Showing posts with label divine mercy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label divine mercy. Show all posts

Sunday, April 12, 2015

Gospel For Today: 2nd Sunday of Easter

SECOND SUNDAY OF EASTER (B) - SUNDAY OF DIVINE MERCY

In the Jubilee Year of 2000 Pope St. John Paul II declared the second Sunday of Easter to be celebrated each year as a feast to Jesus' Divine Mercy.  And now 15 years later, Pope Francis has declared another Jubilee Year -- a year devoted to Mercy, to be celebrated from Dec. 8, 2015 (the feast of the Immaculate Conception) to Nov. 20, 2016 (the feast of Christ the King).  In his very first Angelus address as Pope, Francis reminded us, "Let us not forget that God forgives, and God forgives always."  This extraordinary holy year is a needed reminder to the world of God's great and loving mercy that can be found in the Catholic Church.

Recently I had the pleasure of escorting several students on retreat, the theme of which was "Reasons Why."  Each student on retreat was asked to reflect on the reasons why they were Catholic.  For some a decision was made to become Catholic as an adult.  For those born into the Church the decision must still be made in adulthood to remain a Catholic.  Why make that choice?  What does the Church have to offer?

When the English writer G. K. Chesterton was asked why he became a Catholic, he famously answered, "To get my sins forgiven."  Chesterton had a way of getting to the heart of the matter.  Truly, if the Church is stripped down to its core, the only reason for its existence is to mediate God's mercy to sinners so that they (we) may be reconciled to Him.  That is it.

The whole drama of salvation history has been all about this.  God's covenant relationship with the people of Israel.  The Incarnation.  All the teachings of Jesus. His passion and death.  His glorious resurrection.  The establishment of the Church.  All this has been about one simple thing: reconciling man to God by means of His mercy.

In our gospel today the Risen Christ appears to the Apostles one week after that first Easter Sunday. They are locked away in a room, hiding in fear.  But Christ does not want them to be hidden.  He does not want them to be fearful.  So He gives them His peace.  And He sends them on a mission.

"Peace be with you.  As the Father has sent me, so I send you."  And when He had said this He breathed on them and said to them, "Receive the Holy Spirit.  Whose sins you forgive are forgiven them.  Whose sins you retain are retained" (Jn 20:21-23).  

And so Jesus, the Son of God and the only man possessing God's authority to forgive sins, passes that authority on to the first leaders of the Church; an authority subsequently passed on to every priest and bishop from that time to this.  This is the origin of the Sacrament of Reconciliation, or what is commonly called Confession.  We humble sinners come before the priest, that minister of mercy, to confess our sins.  The priest, not on his own authority but with the authority granted by Christ through the Holy Spirit, conveys God's forgiveness.  

Elsewhere in scripture St. Paul tells us:

"All this is from God, who reconciled us to Himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: that God was reconciling the world to Himself in Christ, not counting people's sins against them.  And He has committed to us the message of reconciliation.  We are therefore Christ's ambassadors, as though God were making His appeal through us.  We implore you on Christ's behalf: Be reconciled to God" (2 Cor 5:18-20).

God wants nothing more than to shower His mercy upon us, but because His mercy comes from love it cannot be forced.  It can only be accepted.  Each time we come to the confessional we accept God's gift of mercy.  Each time a soul comes back to the Church, God rejoices at the reconciliation.  This is why He established the Church -- to open wide the gates of His mercy.

Come through those gates.  Come into the Church, the "community of believers that is one one heart and mind" (Acts 4:32).  To be reconciled to God is to be reconciled to one another.  Mercy is the mission of the Church and mercy is the mission of all in the Church.  The priest is the ambassador of Christ sacramentally in the confessional.  But every Christian is an ambassador of Christ in the world, helping to spread the message of His mercy to all who need it.  To receive God's mercy is to become yourself a conduit of mercy for others.  Every time you forgive someone in your heart, you are doing God's work.  Every time you hold anger or hatred in your heart toward another, you are doing the work of Satan.  Do not allow bitterness and anger to gain a foothold in your life.  Be an ambassador of forgiveness.  Show mercy to others, and you will know God's mercy all the more.

