mercy as a blanket approval for all manner of action, behaviour and lifestyle. Mercy is treated like a whitewash, covering up all sin and not actually changing the situation of our lives. An understanding of mercy, which allows a person to become at peace with sin, is far from the mercy shown by Jesus, because His true concern is for our true happiness.

How is His mercy connected to the peace which He offers in today’s gospel? True mercy releases us from sin and allows us to live in friendship with God. That is how mercy leads us to be at peace with God. Such peace can only be experienced when we surrender to God’s justice, turn to Him in repentance and be reconciled with Him in spirit and in truth. This is the reason why the words of the Risen Lord as we have heard in today’s gospel connect both peace and forgiveness. There can be no authentic peace if we have not been truly forgiven of our sins.

Mercy does not make sin acceptable. No, mercy seeks to free us from sin through forgiveness. It opens up a space for us to become a better version of ourselves. A false consolation that allows someone to continue in his sin whilst ignoring the guilt of his actions is not mercy at all if the person is not freed from the sinful situation. St Pope John Paul II once wrote “According to Catholic doctrine, no mercy, neither divine nor human, entails consent to the evil or tolerance of the evil. Mercy is always connected with the moment that leads from evil to good. Where there is mercy, evil surrenders. When the evil persists, there is no mercy.” Unfortunately, many today reject God’s forgiveness because they live in denial and refuse to accept the blame or acknowledge their own faults.

Divine Mercy is God’s offer to us to come close to Him. It is a real offer which invites us to a conversion of life, a definite break with sin, and a peace, of knowing and living in communion with God. This relationship is not mere lip service but a reality. God is never NATO! What God has promised, He does. When one meets the Lord’s mercy, our lives change. Our acceptance of mercy involves us trusting our lives to Jesus and our willingness to obey Him. When we pray for true mercy, we ask the Lord to forgive us our sins and weaknesses and to give us the grace to live in communion with Him in sincerity and truth.

Jesus! We trust in You!

Touch these wounds

Second Sunday of Easter Year A

Our story provides us with a paradoxical contrast - closed doors but open wounds. How we wish it was the other way around? The idea of closed doors suggests that it is a done deal, there is no longer any room for negotiation, that time has run out. In the synoptic gospels, we have the parable of the ten bridesmaids, five wise and the remaining foolish, with the latter being turned out of the party because of their folly and lack of preparation. When they returned from their shopping trip, they were confronted with the painful reality of closed doors - they were too late and judgment has already been delivered.

We can imagine a similar scenario in today’s passage. The disciples of the Lord could only live with regret - the regret of following a man who could have been the Messianic King, the regret of not following Him to the very end, the regret of turning their backs on Him, with one denying Him and the other betraying Him. The closed doors symbolised their predicament. They had closed the doors of their hearts to their master and now they deserved to have God closed His doors of mercy on them, or at least this is what they thought. Despite the doors of the Upper Room and their hearts were shut and locked, the Lord Jesus came in anyway. The stone which blocked the tomb could not keep Him in. Neither could these flimsy wooden doors keep Him out. That is the power of Divine Mercy.

Several things happened on this day. Our Lord breathed the Holy Spirit on to His disciples and offered them the gift of peace which the world cannot give. Our Lord offered them pardon and mercy for their betrayal, courage in place of their fear, peace to their troubled hearts, and the Holy Spirit, the advocate to be their “forever” companion. But there was one more thing He offered them on this day. He offered them the gift of His wounds, the one thing which would have shamed them to their core, because these were the most condemning evidence of their lack of commitment and cowardly betrayal.

Christ came to these disciples with His opened wounds. He could have concealed them under layers of clothing, He could have cauterised and healed them without leaving any trace of a scar. But He left them visible and opened. The Glorified Lord carried the marks of His passion. His resurrection did not obliterate these signs of His great act of self-sacrifice. This is because the wounds of His crucifixion are the means by which we are saved. In the words of the prophet Isaiah, “whereas he was being wounded for our rebellions, crushed because of our guilt; the punishment reconciling us fell on him, and we have been healed by his bruises” (Isaiah 53:5). We cannot know who Jesus is without seeing His wounds. We cannot understand Jesus without understanding the significance of His wounds. His identity is tied to His passion and death. His wounds are the marks by which humanity is reconciled to God. His wounds are a testimony to the mercy of God towards humanity, a mercy beyond our comprehension. You have to see it to believe it.

