On our response to Divine Mercy: Homily for Divine Mercy Sunday, the Second Sunday of Easter 2023

Icon of St. Martin of Tours gifting half his cloak to a beggar,
via www.johnsanidopoulos.com

My dear brothers and sisters,

Today, the second Sunday of Easter, Holy Mother Church celebrates the feast of Divine Mercy. Considering the age of the Church, this feast, which was instituted only in the year 2000, is a fairly new tradition, and it is celebrated alongside another fairly ancient Christian one, that of Low Sunday. The origin of the name, Low Sunday, is uncertain, and there are two possible interpretations of this term. First, that it refers to the end of the Easter octave; as I indicated to you last week, Easter is celebrated for an octave, i.e. for eight days as if it were a single day. Low Sunday could, therefore, refer to the end of this great feast of Easter – but remember, we are in Eastertide until the great feast of Pentecost. The other possible meaning is that it refers to the day when neophytes who had been baptized at the Easter vigil, would take off the white robes, or albs, that they had been given at their baptism – hence the liturgical name for the day Dominica in albis depositis.

It is a testament to the singularity of purpose of Holy Mother Church that despite this layering, there is still a profound connection between these two commemorations.

As we just saw the white robes given to the neophytes are known as albs. Albs are what ordained ministers are always required to wear prior to donning the stole and their dalamatics, or chasubles. Now, there is a prayer that a minister is required to say prior to donning on every liturgical vestment. In the case of the alb, the white garment that goes over the cassock or the clerical clothes of the minister, the prayer to be said goes as follows:

Dealba me, Domine,

et munda cor meum:

ut in sanguine Agni dealbatus,

gaudiis perfruar sempiteris.

In English, this beautiful prayer reads as follows:

Purify me, Lord,

and cleanse my heart

so that, washed in the Blood of the Lamb,

I may enjoy eternal joys.

What is the connection between this prayer and Divine Mercy Sunday, or simply Divine Mercy? It is this, that I may be able to enjoy eternal joys, that is the remain face to face with God forever, and enjoy the beatific vision, only by being washed in the Blood of the Lamb which will purify me and cleanse my heart. It is an act of Mercy because I, or any other person, being of a sinful nature, do not deserve this gift. It is only through an act of love, an act of mercy that I, or any of us sinful children of Eve, may obtain access to eternal joys. Mercy is, after all, the act of clemency exercised by a judge over those guilty of an offence. Without Divine Mercy all we are entitled to is an eternity in Hell.

The gift of Divine Mercy, however, comes with certain obligations. We, who have benefited from this mercy, a mercy we do not merit, are now obliged to show the same mercy to others. Think of the parable of the unforgiving slave which we can find in the gospel of Matthew18:21-35; pressed to repay his debts, this slave begged for mercy since he could not repay the amount at the time. In response, the king forgave his debt. This lucky man now met a fellow slave who owed him a hundred denarii. The man now demanded payment of the debts his fellow slave owed, and when the colleague could not pay, the first slave had his fellow thrown in prison. When the king found out, he had this first slave turned over to the torturers until he could repay the debt.

The mercy we receive, we are required to show to others in turn.

This cyclical nature of mercy is captured wonderfully in a pithy saying by Saint John Chrysostom: “If you cannot find Christ in the beggar at the church door, you will not find Him in the chalice.” Show no mercy to others, and we will find no mercy from God. And remember, it is not God who denies us His mercy. God the Father has exercised His mercy by giving us His Son, who rains down His mercies on us. It is we ourselves who have placed barriers against the flow of this mercy from His Sacred Heart.

Chrysostom’s reference to the beggar at the door of the church may not be the best example for the act of mercy, because in our times, we are infected by the pettiness that is the mark of the middle-class mentality - and I refer here not to middle-class as an economic location, given that we are all, myself included, economically middle-class. Our attitude is often to throw some coins in the direction of the beggar and smugly satisfy ourselves with the idea that we are so wonderful. This is not the mercy that Chrysostom would have meant. The mercy he would have meant would have been the acts of complete faith and generosity that marked the early church as described for us today in the reading from the Acts of the Apostles.

All who believed were together and had all things in common; they would sell their property and possessions and divide them among all according to each one’s need.

It is little wonder then, that “every day the Lord added to their number those who were being saved” where as in our time almost every Easter vigil service, the time when we welcome people into the faith, is empty of those converting to the faith.

