Divine Mercy Sunday (Knock Shrine)
Posted by Vincent on April 25, 2009
Knock Shrine, Co. Mayo
Introduction to the Eucharist and Homily preached by Bishop Brendan Kelly at Divine Mercy Sunday 2009 in Knock, Co. Mayo.
Introduction:
Céad fáilte go Cnoc Mhuire ar an lá aoibhinn Cásga seo!
Alleluia is our song, for we are an Easter people! We know we are saved and our destiny is Life in all its fullness, for Jesus is Risen…by the power of the Father, his power which is his Mercy…He does not hold anything in for us…let us not retain our sins ourselves, or the sin of anyone against us. Give us the grace to grasp in a new and liberating way the depth of your mercy to us, Lord, that we may in turn be merciful to each other, especially those who have sinned against us.
Homily:
Alleluia Alleluia!
Jesus said: “You believe because you can see me.
Blessed are those who have not seen and yet believe”
Alleluia!
When Jesus was on the mountain, at the beginning of his ministry, he sat down with his disciples and a great crowd of people and what he taught them was “Blessed are the poor in spirit, blessed those who mourn, blessed are the meek..” The 8 Beatitudes! We often refer to them as the ‘New Law’ given on the new mountain by the new Moses, or rather the one whom Moses imaged, – but framed in positive terms, unlike the Old Law. (‘Thou shalt not..’)
Here now at the very end of his time on earth, Jesus’ last word to them as Risen Lord, another beatitude, a ninth! Only this one is not for the disciples who saw him in the flesh, historically.
This beatitude is for US, for you and me specifically today.
“Blessed are YOU he is saying to us, who have never seen and yet believe”
And we do believe! That’s why we are here! That is our blessing! We believe in Easter, in Jesus Risen. We have not seen physically, but we believe! Just as the disciples who were full of fear and Thomas who was plagued with doubt put their fear and doubt aside and believed, not because our eyes always tell us, but because we have decided in our hearts: We have chosen belief in Jesus, as risen Lord of our lives!
All around us today there is conflict, greed, selfishness, and death. So much happening that diminishes life that takes it away…
Trócaire in their campaign this year put before us the fact that 26 million people are homeless because of conflict and war… Also the fact that 6 million children will die of starvation this year.
The hard times that have come upon us economically, bringing so much fear and doubt into many lives, have come upon us to a large degree because of greed… and lets not be too quick to point fingers. We all got caught up maybe to some degree. These are only two very blatant facts of life around us today…I could go on.
In the midst of all this nevertheless, we are believers. We are an Easter people. There is a future marked out for us. Nothing the world can do to us will quench this faith. We are here today celebrating the Passover of the Lord, for that is what the Mass is. The one who faced condemnation, deprivation of freedom, violence, abuse, scorn, contempt, hatred, most sorrowful passion and death itself is victorious over all these cruel and harsh realities. He is alive. Risen. And we are his risen people. Our trust is in the same Father. The Father all-merciful. It’s a concept we can hardly imagine. St. Faustina said “tell the whole world about his inconceivable mercy”.
(Three years before St Faustina was canonised, St Therese, the Little Flower, was declared in 1997 ‘Doctor of the Merciful love of God”… because she spoke continuously of the power of God’s mercy to restore and heal even the most hardened sinners. “Were I to commit all possible crimes”, she said, “it would be only like a drop of water in the ocean of God’s mercy”)
We don’t experience mercy often from the world. We are so easily hurt, grievously, we find it impossible to forgive. We are a hugely fragile and vulnerable people and
we build all sorts of protections around ourselves, even religious protections.
We do not expect mercy in our world…in a sense the world seems incapable of mercy or forgiveness ‘to err is human, to forgive divine’, the proverb says. We believe in the mercy of God, because we know Jesus who was condemned and suffered and died has risen and destroyed death and all death’s children… by the power of God’s mercy.
Clearly the Church is telling us, at the end of the old millennium and the beginning of the new, to announce God’s mercy in our own day… not out of fear, but with deep peace in our hearts: peace, the gift of our risen Lord in today’s gospel and his ultimate
blessing upon us.
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The word Mercy is a wonderful word.
In Latin the word is ‘misericordia’ made up of two words: the word ‘miser’ meaning ‘misery’ and “cordia” which comes from the word for ‘heart’.
So mercy or misericordia means
Having a heart for the misery of mankind, of the world.
