Divine Mercy Sunday 2019
 
Dear Brothers and Sisters, as evening approached on Easter Sunday, Jesus came and stood among His disciples and greeted them with Peace.  He then showed them His hands and His side.  And although He still visibly bore the terrible wounds inflicted on His Sacred Body by the sins of the world, He revealed them now not as rebuke to humanity but as an offer of the kind of lasting peace that only He could give. 
 
He had been sent by His Father to forgive the sins of the world and now, in the strength of the Holy Spirit, He was sending them, His Church, to forgive the sins of all humanity in His name until He comes again.
 
The Scriptures show how the Church was faithful to the Lord’s command to bring His peace and mercy to the world. 
 
So Peter, in his turn, becomes an instrument of the mercy of Jesus and, just as the grâce flowing from the glorious wounds of Jesus brings peace to His Church, so now Peter’s shadow, as it passes over the expectant crowds and touches their tormented souls, cures all those gathering from many nations.
 
So, too, Saint John, now exiled on the island of Patmos for witnessing to Jesus as Lord, is content to suffer there for the Lord’s Kingdom, in order to spread the peace and mercy of the Lord around the world.   The Lord now appears to him in a Divine Image, dressed in a long robe tied at the waist with a golden girdle and directs him to write down a diary of present happenings and things that are still to come.  Those happenings would be both terrible and glorious; about a Male Child, brought forth by a Woman and besieged by the Evil One, Who would nonetheless be spared to rule all the nations; about how the Archangel Michael would defeat the Devil, conquering him by the Blood of the Lamb, and throwing him down to earth; and about about how the Devil, angry with the Woman, would make war on Her offspring who bear testimony to Jesus, knowing his time was short.
Since the beginning of this third millennium and the Jubilee Year 2000, this second Sunday of Easter has been established as Divine Mercy Sunday.  In instituting this Universal Feast at the canonisation of Saint Faustina, Saint John Paul called the witness to the Divine Mercy a gift of God for our time.  He was conscious of the diabolical events which had bewildered the world in the twentieth century, in its great wars and the horrible sufferings caused to millions of people by its misguided ideologies, much like those Saint John was asked to write down of things still to come.  Those who witnessed such chapters of man’s inhumanity to man kn e w well how necessary was the message of mercy.   The Pope noted Jesus’ advice to Faustina that, ‘ Humanity will not find peace until it turns trustfully to divine mercy’.   
 
It was the twentieth century’s technological progress, allied to wicked ideologies that denied God, that had brought the world such catastrophy, and that had wreaked such unheard of harm on humanity and its nations.  Pope John Paul had seen with his own eyes how it had brought no lack of painful experiences.  And so, it should not be human progress or political ideals but, rather, the love of God that must inspire humanity today, if we were to face the crisis of the meaning of life, the challenges of many diverse needs , and our duty to defend the dignity of every human person.
 
In these same times the Holy Spirit intervened to inspire both the revelation of Jesus’ Divine Mercy to Saint Faustina and the apparitions of Our Lady to the pastorinos at Fatima.   He revealed to them how our world is in a spiritual battle, with Satan waging war on the souls of peoples and nations.  Pope John Paul, mindful of his own expériences and of these revelations of our times, understood how: The grave challenges confronting the world at the start of this new Millennium needed some intervention from on high, capable of guiding the hearts of those governing the destinies of nations, to give reason to hope for a brighter future.  In Rosarium Virginis Mariae he pointed to Our Lady of the Rosary as the One Who would win this intervention from on High.  
 
The first anniversary of Rosary on the Coast falls today, on Divine Mercy Sunday, as if devotion to Our Lady of Fatima is leading us to the Feast of Mercy of Her Son!   We hope our worship and devotion today can be rasied up in one great effort of prayer for God’s Mercy for Our British Isles, now in our hour of need, and in the years to come.
 
Pope John Paul reminds the Church that the revelation of the Divine Mercy is not a new message but that it is, nonetheless today, a gift of special enlightenment which the Lord wished to return to the world , to illumine the way for the men and women of the third millennium and to help us live the Gospel of Easter more intensely, so as to offer it as a ray of light to the men and women of our time.   
 
It is the whole message that comes to us from the W ord of God on this Second Sunday of Easter.   Indeed, the Liturgy of this Sunday, now Divine Mercy Sunday, indicates the path of mercy which renew s the relationship of each person with God , as well as frater nity among nations.  Christ shows us that mercy has many paths , and not only forgives sins , but reaches out to all human needs , ben ding over to every kind of human poverty, material and spiritual.  Whenever we look with new eyes on our brothers and sisters, with an attitude of unselfishness and solidarity, of generosity and forgiveness , a ll this is mercy!
 
The Lord sends out His Church with a consoling message addressed, above all, to those afflicted by harsh trial s or crushed by the weight of the ir sins, and who are tempted to despair. To them we offer the gentle face of Christ so that the rays from H is H eart touch them , shine upon them, warm them , show them the way and fill them with hope. How many souls have we seen consoled by the prayer, ‘ Jesus, I trust in you .’
 
We pray to Saint Faustina and to Saint John Paul, a gift of God to our time and to the whole Church, to obtain for us an awareness of the depth of divine mercy; to have a living experience of it and to bear witness to it among our brothers and sisters so that our Church can spur on sinners to conversion, calm rivalries and hatred , and open nations to the practice of brotherhood.
 
May God bless our prayers today in this blessed Hour of God’s mercy for our Church and world, each in so much need today, but even more beloved of our Risen Lord, the Same yesterday, today and forever.
 
Jesus, I Trust in You