Scripture Reflections for the Second Sunday of Easter, Sunday of Divine Mercy
Year B, Lectionary 44
The resurrected Christ shows up to his followers offering peace. Not hate or judgment but peace. Jesus comes to a community of believers who may have doubts but works within us so that we can move ahead together in building up the Kingdom of God. Only as a community working together can we express and spread the love of a crucified Christ to the world.
Hate feeling lost on Sundays at church? Searching for a better explanation of the Bible than what you hear from your pastor's sermon? Check out the following collection of audio, video, and text commentaries from various Christian experts for a better understanding of today's scripture that deal with: Almsgiving • Baptism • Believe • Blessing • Blood • Charity • Church • Commandment • Community • Creation • Darkness • Death • Disciple • Door • Doubt • Doubting • Easter • Eucharist • Evil • Faith • Fear • Forgive • Forgiveness • Grace • Greed • Healing • Holy Spirit • Hurt • Inclusion • Journey • Joy • Justice • Light • Love • Mercy • Mission • Need • Peace • Poverty • Praise • Reconciliation • Relationship • Resurrection • River • Sacrament • Sight • Sign • Sin • Thanksgiving • Thomas • Unity • Want • Water • Witness • Wounds •
“Unity is a mark of the authentic apostolic Church and Luke expresses that by saying that they were ‘of one heart and one mind’”
“The commandments at the end of the day are not rules to be kept, they are the ways we love God or love our neighbor”
“maybe your doors are locked. And maybe in locking that door you think we can keep, keep all the bad out. And yet Jesus walks through that door.”
“if you want to be close to the risen Lord you must be close to the community whom God has put you with, the closer you are to community the closer you are to the risen Lord”
“In a very real way Thomas literally was expressing what those apostles had been feeling the moment before Jesus had come through that door…Thomas was willing to say what the other folks were thinking but maybe didn’t have the courage to say.”
“this is how you encounter the resurrected Christ: Community. By staying in community...those whom God has placed in your life. You stay close to them, you stay close to community and you will be close to the resurrected Christ.”
“what Jesus is doing here is in a sense inaugurating once again the new creation but in this case the power that's being revealed to that action is not the sacrament of baptism...but here it's the power to forgive and retain sins”
“life is worth living because Christ lives and he lives in us”
“John is subtly saying in the book of Genesis we have the story of God’s creation of the world, this gospel that you are now reading is about God’s re-creation of the world. Or perhaps, the bringing of present creation into line with the original design of God, a design that up until now has been thwarted by human sin.”
“I have been inside the empty tomb but I have grown to have faith in the resurrection through the witness of others, of those who profess the resurrection but do not deny the reality of Good Friday. I need the whole of the Paschal mystery.”
“What scars on us will tell the story that we fought the good fight and we conquered? What marks are we going to show to him that these are signs of a true discipleship?”
“they were joyful but they had a hard time grasping and really believing what they were seeing. That Jesus was in their midst. It wasn't simply that Jesus had risen from the dead but that Jesus was again and again showing this ability to overcome the limitations of flesh and bone.”
“and where does Thomas find Jesus? In Church. Not in the building, not in the Cathedral. Among people. Church. The Church is fundamentally first and foremost a people.”
“According to the Gospel of John then, Jesus is the original apostle because he's the one sent from the Father and so when he sends out his apostles we can't treat their authority and their teaching as if, 'well that's different, you know, than Jesus'”
“let us follow Ignatius' example and his exhortation that we should name, like Thomas, the very things that we need. What is it that you need to experience the resurrected Lord in your life right now? And second be ready to receive whatever the Lord has to give you even if it's not exactly what you think you need”
“Anyone who apologizes is the stronger one for it is easier not to apologize than to swallow your pride and say you are sorry. The one who forgives is the stronger one for it is easier to get revenge than to forgive.”
“There is a natural human impulse to hide our wounds. They make us seem weak or needy or maybe even unlovable. We have a desire to present the best of ourselves, hide our imperfections and conceal any painful or shameful past experiences but Jesus models just the opposite.”
“a week after Easter has the resurrection made a difference in your life?”
“expect the resurrected in the unexpected. In our simple, mundane, everyday living.”
“When we show mercy to others, we're showing mercy to Jesus. And when we receive mercy, we're receiving mercy from Jesus. So our focus should be on him.”
“I don't think we should really refer to this just as 'doubting Thomas.' We should call it 'doubting and believing Thomas.'”
“Dear friends, we are all called to be credible witnesses of Christ in the world, announcing that we have seen the Lord not only through our words but in the kinds of communities we build and create”
“And faith, like any journey, experiences obstacles and setbacks. Confusion and wrong turns. There are misunderstandings and we get lost. Like all journeys, faith takes time and we need directions. And faith, like many journeys, is both an outward and an inner journey. And like all journeys, there is a destination.”
“if we truly believe that Jesus is risen and that Jesus is now in everyone we relate with then it should show in the attention we give to all those we meet, it should show in how we attend to the needs of others”
“The more we believe in the power of the resurrection, the more we are aware of who we are, the more we are aware of whose we are, the less will the world be able to decide for us when to be happy and how to be happy”
“Although many scholars paint Jesus's response to Thomas as one tinged with shame and rebuke, Jesus is in reality giving Thomas what he needs for faith, as Jesus did for his beloved followers throughout the Gospel and does for all of us”
“we are all Thomases because we too have to look a little bit harder to see the risen Jesus. We weren't there when he came to the upper room for the first time.”
