The Catholic Church - House of Divine Mercy

Second Sunday of Easter (or Sunday of Divine Mercy)

Reading 1 - Acts 2:42-47

Reading 2 - 1 Pt 1:3-9

Gospel - Jn 20:19-31

In Johns Gospel we see the Apostles not in a state of celebration upon seeing the risen Christ, but instead we see them in a state of confusion, grief, shame and blame.

After discovering Christs tomb empty John and Peter don’t go out to preach the gospel in Jerusalem like Jesus instructed them to. They run and hide in the upper room. They feared that those who crucified Jesus and now apparently taken His body will be coming after His disciples next.

When Jesus reveals Himself to them they are afraid of Him. Jesus responds by saying Shalom, meaning peace, but then He does something interesting by breathing on them. This is to show them that He is real and not a hallucination; He has air in His lungs. But the divine breath goes all the way back to the book of Genesis. After God creates the heavens and the earth, he creates Adam. Adam becomes animated by the holy breath God breathes into his nostrils.

The breath of God, the word of God, the Holy Spirit; experiencing these send us on mission. But we find in the book of John that Jesus’ disciples have gone exactly nowhere. Jesus was trying to establish the Holy Church but John and Peter have hunkered down in the upper room.

The mission of the Church is to forgive sins. The Easter season is about new beginnings. Jesus Christ, God Incarnate, the new Adam, went into the depths of our humanity and thus into the depths of our sin and was sacrificed on the cross so we may all have a new beginning and new life in His divine love and mercy.