Second Sunday of Easter-Divine Mercy Sunday Year B Joh 20.19-31

 I don’t know if you have ever asked yourself what hurts you the most from your surroundings. What hurts me the most is when someone doesn’t believe in me or doubts my abilities. That’s when I feel frustrated. Enduring an opponent, an adversary is always a challenge, but having a person next to you who doubts me, doesn’t believe my Word, and I mean it sincerely, is always tricky for me.

Today’s Sunday tells us about God’s mercy, God’s love, and God’s attitude towards all those whom he represents: Judas, who betrayed because Christ had a different political program than him; who is represented by Peter, who betrayed out of fear, and also who represents Thomas, who did not believe Jesus’ words. He had heard so many times from the mouth of Jesus that the Son of Man would be delivered into the hands of the Jews, that he would suffer, that he would be crucified, that he would die, but rise from the dead on the third day. And yet, when he heard the news of his resurrection, he did not believe. He needed to see his pierced side. So many announcements, the multiplication of bread, the calming of the storm at sea, so many healings, nor the raising of Lazarus were not enough.

This is often our problem. We don’t believe in God. How could God allow this? Why did this happen to me? These are the questions we ask ourselves when we don’t believe in God. It seems to us that God arranged it wrong, that he miscalculated. This unbelief of ours, our doubting God’s omnipotence about the fulfillment of His Word in our life, is worse than Judas’ betrayal or Peter’s fear. It is what ultimately leads to the loss of God in our lives. And not because it doesn’t exist, but because I don’t need it. This is the problem of today’s Europe. However, a person cannot live without a higher principle that we all feel in ourselves, so he builds an idol from which he expects a fuller life. We see this very well in the Israelites who walked in the desert. When Moses, who personified God’s Word for them, went away from them for forty days, they built an idol. An idol is what we expect in life from money, fame, and career.

This “modern world” is a whole of these modern idols that ultimately enslave man and make him a slave to himself and his false ideas. We all have this experience with idols in our lives. No, we are not atheists; we just stopped expecting life from God. We want to touch something, just like Tomáš, and money is so concrete, so tangible, and you can buy everything with it. And a career so tempting. And power and glory, so intoxicating. And what is God’s answer to this situation of ours? Such as we read in today’s Word of God. To Thomas’ unbelief, Jesus responds with a greeting: “Peace be with you!” Then he said to Thomas: “Put your finger here and see my hands!” Reach out your hand and put it on my hip! And do not be unbelieving, but believing!” (Jn 20, 26-27)

This is how God comes to us, through his Word, similarly to Thomas. Where we looked everywhere for our security and how quickly it fell apart. A tiny virus, the size of which can only be expressed in nanometers, was enough to bring down the world economy in a short time and cause a global pandemic. What was our certainty yesterday, what we believed in, and what we expected life from is today only a lost dream. But God does not feel humiliated or disgraced that we despised him, that we did not trust him, because he humbled himself in the person of his Son, allowed himself to be deceived and humiliated. The Holy Apostle Paul writes: After all, in Christ God reconciled the world to himself and did not count their sins against people. … He made him who knew no sin to be sin for us so that in him we might become the righteousness of God. (2 Cor 5, 19,21)

God’s mercy is evident in the cross of His Son, Jesus Christ. On the cross, God shattered the devil’s lie that He doesn’t love us, that He restricts us. This is why the early Christians referred to the cross as ‘the shining face of the heavenly Father.’ We may have been deceived, but we are all redeemed by God through the cross and resurrection of Jesus Christ. As Saint Paul reminds us, ‘For we are driven by the love of Christ, when we realize that if one died for all, then all have died. And he died for all so that those who live should no longer live for themselves, but for him who died for them and rose from the dead.’ (2 Cor 5, 14-15)

Brothers and sisters, we have “fresh” joy from Jesus’ resurrection and his presence among us. The pinnacle of our relationship with Jesus is live participation in his sacrificial feast. Every time we receive the Holy Eucharist, we confess the Christian truth about the resurrection. We tap into the source of new life, which nothing can take away from us. We live a victorious life.