Let us pray for an increase of mercy in the world and in our hearts, today on this day of Divine Mercy, during the extraordinary Jubilee Year of Mercy, and for all years to come.

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Sunday, April 27, 2014

Gospel For Today - 2nd Sunday of Easter (A)

SECOND SUNDAY OF EASTER (A) - SUNDAY OF DIVINE MERCY

Jesus said to them again, "Peace be with you.

As the Father has sent me, so I send you."
And when he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them,
"Receive the Holy Spirit.
Whose sins you forgive are forgiven them,
and whose sins you retain are retained."

With these words, Jesus grants the Church the authority to carry out her most urgent and fundamental mission in the world, which is to reconcile sinners to the Father.  On the evening of His Resurrection, Jesus appears to the Apostles and tells them, "As the Father has sent me, so I send you."   So if we want to know why Christ sent the Apostles (and why God sent us the Church) we must know why God the Father sent His Son into the world.

The scriptures are abundantly clear on this point. From the beginning of the incarnation narrative, the angel who announced the coming of Christ to Joseph said, "and you shall call His name Jesus, for He shall save His people from their sins" (Mt 1:21).  Jesus in His own words said, "I have come to call sinners" (Mt 9:13) and, "For the Son of Man came to save what was lost" (Mt 28:11).   In so many of Christ's parables, including the story of the Prodigal Son, the Good Samaritan, and the Good Shepherd, our Lord describes His mission to call sinners to repentance and to grant forgiveness.  And on many occasions we see Christ granting that very forgiveness to individuals including Mary Magdalene, Zacchaeus, the thief crucified next to our Lord, and the Samaritan woman at the well.  

Very plainly, when Jesus heals the lame man who had been lowered through the roof, He says He did so, "so that you may know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins" (Mt 9:2-8). This was Christ's chief mission, without a doubt.  It was the purpose of all that He suffered through on Good Friday, and here on the eve of the Resurrection we find Christ passing that divine authority on to the Apostles.

In our gospel, we read, "When He had said this, He breathed on them and said to them, 'Receive the Holy Spirit.'"    We must remember that it was the breath of God that gave life to Adam in the beginning (Gen 2:7).  The word spirit itself derives from the Latin word for breath.  This also anticipates the coming of the Holy Spirit on Pentecost, 50 days later (Acts 2:1-4).  In fact, Christ expressly says, "Receive the Holy Spirit," while breathing on them. 

The purpose of Christ transmitting the Holy Spirit to them at this moment was to empower them - to grant them the divine authority - to fulfill their mission.  And what was that mission?  "Whose sins you forgive are forgiven them, and whose sins you retain are retained."  Christ says quite plainly that the mission of the Apostles, and by extension the Apostolic Church, is to forgive sins.  He has granted them God's authority to do so.  He has instituted the Sacrament of Reconciliation, or what we commonly call Confession.

How do we know this authority continues on in today's bishops and priests?  We know this because Christ intended that the mission of His Church would continue until the end of time.  If the Apostles did not have the ability to transfer that authority to others, then Christ's mission of forgiveness would have ended with that first generation of Christians, and extended only to those with personal contact with the Apostles themselves.  Forgiveness of sin would have come to an end with the death of St. John.  The forgiveness of sin must continue to be available to us for as long as there is sin in the world, which will be until the end of time.  And so the Church's divinely instituted mission continues on.

But why confess out loud to a priest?  Can't the Church just universally grant forgiveness without us having to go through the act of confessing?  Note that Christ grants the Apostles the authority both to forgive and to retain sins.  How are they supposed to know when to grant and when to withhold forgiveness?  They have to know what it is they are forgiving, the disposition of the sinner, his or her resolutions for the future, their willingness to make amends for any harm done by their sins, and so forth.  All of this requires that the penitent sinner actually confess those sins, and his or her repentance, to the minister of the Church.

