This week’s readings:
- Acts 4:32–35
- Psalm 118:2–4, 13–15, 22–24
- 1 John 5:1–6
- John 20:19–31
What this week’s readings say to me:
This week’s readings provide a variation on the truth that conversion and growth are ongoing processes. I would express the variation that’s introduced today like this: Easter isn’t just one day. Liturgically, it’s a fifty-day season, just as Lent is a forty-day one. Life is a recurring cycle of Lenten seasons and Easter seasons with seasons that connect one to the other. These between seasons called “Ordinary Time” offer gifts of their own that, perhaps, I don’t always recognize. Life presents a series of highs and lows. We don’t get to summits directly from valleys and vice-versa. We can’t teleport ourselves from one to the other. Moving in either direction is a gradual and often painful process.
On this year’s encounter, this week’s readings say to me that the Easter season presents a process. Last week, we read that on the first Easter morning, Jesus’ followers saw the empty tomb with only their physical eyes — at least that’s how I interpreted last week’s Gospel passage. In this week’s Gospel passage, Jesus helps those who have locked themselves away after running from the empty tomb to develop their spiritual sight. The first way He does this is by letting them see His resurrected body with their physical sight. Second, He gives them his spirit so they can use it to carry the Easter message beyond their group.
He sends them to take part in reconciling His brothers and sisters to Himself and to each other. He tells them that the process of reconciliation isn’t cosmetic work or lip service. It requires action on the part of both the one who forgives and the one seeking forgiveness. It also requires openness of heart and willingness to support with a combination of honesty and compassion others who want to make difficult changes in their lives. While the passage shows Jesus’ first followers getting the physical proof and spiritual support they need to move beyond the locked doors, it also offers encouragement to the disciples who wait beyond those doors and in the future. “Blessed are those who have not seen and have believed,” John 20:29 says.
The second reading reminds us what it means to follow Jesus and offers further encouragement to His disciples:
In this way we know that we love the children of God when we love God and obey his commandments. For the love of God is this, that we keep his commandments. And his commandments are not burdensome, for whoever is begotten by God conquers the world. And the victory that conquers the world is our faith. Who indeed is the victor over the world but the one who believes that Jesus is the Son of God?
1 John 2-6
The message I’m getting is that the way of the Trinity doesn’t keep people who follow it behind spiritual locked doors. The Trinity helps us see healthy guardrails and giving, not as deprivations but as gains. Giving and living within guardrails are the ways to receive and to share the unending mercy the psalm praises. The first reading describes what living that mercy look liked for the early church. That passage brings to my mind the corporal works of mercy and the spiritual works of mercy and how the two types of works are inextricably linked to each other. We are called to take part in these works, to do our part in helping the world experience that “[God’s] mercy endures forever” (Psalm 118:4).
What someone else is sharing about this week’s readings:
Layla A. Karst shares that this week’s readings explore “what it means to be church.”
Beyond this week’s readings:
It’s easy to read that ” his commandments are not burdensome, for whoever is begotten by God conquers the world. And the victory that conquers the world is our faith” (1 John: 3-4) But I’d be lying if I wrote that it felt true. I don’t know about all of you, so I’ll speak for myself. Hanging onto can feel burdensome when I’m surrounded by so many events that test faith. And taking part in the spiritual and corporal works of mercy can feel burdensome because they ask me to get out of my comfort zone, to put the basic needs of others ahead of my own wants, to risk being criticized or rejected. The part of my nature that isn’t in union with God’s doesn’t want to do these things, so the necessity of doing them can feel burdensome — even though I feel lighter after doing them.
Lord, help me to accept the crosses You call me to carry for my own sake, for the sake of my brothers and sisters, and for the natural world You’ve given me the privilege of caring for. Because You accepted Your cross, died, and rose from the dead, I can find new life by carrying my crosses, by helping others carry theirs, and by accompanying others into the life of communion and dignity You intend for all of us to have. Thank You.
Give me the courage to trust in Your mercy so that I can seek it, receive it, and share it. Help me to embrace and to extend mercy in all its forms.
Thank You for being with me both in times of faith and doubt and in situations in which I experience a mixture of both. Amen.
Work cited (but not linked to)
Confraternity of Christian Doctrine, Inc. “Divine Mercy Sunday (Second Sunday) of Easter 7 April 2024: Readings at Mass.” The New American Bible, 2001. Universalis for Windows, Version 2.187, Universalis Publishing Ltd., 6 March. 2024, https://universalis.com/n-app-windows.htm.