Those wounds on the Body of the Glorified and Risen Lord teach us several things. First, they show that this Jesus is not a ghost but a real flesh-and-blood Person. Second, they serve as powerful reminders of the great love of God for us, a love so great that in Christ God died, so that our sins might be forgiven. Third, those wounds illustrate the continuity between the earthly life and ministry of Jesus and His eternal high priesthood, by which He lives to make continual intercession for us before His Heavenly Father (cf. Heb 7:25).

It is not by accident that St Thomas comes to faith, not by simply seeing an apparition of Jesus, but only after being instructed to pay heed to those sacred wounds, which are not scars of defeat and ignominy but, as the medieval mystic Julian of Norwich puts it, noble “tokens of victory and love.” This is why medieval art will show Christ at the Last Judgment showing us once again those sacred wounds. What purpose do they serve? When we meet Christ face to face on Judgment Day, He will look just as He did during that first Easter season: We will behold Him in glory, but a glory that still teaches us the price of sin. Seeing His wounds on that day will bring us to the full awareness of what our sins have done and this will either move us to loving gratitude as expressed by all the saints in heaven or to utter shame and unrepentant guilt in the fires of hell. No one can stay neutral in the face of these wounds. We will either experience mercy and forgiveness or be condemned to despair by our shame and guilt.

But our Lord’s wounds are not confined to the visible parts of His body, His hands and feet and His side which would have necessitated the lifting of His tunic. The biggest wound is the wound to His heart. In his account of the crucifixion, St John alone among the evangelists tells us: “One of the soldiers pierced his side with a spear, and at once there came out blood and water.” (Jn. 19:34) This was a pivotal moment of revelation for St John. The wound at His side was not a superficial flesh wound. The spear penetrated deep into the very core of our Lord - His heart.

What we can only imagine with our mind’s eye is now made visible in the iconic image of the Divine Mercy. The image opens a mystical door into the inner core of His being, allowing us a peek into what remains a mystery. It shows the pierced heart of the Lord from which the streams of red and white light flow, representing the blood and water which the evangelist saw. This is the grace of salvation flowing upon humanity. The piercing of the heart was the means by which the floodgates of mercy were opened upon a sinful, broken and suffering humanity. The piercing of our Lord’s heart gave us the two foundational sacraments which made the Church and makes us members of the Church - Baptism and the Eucharist.

Devotion to the holy image of the Divine Mercy as our Lord communicated to St Faustina is not just confined to His handsome and beautiful visage. It is also an invitation to gaze upon His wounds, both visible and hidden. Contemplating the wounds of Jesus can move cold and obstinate hearts. It can bring about conversion. It can open doors that are sealed shut by our obstinacy. It can heal wounds that have been opened by our sins and the sins of others.

As the Lord said to Thomas, He says to us, “Put your hands into the holes that the nails have made.” These holes are the wounds by which we are saved. These holes are the wounds by which we are healed. These holes are the means by which My Divine Mercy will be poured forth upon humanity. Don’t be afraid to touch these wounds and believe. Touch these wounds and be moved. Touch these wounds and hear our Lord’s accompanying words: “Peace be with you”, “your sins are forgiven” and “I am sending you.” Touch these wounds and like Thomas, bow in adoration while professing: “My Lord and my God... I trust in you!"

God’s mercy is stronger than our misery

Second Sunday of Easter

This Sunday is uniquely confusing because it’s known by many names. It’s always much easier to deal with someone or something when you only have to contend with one name. Today is the Second Sunday of Easter. It is also known as the Sunday within the Octave of Easter. In the extraordinary form and in the pre-1969 calendar, it was also called Low Sunday (in relation to last Sunday, Easter). And since the pontificate of St John Paul II, who had a strong devotion to the Divine Mercy, it has received this eponymous title - Divine Mercy Sunday.

