Bishop Glen John Provost
Bishop of Lake Charles
Homily for Second Sunday of Easter
Divine Mercy Sunday
Sunday, March 30, 2008
Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception
"Put your finger here and see my hands, and bring your hand and put it into my side." John 20:27
I recall once someone saying that what he remembered about his mother best were her hands. It was her hands that held him as child, her hands that dressed his injuries, her hands that prepared his meals, her hands that stroked his head when he was injured, and her hands that took his into hers when she taught him to pray. Hands tell us a great deal about people too, the coarse hands roughened by work, the smooth hands of an artist, the steady hands of a surgeon, or the nimble hands of a seamstress.
How appropriate that Christ in His Divine Mercy be pictured with His hands shaped the way they are! One hand is raised in blessing. From the earliest centuries of Christian art, Christ has been pictured this way, with fingers raised. Ancient Roman sources (e.g. Quintilian Inst. Orat. XI and Cicero Orator XXV) tell us that this gesture symbolized that the speaker was speaking definitively. A judge raised his hand in this way to give a verdict, an orator to make a point, a witness to take an oath. The other hand is pointed towards the heart. Jesus seems to be saying, my heart is definitively opened to you. Consider what the hands of Jesus tell us in the Gospel today.
Jesus has already appeared to His apostles following the Resurrection. However, Thomas was absent. When the other apostles tell Thomas of Jesus' appearance, Thomas responds, "Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands and put my finger into the nailmarks and put my hand into his side, I will not believe" (John 20:25). Thomas sounds like the typical skeptic of today. His demand to see so that he can believe is the demand of the person for whom the only real knowledge is scientific. But let us not be too hard on Thomas. Thomas wants to touch the hands that were nailed to the cross. He wants to feel the hands that cured the lepers, healed the paralytics, and gave sight to the blind. Thomas wants his faith restored.
The opportunity comes a week later. Jesus appears again and challenges Thomas saying, "Put your finger here and see my hands, and bring your hand and put it into my side" (John 20:27). There are Jesus' hands again. They are the hands of invitation. Jesus invites with His hands to touch and "not be unbelieving, but believe" (John 20:27).
Jesus in His Divine Mercy is an invitation, and He does so with His hands. Just as the hands tell us a great deal about anyone, about Jesus they tell us everything about His mercy. The hands are open, accepting, unconditional. It is this that the world has need of today. Human beings need to be reminded of the love that God has for them, because true conversion is brought about in love.
It is no small matter that in His first Resurrection appearance to His apostles as a group, Jesus says, "Whose sins you forgive are forgiven them, and whose sins you retain are retained" (John 20:23). Jesus is not only giving to His Church the legacy of the Sacrament of Penance. He is also reassuring us that His Divine Mercy flows forth from the mystery of His being.
Pope Benedict XVI reminds us of this message in his first encyclical "Deus caritas est." He quotes St. Augustine, who in his treatise on the Trinity writes, "If you see charity, you see the Trinity" (VIII, 8, 12). Our Holy Father comments, "The Spirit, in fact, is that interior power which harmonizes (the believers') hearts with Christ's heart and moves them to love their brethren as Christ love them, when he bent down to wash the fee of the disciples (cf. John 13:1-13) and above all when he gave his life for us (cf. John 13:1, 15:13)". The Spirit that Jesus breathes His apostles is the Spirit He breathed on the cross, when in a great act of love His death unleashed the completion of redemptive work for the sins of mankind. This the world must understand.
Thus, the hands of doubt in Thomas are invited to touch the hands of faith in Christ. In the hands of Christ, which could not be touched without love, Thomas finds the faith that eluded his grasp.
How often have we seen the hardened sinner or the most stubborn skeptic melt before the power of love? For when all the rational arguments in the world could not convince him of the truth of what Jesus said, it was the opened hands of God's love that awakened a hidden love that the sinner never before had known. Praised be Jesus Christ that allows His Church to be the instrument of that converting love. Love became the only proof needed. When one loves, then little proof is necessary.
The hands of Divine Mercy tell us everything about a love. It is a love that transforms doubt into faith, a love that invites a hand to touch so that hearts can be transformed. This is the Mercy that moves mountains and inspires saints, that brings repentance and forgives sins, that gives body over to be burned and sells all that it owns to give all away. It is a Mercy so compelling that a commandment becomes a work of love, a joy rather than a burden. It is about this quality of Mercy that every spiritual writer has spoken and to which every saint has responded. It is expressed most exquisitely to me in an ancient English poem: "My God, I love thee - though there were/ No heaven for me to win,/ No hell to punish those who dare/ Against thy love to sin.... And shall the fear of hell below/ Or hope of heaven above/ Be all the reason heart can know/ This loving Lord to love?/ The love that asks not anything/ Love like thy own love free/ Jesus, I give..."