That’s what Jesus came to reveal to us and to show us in his life, in his word above all in suffering the sorrow and passion of Calvary: That God has a heart for the misery of the world, for you and I in our misery. Jesus took on himself that misery, in all its depth. This is his mission from the Father.
St Paul says so eloquently, in the letter to the Philippians:
“He emptied himself,
taking the form of a servant…
He was humbler yet and became obedient unto death even death on a cross”- the cruellest most abject suffering, identified thus with the most despised criminal,
shamefully exposed, despised, jeered at and damned, object of scorn, contempt every possible insult, spat upon.
Jesus identified with us in our deepest misery and poverty, revealing to us that God is not absent but profoundly present when we are at the lowest point…
We come to Knock on pilgrimage…carrying our own pain or the pain and misery of others, of people we love and cherish…illness, suffering, approaching death, bad news we have received, breakage in relationships or families, pain and suffering. We come here…to the place where Mary, Jesus, and the Lamb who was sacrificed appeared in the misery of pouring rain and at a time when hunger and distress was again stalking this part of the country. They didn’t use the word “recession” in those days. But it was a recession so deep people were starving: it was a time of famine. Mary and the Lamb silently but really present to the people in their misery; they are not alone, not abandoned. Neither are we now.
Jesus as the Lamb, utterly approachable, most vulnerable of creatures, reveals the true nature of the Father. The Lamb reveals the merciful love of the heart of our God for us. Not distant or too ‘holy’ for us but with us in all our misery and failure and sin. We sometimes like to keep God at a distance It can suit us. The vision of Knock was an act of mercy from God. It was a manifestation of the His mercy for the people of this place in their misery in August 1879. It is still so for us today, lest we be tempted to lose hope.
That’s the whole story of Jesus’ life isn’t it? Over and over, he manifests the mercy of God for his people in their misery.
Remember the woman caught in adultery. The religious people, the lawyers & Pharisees wanted him to condemn her but he bent down to the ground and eventually said, “He who is without sin cast the first stone”. Jesus casts no stones for he is merciful. They slowly went away beginning with the eldest, it says, until only Jesus remained and the woman.
“Has nobody condemned you”? “Nobody”!
“Neither do I. Go and sin no more”.
In this story.. misery and the heart of God meet- MERCY!
And the woman is liberated, set free to new life.
It’s the same way in the story of the prodigal son.
The son’s misery meets the Father’s heart- MERCY- and there is resurrection and new life, there’s celebration, joy!
There is no condemnation in Jesus. There is no condemnation in the Father only merciful Love.. that calls us to love in our turn to be merciful.
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When Pope Paul 2 canonised St Faustina on April 30th 2000 he said “by this act today I pass on the message of Divine Mercy to the new millennium. I pass it on because I want people to know the better face of God and that of his Divine Mercy and through it, the better face of their brethren”.
Three years before this on Mission Sunday 1997, as I’ve already said, the same Holy Father proclaimed St Therese of Lisieux, the Little Flower, a Doctor of the church and specifically the Doctor of the Merciful Love of God. It is worth noting that Therese’s full name in religion is St Therese of the Child Jesus and of the Holy Face. ‘I want people to know the better face of God’, the Holy Father said in 2000. And the Risen Jesus calls on the apostles..to show forth this merciful face of God. In bringing forgiveness. And to be a people who see the better face of God in their brothers and sisters especially the poorest and all whose lives are miserable. People who are sinners.
“As the father sent me so I’m sending you.
Receive the Holy Spirit,
those whose sins you forgive they are forgiven;
those whose sins you retain they are retained”.
The church has always seen these words as instituting the Sacrament of Reconciliation. But they are words first of all for the ordinary everyday life of those who believe in the Risen Christ. We are people who forgive as the Father forgives us; we do not retain, hold on to the sin done to us.
We are people who are merciful as the Father is merciful.
We are people who say to the Father when we turn to him ‘Forgive our sins as we forgive those who sin against us..’
The world very often does not believe in forgiveness: we hear constant demands for retribution, for punishment, for ostracisation.
But we, like our Father, are merciful. We forgive. In our families, in our tribes, in our world. We are all called to be the living face of God’s Mercy. Never despairing of even the most depraved person.
There’s the call of the God who is merciful, the call of the Risen Jesus:
Be merciful as your heavenly Father is merciful. Show the world his face. Be that Holy face of the merciful God in the world of 2009.
We believe!.
Therefore we will, with the help of God, be merciful.