But my favourite name for this Sunday is derived from the opening words of the introit, the entrance antiphon for this Sunday. Quasimodo Sunday. It is taken from 1 Peter 2:2 and in Latin, it begins with these words: “quasi modo geniti infantes” or in English, “like newborn infants.” This is the full text of the antiphon: “As newborn babes, desire the rational milk without guile, that thereby you may grow unto salvation: If so be you have tasted that the Lord is sweet.”

The name Quasimodo Sunday may not be familiar to most of you but the name is not unfamiliar. Sounds like an oxymoron, right? Well, if you recall Victor Hugo’s novel, “The Hunchback of Notre Dame,” you will remember that the main protagonist’s name is Quasimodo. For those not familiar with the storyline, this tale of love, chivalry and strange beauty is about this unlikely hero, the severely deformed hunchback, with a pristinely beautiful and innocent heart and soul, who lived in the rafters of Paris’ Cathedral.

In Hugo’s novel, Quasimodo, rejected by his parents for his deformities, is abandoned inside Notre Dame Cathedral, at a place where orphans and unwanted children were dropped off. Monseigneur Claude Frollo, the Archdeacon, finds the child on “Quasimodo Sunday” and “called him Quasimodo; whether it was that he chose thereby to commemorate the day when he had found him, or that he meant to mark by that name how incomplete and imperfectly moulded the poor little creature was,” Hugo wrote.

In a strange way, the character Quasimodo, who risked his own life to save another whom he loves, is a type of Christ. And like Quasimodo, Christ also appears before His disciples today, arrayed not in gold and resplendent garments, but carrying the trophies of His victory on the cross - His wounds. But unlike Quasimodo, our Lord was not born with these deformities, for He is the unblemished Paschal Lamb. These are the scars of the torture He endured for our sake. Instead of an unscarred and unblemished appearance, He chooses to retain His ugly wounds as a sign, not of His failure, but of His victory over sin and death. His wounds are supremely beautiful because they are visible marks of His love for us, the receipt for the price He had paid for us, the booty of a cosmic battle which He had fought and won for us.

On this Sunday, Catholics are called to remember the newest members of the Church, those who were baptised, received into the fold of the Catholic Church, confirmed as adults and who received their First Holy Communion as full members of the Church. So, the words of the antiphon have special significance for these. The website, the New Liturgical Movement, writes:

“It counsels the first communicant or the convert, likened to a newborn child, to desire the milk of the mother, to receive that nourishment and grow. Properly disposed, the new communicant doesn't need to be told this. But the rest of us sing about this as a reminder that there are children among us who need to be cared for, and that we all should preserve the spirit of the children of God and remain humble and submissive to the Divine Will.”

Yes, in a way, all of us are incomplete and imperfectly moulded. We desire and hunger for the sacramental milk which only our Mother, the Church, can give. We have been deformed by sin, poor orphans abandoned and languishing in this Valley of Tears, waiting to be picked up by our Heavenly Father and to be adopted by Him. In His mercy, He has given us His only begotten Son, the Divine Mercy, not only to be our companion but to exchange places with us. Our Lord Jesus, the sinless and perfect Son of God, Beauty ever ancient ever new, chose to take our ugliness upon Himself in order to confer upon us the beauty of sanctifying grace. He took our sentence of death, in order to grant us the repeal of life. He has done this through the Sacraments of Baptism and the Eucharist, symbolised by the water and blood which flowed out through His wounded side, the source being His Most Sacred Heart beating in love for us.

But St Faustina also saw in that gushing spring of water and blood something else -  grace and mercy. This is what she wrote: “All grace flows from mercy, and the last hour abounds with mercy for us.  Let no one doubt concerning the goodness of God; even if a person’s sins were as dark as night, God’s mercy is stronger than our misery.” (Diary of St. Faustina, number 1507) Even the ugliest Quasimodo's in this world can be potentially the most beautiful beings seen through the lenses of grace and mercy because “God’s mercy is stronger than misery!”

