April 18, 2017 // Columns

Although we have not seen, we believe

Msgr. Owen Campion

The Sunday Gospel

Second Sunday of Easter
John 20:19-31

With deep faith and faith-filled excitement, the church continues the celebration it began a week and a day ago: Easter, the Lord’s resurrection and final victory over death and sin.

As is the case in almost every Mass of this season, the first reading this weekend comes from the Acts of the Apostles. Acts was originally seen to be a continuation of St. Luke’s Gospel, and these books should still be considered as being in sequence. Together they tell an uninterrupted story of salvation in Jesus, from Mary’s conception to a time years after the Ascension.

This weekend’s reading reveals to us what life was actually like in the time shortly following the Ascension. The first Christians, most of whom likely knew Jesus, reverently followed the apostles. They were together in a most realistic sense of community, eagerly caring for the needy, praying and “breaking the bread,” a term referring to the Eucharist.

Clearly, Peter was the chief of the apostles. He was special. Most importantly, through the apostles and in the church, Jesus lived and acted. The sick were cured. The deaf heard. The blind saw. No one was beyond the apostles’ concern.

For its second reading this weekend, the church offers us a passage from the First Epistle of Peter. In this reading, the early church’s obvious and intense love for and faith in the Lord are obvious and inspiring.

It was a faith that hardly went unchallenged. The culture in which Christianity was born and grew either rejected the ideals of the Gospel or held them in outright contempt. But the mere presentation of these beliefs in this epistle show how steadfastly the first Christians held to what Jesus had taught.

John’s Gospel provides the last reading. It is one of the beloved and most familiar of the Resurrection narratives.

In this reading is the story of the reluctance of the Apostle Thomas to accept that Jesus indeed had risen from the tomb. Then, as all recall, Jesus dramatically appears on the scene. He invites Thomas to believe. In awe and the uttermost faith, Thomas declares that Jesus not only is teacher and redeemer, but indeed that Jesus is God. The Lord then confers upon the apostles that most divine of powers, the power to judge what is sinful and to forgive sin.

Reflection

This weekend is Divine Mercy Sunday, a breathtaking contrast to evil. Coincidentally, for people in Israel and for Jews everywhere, this is the day to remember the millions who died in Adolf Hitler’s savage persecution of Jews. For many years before the collapse of the Soviet system, it was also the day of the great celebration of Communism, a philosophy that brought death and heartache to many millions.

Springtime brings these three events together. The last two, the hideous policy of Adolf Hitler’s dictatorship in Germany that slaughtered millions and the generations-long domination of Communism, stand on one side as an example of how terribly sin and disregard of God and God’s creatures, human beings, can bring terror and death into the world. Humans can do awful things.

Opposite all this is God’s loving mercy for us. In mercy, God sent the Lord Jesus. Christ’s humanity, life, death and triumph over death provided our access to divine mercy.

The apostles and their successors bring us this mercy, connecting us with Jesus, with God and with the hope of being forgiven, just as they brought these to the Christians recorded in Acts.

Always, the church gathers around the apostles. We try to become part of the church by modeling in our hearts the faith of the first Christians and of Thomas.

Through this faith, in the church and with the apostles, we experience the mercy of God.