The Sacrament of Reconciliation is a great mercy of God.  Through it the sinner is brought into renewed friendship with God.  Your sins are forgiven.  You receive sanctifying grace.  The everlasting punishment due because of your sins is remitted and God's grace will strengthen you to help you avoid future sin.  Plus, you get the chance to receive spiritual advice and instruction - all freely given!  

Christ will come at the end of days as the Just Judge.  But when He came to us in the Incarnation it was as the Divine Physician; it was as the Good Shepherd searching for His lost sheep.  The prescription for our ailment is repentance and forgiveness.  The Shepherd's voice is a voice of mercy.  The greatest tragedy in our lives would be to not take advantage of Christ's abundant mercy. 

The Divine Mercy devotion is based on the writings of an uneducated Polish nun, St. Maria Faustina Kowalska, who kept a diary of some 600 pages in the 1930s.  In one passage of her diary, she has Jesus saying, "He who refuses to pass through the door of My mercy must pass through the door of My justice" (Diary 1146).  

The door of Christ's mercy is the door of the Confessional.  The key to unlocking that door is our own repentance.  The only cost of entry is to trust in His mercy and love.  

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WCU Catholic Campus Ministry
Matthew Newsome, MTh, campus minister
  
(828)293-9374  |   POB 2766, Cullowhee NC 28723

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Tuesday, April 23, 2013

From WCU: Gospel For Today

SECOND SUNDAY OF EASTER (DIVINE MERCY SUNDAY)

Today's first reading is from The Acts of the Apostles.  This is a unique book in the New Testament.  It is not a gospel account of the life of Jesus.  It is not a letter written to a church or an individual.  It is a history, written by Luke, of the earliest days of the Church.  This is the beginning of our story, the story of the Catholic Church.  Reading the book of Acts shows us two things: we see the continuity of the early Church and today's Church, in the apostolic mission, the ordaining of bishops, priests and deacons, the celebration of the breaking of the bread (the Eucharist), baptisms, and even a Church Council; it also shows us the continuity between that early Church and Jesus Christ.

In the reading today from Acts 5:12-17 we hear of gathering crowds.  People are bringing their sick and lame out into the streets, hoping that they might be healed if only they might be touched by the shadow of....  not Jesus.  Peter.  

It reads like a scene from one of the gospels, where the crowds are pressing in on Jesus in expectation of a healing miracle.  But this time it is not the Christ, but the one whom He left in His stead, the one to whom He gave the keys to His Kingdom; Simon the fisherman, now called Peter.  He is the chief shepherd of the flock of Christ.  And it is not because of anything special about Peter that the crowds come to him.  It is because the graces of Christ flow through him.  

So, you see, they still come for Jesus.  They are not called "believers of Peter," but "believers of the Lord."

They come to Peter because as one of the Apostles he has the authority of Jesus Christ.  It is the same authority that Christ possessed of the Father; the authority that allowed Christ to heal, that allowed Him to forgive sins, that allowed Him to teach as He did.  That authority has been handed on to the Apostles.

In today's gospel reading from John we read of Christ appearing to the Apostles after the Resurrection.  "Peace be with you," He says.  "As the Father has sent me, so I send you." Then He does a magnificent thing.  Our Lord breathes on them.  We must remember that the root word of "spirit" means "breath" (as in "aspirate").  Jesus breathes on them and says, "Receive the Holy Spirit.  Whose sins you forgive are forgiven them, and whose sins you retain are retained."

God alone has the authority to forgive sins, for when we sin, it is God whom we offend.  Jesus possessed this authority from the Father.  And now Jesus passes it on to men.  

The Apostles are still with us today.  Not the same men, in the flesh, as we read of in Acts.  But their successors are with us.  Just as Jesus sacramentally passed His divine authority to the original Apostles, so they passed that authority on to others, and they to others, down the line of Apostolic Succession to the present day bishops in our Church (and the priests and deacons ordained to aid them in their ministry).

Just as it was in the earliest days of the Church, Jesus Christ is still alive and still ministering to us through His chosen men.  Our faith should be as strong as those who came to Peter and the others for healing and reconciliation.  St. Thomas in today's Gospel refused to believe in the Resurrection until he could touch the wounds of the Risen Lord.  Jesus said to him, "Have you come to believe because you have seen me?  Blessed are those who have not seen and yet believe."  