In Victor Hugo’s novel, as a group of old women hunkered over to examine the little monstrosity that had been left near the vestibule of the Cathedral, one of them remarked, “I'm not learned in the matter of children ...but it must be a sin to look at this one." Could this remark be referring to us too? This is who we were, inheritors of Original Sin, prisoners and victims of our own sinful misdeeds, deformed by our iniquities, that it would be a sin for anyone to look at us. But then, God looked upon us, not with vile disgust or hatred but with love and mercy, and His “mercy is stronger than misery.” God offered us atonement and pardon for our sins. God offered us His incalculable mercy by offering us His son to take our place on the cross. As Saint Paul assures us, “God made Him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in Him we might become the righteousness of God” (2 Cor 5:21). We have seen this God, we have tasted Him, we have been redeemed and saved through His grace and mercy and we can proudly acclaim that we have tasted the Lord, and can testify that He is sweet!

See His Wounds, See God

Second Sunday of Easter - Divine Mercy Sunday

The Paschal candle blessed and lit during the Easter Vigil liturgy represents Christ, the Light of the World, down to the smallest detail. The pure beeswax of the candle represents the sinless Christ who was formed in the womb of His Mother (the Queen bee was also believed to have been a virgin queen). The wick signifies His humanity, the flame, His Divine Nature. Etchings are made on it to remind us that He is the Alpha and the Omega, the Lord of time and history.

But then the priest does something incredible to the candle. He wounds it with five grains of incense. The grains of incense are inserted into the candle, nailed into the flesh of the candle, in the form of a cross, to recall the aromatic spices with which His Sacred Body was prepared for the tomb, but also to remind us of the five wounds in His hands, feet, and side. So, as we look upon this symbol of Christ, we will be forever reminded that our Lord bore these wounds for us on the cross, but continued to display these wounds after His resurrection.

Those wounds are an integral part of His identity. It is as if the Church is giving us a clue - You will recognise Him by His wounds. Christ would appear incomplete without those scars. A Jesus without wounds is a Jesus without a cross and a Jesus without a cross, would be a Jesus that did not rise on Easter Sunday.

The scars were the main way our Lord confirmed to His disciples that it was truly Him, in the same body, now risen and transformed. St John draws our attention today to His scars. St Thomas did not just insist on seeing Jesus with his own eyes, to see what the others claimed to have seen. That is not what he requested. He asked for something quite different, something quite specific and odd. He says, “I want to see the wounds of Jesus. I want to touch those wounds.”

It is only in the Gospel of St John, in this particular passage, that we come to realise that Jesus was affixed to the cross by nails and it is only in the Fourth Gospel, do we have the story of the piercing of His side with a lance. The other gospels have not one single word about piercing nails or thrusting spear or even physical and visible wounds on the body of the resurrected Lord.

If St John didn’t tell us about the scars, we likely would assume that a glorified, resurrected body wouldn’t have any. At first thought, scars seem like a surprising feature of a perfected new-world and a perfected humanity. Isn’t the resurrection by definition a glorification, a perfection, a total healing? Shouldn’t the resurrection remove every trace of old weakness, every hint of prior vulnerability?

Our world does not tolerate scars and defects and people are willing to spend thousands and even millions on surgery and cosmetics just to hide them. Would we not expect that the body of the Risen Lord be an upgrade — from a perishable body designed for this world to an imperishable body designed for the next. Having scars just doesn’t fit the picture.

To add further intrigue to the story, Our Lord offers Thomas precisely what he desires, without any rebuke. At that point, Thomas utters his confession, “My Lord and my God.” Pay special attention to this high point, perhaps the climax of the entire gospel. The wounds of Christ would be the very reason for this confession of faith. Thomas sees the wounds and he sees God.

We might assume the Father would have chosen to remove the scars from His Son’s eternal glorified flesh, but scars were God’s idea to begin with. Remember how God brought forth Eve from the wound in Adam’s side? Or how He chose Jacob as the father of His new people after having broken Jacob’s hip in a physical tussle. Some of our scars carry little meaning, but some have a lot to say. But in the case of our Lord Jesus Christ, they are not a defect nor scars of shame but His trophy of glory. What do His wounds tell us?

