1. -- Lanie LeBlanc OP -
2. -- Dennis Keller OP - Second Sunday of Easter
3. -- Fr. John Boll OP -
4. --
5. --(Your reflection can be here!)

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Second Sunday of Easter
Sunday of Divine Mercy

April 27, 2025

Acts 5:12-16; Responsorial Psalm 118; Revelation 1:9-13, 17-19;
Gospel Acclamation John 20:29; John 20:19-31

This is the Second Sunday of Easter, the first being Easter Sunday itself. The celebration of the Last Supper, the agony in the Garden of Gethsemane, the trials by the Sanhedrin, by Pilate, the via dolorosa, the passion and death on the cross, the burial, and the Resurrection are very difficult to unpack. Surely, the King we heard about on Palm Sunday failed to establish his Kingdom! If that is our thought, we are like the Chief Priests, the Sanhedrin, and the Jews who were brain washed by those others. Many of those people and we are terrorized by death: it is so unplanned for, it is so fraught with uncertainty, it is so very permanent. Human life is flooded with constant change: sometimes it is for the better, sometimes it is for the worse. But we can count on change. That comes from living in time which is known by one thing following another. Growth in nature in the spring follows a sequence. Babies grow into children, children into adolescents, adolescents into adults, adults into highly experienced old people. The celebration of the Triduum is a growing process that tells us death is not the end.

The celebration of Triduum is about Jesus taking on civil power, religious power, and death itself. He allowed those enslaving powers to battle with him. His rising from that borrowed tomb, defeated death. Death, evil civil and religious leadership failed to keep its myth of permanence. It was through his suffering, the betrayals, the denials, and leadership ignoring of civil and religious law, and even death itself that Jesus won the victory. What a lesson for us! What a revelation! Suffering can lead us to new life – even here and now. However, there is a significant problem with putting that faith, that belief into action. Minds are not strong enough for us to endure such pain. Only if our hearts have faith in this revelation by the Christ, the King who entered into the City of Peace. More on that shortly.

This time during these seven weeks till Pentecost is a time the Greeks call MYSTAGOGIA. That means “walking around in the mysteries.” For the next seven Sundays, our readings will lead us into a greater understanding of the unfathomable mystery of the Christ. The readings are all of the New Covenant established in the Blood of the Lord and in his rising. All can lead us into a stronger faith. Faith is resident in our hearts. When we love, nothing can stand in the way of faith.

The first reading in each of these seven Sundays is from the Acts of the Apostles. Luke just continues his gospel by writing about how the Church came into being. It is not a building, not an institution, but a people, a nation of priests, prophets, and shepherds (the original meaning of King and Queen). If we listen with our hearts, we will come to a fuller appreciation of what our Assembly is about. Our assembly is our group who together worship and pray and are united by Communion in the Lord. Liturgy has the power to build a community of care, concern, love, and support. That is our church – a community of care. We are baptized into a community, a parish in which each is meant to care for others. That unity is confirmed and strengthened in reception of Communion which is the Lord and who joins us all into His one Body.

The Second reading in these seven Sundays is always from the Book of Revelation. As a child, I hated that book. It frightened me. It is the story of the continuing conflict of the way of the world with the Way of Jesus. This Way of the Lord is growing. The victors are already known. The victors identified in Revelation are a New Heaven and a New Earth. That New Heaven and New Earth are populated with – as the Letter to the Hebrews describes it – a great cloud of witnesses the number of which escapes human capacity to calculate. The book of Revelation is about the combat between the Way of the Lord and the Way of the World. Listen carefully to understand that scary telling so as to understand its intent.

The third reading is always from the Gospel of John. John’s gospel is the last to be committed to writing. It is the most poetic, the most mystical, the most difficult of all the gospels to understand and apply. The difficulty comes from its richness of images and references to the old covenant. In the Resurrection accounts of every gospel, we see a pattern. That pattern applies to each of us who believe in the Christ and his ministry, preaching, teaching, healing, suffering, death, and resurrection. The pattern that runs consistently through his gospel is the growth of faith. Mary Magdalen went to the tomb early on Easter morning. The stone was rolled away, and the tomb was empty. She ran to Peter and John and wept “they had taken his body.” Peter and John ran to the tomb and found the burial clothes folded up and set aside separate from the face cloth. Certainly not the work of grave robbers or even ones who would play a game about resurrection. John saw and believed. That is significant. Peter did not yet but began to. Mary Magdalen met one in the garden she thought was the gardener. When he called her by her name, she recognized him and believed. The two-walking home to Emmaus listened to the stranger on the road. Their hearts were moved and set on fire. There began faith in them. But it was at table when the stranger blessed, broke the bread, and gave it to them that they recognized him.

They all walked with him for about three years. Yet each failed to recognize him. That included those in the upper room when he first appeared to them. They thought of him as a ghost. When he asked for food, they came to a beginning of faith. In repeated visitations they grew in faith. This Sunday we see how Thomas doubts the witness of the disciples. We can emphasize with his doubt. How intense and committed is our faith in the Resurrected Jesus? Does it change how we live? Have we experienced suffering and pain loosen chains that rob us of life? Do we realize that the way of the world causes us constant effort? Those efforts, their values lack the strength to satisfy us completely. Pursuit of the values of the world put us on a never-ending hamster wheel. We run like crazy, covering over and over again the same places. To become unchained from the endless pursuit of more power, of more accumulation, of acceptance and notoriety, of pursuing more pleasure – that is freedom. When our values are about fulfilling our potential to grow our characters, our spirits, our souls, then we share in the New Creation of heaven and earth. We grow to passing through the portal of death which is the entrance way to the resurrection of our bodies, rejoining our spirits so we are once again fully human. And the life we enjoy then is the life of God. That life is the Spirit who is love. Clearly, Pope Francis has come into the fullness of life. He has been an advocate for peace and flourishing in his time with us. Now he will be an advocate at the throne of God – the God who loves us beyond any measure we can conjure.

Dennis Keller <Dennis@PreacherExchange.com>
 

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Volume 2 is for you. Your thoughts, reflections, and insights on the next Sundays readings can influence the preaching you hear. Send them to preacherexchange@att.net. Deadline is Wednesday Noon. Include your Name, and Email Address.
-- Fr. John