Just a word before we go...Second Sunday of Easter (DivineMercy)...April 7, 2024
Just one week ago we sat in the darkness of this church at the Easter Vigil, and listened to the story of salvation, as told in word and song. Dan Schutte, Kathy Flynn and the choir sang “The Exultet,” and we joined them in the refrain: “Most Holy Night, most blessed of nights, when Christ broke the chains of the darkness! God's mighty love is stronger than death. Christ our Light shines forever!” In the darkness, illuminated only by the candles in our hands, we sang that refrain, raising our candles high, together, as we proclaimed our belief in God’s power to overcome all evil, even death. These words are of such great consequence that they replace the recitation of the Creed at that Mass. Through the symbolic acts of singing and raising our lights high, we profess our belief in a way that is only hinted at in our often rote recitation of the Creed.
In today’s Gospel we hear about the much maligned Thomas, who speaks what others are afraid to, as he questions the reality of Jesus’ resurrection, demanding proof. Jesus enters the room where the disciples are gathered through a locked door and shows his transformed wounds to Thomas, who then proclaims, “My Lord and My God.” Note that Thomas did not touch the risen Lord, but was convinced by Jesus’ presence alone. We, together, in this church, are the Body of Christ. In Word, and Sacrament and in the gathered community, Christ is present, as those who participated in the Vigil certainly realized.
We all have questions, some of which cannot be answered easily or completely, but these questions need not preclude our having faith in the resurrection of Jesus, or of our loved ones.
The Austrian poet Ranier Maria Rilke writes:
“Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books that are now written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.”
Thomas had the advantage of having his question answered in the physical form of Jesus; we who live today do not have that. But we can have strong, palpable knowledge of that which is beyond our sight. Anyone who has had the experience of knowing that a departed loved one is still present to them in some intangible form knows what I am speaking of. Whether it is a feeling that is evoked by a prayer, or a song, or a conversation, or even a dream, our loved ones can make their presence known, as Jesus does. That presence is evidence of the mighty love of God that we sang at the Vigil...that is Divine Mercy.