First, our Lord’s scars tell us that He knows our pain. He became fully human, “made like [us] in every respect” (Heb 2:17 ), that, as one of us, He could suffer with us, and for us, as He carried our human sins to die in our place. This is why the suffering and death of the Son of God is unique in the world’s religions because in it, we see the ultimate answer to suffering. God does not give us a ten-point explanation on suffering. God does not stand aloof, watching, as the world suffers. In the Lord Jesus Christ, God enters the world and experiences suffering with us and for us. His scars tell us of His love, and that of His Father’s. St Paul assures us, “God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Rom 5:8).

But it is also important to note that our Lord’s scars are not wet open sores but healed wounds. They point not only to the pain which He suffered but to the victory which He has won. Every person who has undergone a surgery leaves the hospital with scars. The scars are evidence that the doctors and surgeons have successfully addressed the issue- they have won the battle. The patient is now healed. Likewise, our Lord’s wounds forever tell us of our final victory in Him. “By His stripes (wounds) we are healed” (Isaiah 53:5).

When Thomas sees Jesus and believes, he sees the wounds. He looks at the wounds. He does not see the evidence of man’s depraved cruelty but rather, he sees beauty, the beauty of the self-sacrificial love of the One who willingly chose to die for us. He sees the face of God’s mercy.

We too need to see them to believe. We will worship Him forever with the beauty of His scars in view. They are not a defect to the eyes of the redeemed but a glory for saved sinners beyond compare. We must let it sink in and remember that Christ did this for us. The wounds that mar Christ are the wounds that mar us all, transferred from us to Him. In His death, every needless death is absorbed. Every sorrow is seen in His sorrow. Every tear of mourning and loss is understood by Him. Our wounded God has redeemed every wound. Our murdered God has redeemed death. Our broken God has redeemed every broken heart and body. Our bereft God has redeemed every mourning. And should anyone ask us, “How can we recognise your God?” Just reply, “by His wounds you will recognise Him.”

Healing the Wounds through Forgiveness

Second Sunday of Easter Year C

I dislike wearing short khakis. To be honest, I find it embarrassing, not because I’m prudish but because I have ugly scars from a previous motorcycle accident stretching the entire length of the shin on both legs. I guess we all have scars, from the unstitched nicks of childhood to crooked or misshapen noses, to long gouges left on our chests from bypass surgery. Then there are the countless inner wounds; the grief that never quite heals, wrongs done to us or by us that can never be righted, memories that cannot be erased, hurtful words or betrayals that seem to have a direct line to our tear ducts or the recurrent knot in our stomach. Some scars are readily visible; others remain hidden, whether from embarrassment or reticence. A friend once told me that his “tears roll on the inside.” You can’t get through life without scars, inside or outside.

But where do our deepest hurts come from. The popular spiritual author, Henri Nouwen speaks of them emanating from our primary relationships, those persons we love most and who love us most; they too are the ones who hurt us most. Nouwen writes, “that is where we are most loved and most wounded… where our greatest joy and our greatest pain touch each other.” Yes, those who are closest to us are also those who cause us the deepest pain. It is our father, our mother, our brother, our sister, our spouse, our closest friend, our co-worker, our neighbour, a member of our community, our priest, who can hurt us most and be most hurt by us. Christians are not exempted from such hurting. In fact, truth be told, Christians offend and hurt each other with frightening regularity. And we know - far too many Catholics have had painful experiences in the Church, and many have simply opted to walk away.

No wonder, the first few words of the Risen Lord as He appeared to His disciples behind closed doors in the Upper Room, spoke not of freedom from trouble or conflict but rather of forgiveness. Our Lord begins a greeting of peace then quickly commissions His disciples to be messengers of God’s merciful love and forgiveness, saying, “Receive the Holy Spirit. For those who sins you forgive, they are forgiven; for those who sins you retain, they are retained.”

The gift of the Holy Spirit and the mandate and power to forgive cannot be understood apart from the wounds which our Lord exhibited on His Body. It’s fascinating, then, that when the fourth evangelist tells the story of the Lord’s appearance to His disciples after the resurrection, he tells how our Lord showed them His scars, His wounds. Not once, but twice. The wounds of Christ point us to our personal wounds, to the wounds of our communities, and to a wounded Church in need of peace, forgiveness and reconciliation. Particularly, Christ’s wounds remind us of the unhealed wounds that often weigh heavily on our hearts.