That is you and me.  We have not seen the Risen Lord.  But we have seen those who carry out His ministry, with His divine authority, still today.  Hold fast to the bishops.  Hold fast to the Catholic Church.  As St. Ignatius of Antioch (a disciple of St. John, ordained bishop by St. Peter) wrote in the year 110, "Wheresoever the bishop appears, there let the people be; just as wherever Christ is, there is the Catholic Church."

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DIVINE MERCY SUNDAY
Today is also Divine Mercy Sunday.  Jesus said in a vision to St. Faustina that whoever would not enter in through the door of His Mercy must pass through the door of His Judgment.  To accept Christ's mercy means three things:
1. You must ask for it.
2. You must yourself be merciful to others (allowing Christ's mercy to flow through you).
3. You must trust in Jesus.

If you are unfamiliar with the devotion to Divine Mercy, take a few minutes today to familiarize yourself with it. Here is one helpful link:

St. Mary's will have a Divine Mercy Holy Hour at the parish today at 3:00pm.  And this evening at 7:00 at our student center, in place of our usual rosary before Mass, we will be praying the Divine Mercy chaplet.  (If you are unfamiliar with this prayer, come anyway, we will have guides).  

This is the day the Lord has made.  Let us rejoice and be glad in it!  
God bless!
Matt

--
WCU Catholic Campus Ministry
Matthew Newsome, MTh, campus minister
  
(828)293-9374  |   POB 2766, Cullowhee NC 28723

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From WCU: Weekly Update from CCM

Dear Students,

'TIS THE SEASON
No, not the Christmas Season - I don't have my holidays mixed up.  I meant the Easter Season!  Yes, it is a whole season in the Church year.  I once read an article by a very misinformed Catholic who did not understand this fact.  She had gone to a Protestant church with a friend on the Sunday after Easter.  At this church they were celebrating "Butterfly Sunday" which she said was a beautiful reminder of the power of Resurrection, using the image of a butterfly emerging from its cocoon.  She really liked the service and suggested that the Catholic Church really ought to do something similar, to extend Easter beyond just Easter Sunday so we can give the Resurrection its fair due.

The writer identified herself as a Catholic, but her comments left me wondering how often she makes it to Mass.  We certainly don't need "Butterfly Sunday" to help us extend the Easter holiday.  For us it is a whole season, stretching from Easter Sunday itself for fifty days until Pentecost.  More than that, the eight days from Easter until the next Sunday (the "Octave of Easter") are regarded really as one extended day in the liturgical calendar.  To give an example, in the Liturgy of the Hours (the Divine Office) for Morning Prayer, the psalms and antiphons for each day this week are taken from the Easter Morning Prayer.  It is the same day over and over again.  But unlike "Groundhog Day" with Bill Murray, we don't repeat the emergence of a rodent from a den, but the Risen Christ from the Tomb.  We consider this such a seminal event in our faith that one 24 hour day just is not enough!

The Second Sunday of Easter in particular has been designated as Divine Mercy Sunday (far better than "Butterfly Sunday" in my book).  The Divine Mercy devotion is rooted in the diary of a young polish nun, St. Faustina Kowalska, written in the 1930s.  In it, she recounts many revelations she received about God's mercy.  The message of mercy is that God loves us, no matter how great our sins.  His mercy is stronger than our sins.  If we trust in His mercy, we not only receive His mercy, but we allow it to flow through ourselves and spread to others.  In short, we must ask for God's mercy, we must ourselves be merciful, and we must completely trust in Jesus.

If you are unfamiliar with the Divine Mercy devotion, or the chaplet, here is a great link to an EWTN mini-site with all sorts of information.

Butterflies are beautiful creatures of God - but if I have to choose between them and God's mercy, all I have to say is, "Jesus, I trust in You!"

God bless and have a great week!
Matt


--
WCU Catholic Campus Ministry
Matthew Newsome, MTh, campus minister
  
(828)293-9374  |   POB 2766, Cullowhee NC 28723

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