Scripture Reflections for Second Sunday of Easter, Sunday of Divine Mercy

🙶 Hidden wounds do not heal. Can we offer these to God, allow ourselves to be touched, to experience mercy, to offer mercy? 🙷

Sr. Connie Krautkremer, MM. "Divine Mercy Sunday." Maryknoll Office for Global Concerns. April 24, 2022

🙶 Let us not only remember and give thanks for those people in our lives who, like Mary, remind us to love and serve the weakest and most forgotten, but also let us consider how we can love the forgotten and unloved in our own lives 🙷

Christine Bodewes. "Divine Mercy Sunday." Maryknoll Office for Global Concerns. April 11, 2021

🙶 A key consequence of Christian belief is asking for forgiveness from God and our neighbours, and in turn, offering that forgiveness to those who offend against us 🙷

Fr. David McLean. "A Message of Mercy." Torch. April 6, 2021

🙶 these marks remain, to be reminded that the resurrection does not wipe away the crucifixion but completes it, as Christ has not come back unharmed to this life, but rather has gone forward, indelibly marked with the signs of his self-giving love, into the new kind of life that began with his resurrection 🙷

Fr. Richard Ounsworth. "Moulded in His Image." Torch. April 16, 2020

🙶 If only we realized just how astonishing the resurrection is, we might spend more time thinking about it. Not since the dawn of creation has anything so significant happened. 🙷

Fr. Robert Verrill. "Doubt No Longer." Torch. April 24, 2019

🙶 just as with the ugliness of Christ on the Cross, so is the ugliness of our lives. But in all my faults and sin – I believe that Jesus will be there beyond that threshold, showing me, showing all of us that believe in Him that He is real and that Heaven is real, that eternal life is real, and that His Divine Mercy is real. 🙷

Joseph LaCombe. "What Do You See?." A Catholic Moment. April 8, 2018

🙶 it is because God has freely given the gift of faith – something we have not earnt and never could – that we are able to profess Christ’s resurrection 🙷

Fr. Gregory Pearson. "Invitation to Blessedness." Torch. April 3, 2018

🙶 by being Easter people, renewed with hope, we can turn divisiveness to unity, hate to love, and fear to hope. Just as the disciples set out to carry on Jesus’s ministries, we too can be the prophets our time calls us to be by speaking out against injustice, working in community, and living simply. 🙷

Chloe Schwabe. "Second Sunday of Easter." Maryknoll Office for Global Concerns. April 23, 2017

🙶 What matters is not how much or how strongly we believe but that we do believe. It matters that we remember those times when God has been present to us, revealing that there is more to life than betrayal, war, violence, hatred, greed, selfishness and power-seeking. 🙷

Fr. Anthony Axe. "Lord, Help My Unbelief." Torch. April 26, 2014

🙶 Abraham, our father in faith, answered God’s call, and travelled with hope of the promise God had given him, that he would become the father of many nations. The Church travels in hope with the promise of everlasting life with God. 🙷

Fr. Robert Pollock. "Seeing and Believing." Torch. April 7, 2013

🙶 Thomas was not a man who was lacking in courage or commitment to his Lord...He questioned in order that he might understand and believe. And once he understood, his surrender to the truth was total: ‘My Lord and my God’. 🙷

Fr. Thomas Skeats. "Help My Unbelief." Torch. April 14, 2012

🙶 We do not touch Christ’s pierced hands, but in baptism Christ himself acts, and he touches us with his pierced hands. In baptism we receive the grace of true faith, which makes our belief in the Lord reasonable. 🙷

Fr. Benjamin Earl. "Blind Faith?." Torch. April 10, 2010

🙶 Indeed the regular confession of our venial sins helps us to form our conscience, fight against evil tendencies, let ourselves be healed by Christ and progress in the life of the Spirit 🙷

Fr. Rudolf Loewenstein. "Progress in the Life of the Spirit." Torch. April 15, 2007

🙶 So there is a hidden irony in this passage. Thomas refuses to be touched by what his fellow disciples recount but still wants to touch the living Christ. He shuts his ears to the truth and yet, in a way his own words testify that he eagerly yearns to believe. 🙷

Fr. John Kenrick. "The Touch of the Word." Torch. April 23, 2006

🙶 Is our faith, then, really faith in other people, as fallible as ourselves (so we might think) and a good deal less educated? Actually, no. Our faith is in God alone: faith is assent to God and trust in him. 🙷

Fr. Aidan Nichols. "Experiencing the Risen Word." Torch. April 3, 2005

🙶 Eternal life is a depth of knowing and loving, in which we dwell in God and God dwells in us. It is to know God just as God so completely and perfectly knows himself. It is to love God just as God so completely and perfectly loves himself. 🙷

Fr. Simon Gaine. "Believe and Rejoice!." Torch. April 18, 2004

🙶 Peace puts an end to fear, peace puts an end to anger about the present and anxiety about the future, peace reassures us of God’s love and friendship 🙷

Fr. Austin Milner. "The Peace of Reconciliation." Torch. April 27, 2003

🙶 the peace of Christ is something alive and active, something liberating and dynamic...it does not grant us an immunity to pain and suffering, or even death, rather it enables us to face all these painful realities and triumph over them in union with the victory of Christ himself 🙷

Fr. Thomas Kearns. "Peace be with you." Torch. April 22, 2001

"Today is Divine Mercy Sunday and the readings make reference to God’s mercy, the necessity for trusting Faith, and our need for the forgiveness of our sins. The opening prayer addresses the Father as “God of everlasting Mercy.” In the Responsorial Psalm (Ps 118), we repeat several times, “His mercy endures forever!” God revealed His mercy, first and foremost, in sending His only-begotten Son to become our Savior and Lord through His suffering, death and..."

Father Lawrence Obilor. "The resurrection. A story of God’s mercy." A Catholic Moment. April 11, 2021

"Behind the readings for this Sunday lies a Gospel text which is never read, but whose influence is felt and whose concepts and images serves as a link between the texts that are read. That passage is John 19:34: The blood and water flowing from the side of Christ is the background for the Divine Mercy image seen by St. Faustina. This “river” that flows out from the side of Christ is understood in the..."

John Bergsma. "Divine Mercy Sunday." The Sacred Page. April 10, 2021

"The first meeting between the Risen Lord Jesus and his disciples St Peter is not given to us in the Scriptures. Peter had never denied that Jesus was the Christ, The Son of God , but had denied three times that he Peter was a disciple of Jesus. We are not allowed access to the intimacy of that meeting. Yet it is referred to quite prominently in the Scriptures: the disciples coming back from Emmaus..."

Fr. John Farrell. "Communities of Mission and Mercy." Torch. April 7, 2015

🙶 Here we see not a group of individuals but a community baptised into Christ and through the gift Holy Spirit reflecting the image of God’s son. They testify to the Resurrection not just by words but by what they do. They share what they have. Their possessions become a symbol of their resurrection faith. 🙷

Fr. David Sanders. "Who Can Overcome the World?." Torch. April 19, 2009