But it is not just individuals who suffer wounds. Because the Church is mystically “Christ’s Body,” how much greater are sins that injure the Church? Since its foundation, Mother Church, the Body of Christ, has been rocked, wounded, and splintered by the sins of its members – heresy, apostasy and schism. But today, toxic behaviour among members of the Body of Christ continue to cause further harm. Such behaviour do not merely injure the reputation or hurt the feelings of another, but often wounds the Church deeply and in fact hinders her from carrying out her mission as a sacrament of salvation to the world. Envy, gossip, back-biting, betrayal, division, factionalism, just to name a few. Instead of attracting others to the Lord, these forms of toxic behaviour are often off-putting as they drive off both potential enquirers, and as well as members of the community who are scandalised by the lack of charity.

Let’s return to the story of our gospel. Most of us have heard a homily about Thomas’ unbelief, and that our faith should not be merely confined to what is visible, “Happy are those who have not seen and yet believe.” Yes, it is about faith. But today I would like to look at this scene a little differently. I want to suggest to you that this story is not just about the faith of Thomas but about the Body of Christ, the Church. You see, many Catholics have no issue with their faith in the Risen Christ, it is their experience with the Church that often shakes their belief and calls into question what they fundamentally hold as true. Let’s face it, most people leave the Church, not because they found her teachings to be false or deficient, but because they had experienced some hurt, pain, or injury at the hand of another within the Body of Christ.

This is true for Thomas. When his brothers told him that they had seen the Risen Lord, his incredulity may have been directed at them. “Can I ever believe the testimony of these cowards, betrayers and deniers?”  He may be thinking that this was some sick April Fools’ Day joke being played on him. If Thomas had doubted, he may have doubted the words of his brothers rather than that of the Lord’s. Hear-say testimony was insufficient to convince him. He needed hard evidence, “Unless I see the holes that the nails made in his hands and can put my finger into the holes they made, and unless I can put my hand into his side, I refuse to believe. 

But, our Lord showed Thomas and the other disciples a different kind of proof – proof of the power of forgiveness. He was that living proof. Here was a man who was not only wounded physically, but most grievously in His heart by the betrayal and denial of those who were dearest and closest to Him, but He forgave them, nevertheless. And this is what He wants of us. He knows how much we’re hurting. He knows and shares our woundedness. To do that, He presents Himself not as an unscathed physician, untouched by the wounds of His patients. But rather, shows Himself to be the wounded healer who heals all wounds and scars through His own wounds. This too must be our ministry and our mission: to forgive those who have hurt us.

Though many of us would wish for a perfectly pristine Church made up of perfect saccharine sweet members who do not hurt each other, this is mere wishful thinking, at least in the here and now. The fact that the Lord still bears His wounds after the Resurrection is a tremendous beacon of hope for the rest of us.  On the face of it, woundedness is not something that inspires hope.  We live in a culture that exalts perfectly shaped bodies and perfectly integrated personalities, and part of me wishes that someday I could get beyond my inner and outer wounds. But this appearance of our Lord to Thomas and the other apostles suggests to me that I’ll always carry my brokenness, or at least the signs of my brokenness, with me, during this life.  More importantly, though our Lord did not promise to give us a Church with perfect members, He offered us something better – the gift of the Holy Spirit and the power and mission to forgive each other’s sins.  There will be no need for forgiveness, if we never hurt or get hurt.

What our Lord asks is not easy. Sometimes we want to forgive, but we cannot seem to let go of our hurt. It can be easier to forgive the sin of a stranger or a non-Christian than a close friend, a relative, or a fellow Christian or your priest, for that matter. That’s because we can expect mistreatment from some strangers and foes. But we expect more from our brothers and sisters in Christ. In the Church, we expect to find honesty, love, and compassion. But instead, we do hurt one another repetitively—more than we like to admit.  We speak carelessly, we forget promises, we fail to offer help in their hour of need, and more. But we must learn to forgive. We need to forgive. We ought to forgive—for our own benefit, for the benefit of our brothers and sisters, and above all because we love and honour Jesus, who first forgave us and gave us this mission, mandate and commandment to forgive. And the Holy Spirit makes all this possible.