We can find another, and may I add, beautiful, insight into the operation of mercy in Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice (Act 4, Scene 1), where Portia, impersonating a lawyer, pleads to the merchant Shylock, who famously, or notoriously, demands as payment a pound of flesh.

The quality of mercy is not strain'd.

It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven

Upon the place beneath. It is twice blest:

It blesseth him that gives and him that takes.

'Tis mightiest in the mightiest; it becomes

The thronèd monarch better than his crown.

His scepter shows the force of temporal power,

The attribute to awe and majesty

Wherein doth sit the dread and fear of kings;

But mercy is above this sceptered sway.

It is enthronèd in the hearts of kings;

It is an attribute to God Himself;

And earthly power doth then show likest God's

When mercy seasons justice. Therefore, Jew,

Though justice be thy plea, consider this:

That in the course of justice none of us

Should see salvation. We do pray for mercy,

And that same prayer doth teach us all to render.

I had initially intended to unpack this beautiful reflection line by line but then realised that we would be here even longer than I intend to keep you this morning. So, I will let you hunt for the analysis of this reflection online, and there are many available, and focus on something that struck me when I was preparing for this homily.

It occurred to me that in contemporary India, Goa even, mercy is understood as weakness. This meant that I had hit a brick wall in the development of this homily. And then it hit me! If mercy is misunderstood in contemporary India, it is because, as Shakespeare points out mercy is “mightiest in the mightiest”, and that while mercy is the attribute of God, the king of kings, it is also an attribute of kings.

And that is when I asked myself the question, are we kings? The answer, is of course, a resounding No! Not because we do not have kingdoms, but because we do not handle the power that is given to each one of us, the power to administer justice, as if we were kings. And remember, each of us has been given this power, whether we are parents, who have authority of a king over the family; whether we are professionals, who exercise the magisterial duty of exercising right and just judgement in our service of others. In every action any of us do in the course of our life, regardless of our station in life, we have been given the power to make decisions, decisions that have an element of the dispensation of justice.

In a Christmas sermon way back in the 5^th century, Pope Leo the Great counselled; “O Christian, be aware of your nobility - it is God's own nature that you share: do not then, by an ignoble life, fall back into your former baseness.” Every Christian then, regardless of their status at birth, or indeed the status society may ascribe to them is noble and is obliged to live as such. Living in contemporary India, and contemporary Goa, surrounded by a base people who worship power and money, we have, in fact, fallen back into our former baseness. It is little wonder then, that we are not only unable to act like the nobility we are, and temper our justice with mercy; but worse we are unaware of the great mercy that redeemed us.

What are we to do then, on this great feast of Divine Mercy? I would say that we need to commit ourselves to cultivating in ourselves, not the cowardly behaviour of middle-class pettiness, but practices of Christian nobility, nobles who are free to do what is right and noble; nobles who seek to excel in all we do and pursue, and share this excellence with others; nobility whose lives are based on the principle of noblesse oblige, i.e. recognising that our social superiority requires us to fulfil a host of obligations, obligations that include fearlessly fighting the social injustices and the patent crimes that mark the smallest parts of our daily lives.

Allow me to close with an extract from St. Paul’s letter to the Colossians (3: 1-4):

you have been raised with Christ, seek [therefore] the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth, for you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ who is your life is revealed, then you also will be revealed with him in glory.

(A version of this homily was first preached at the 10 am Mass at the parish church of St. Thomas the Apostle, Aldona.)

 

Meeting God in His Word: Homily for Easter Sunday 2023

Detail from 'The Resurrection of Christ', Andrea Mantegna, Accademia Carrara in Bergamo, Italy.

This is the day the Lord has made; let us rejoice and be glad.

My dear brothers and sisters,

I would like to begin our reflection on this blessed Easter day with the penultimate line from the Gospel for today: “they did not yet understand the Scripture”. It has been my endeavour through these weeks of Lent to offer to you some ways in which we can understand scripture, by pointing out that the reason we look at the readings of the Old Testament is because Christ can be understood better only when we look at the New Testament in light of the Old. So that through the homilies I have proffered these past weeks, we can understand that it is not just the New Testament that speaks to us about Christ, but that the Old Testament does as well.

Everyone has a history, and a past – baggage as the hip might call it; and this history allows us to understand so much about them. So also, with Christ. Seeing how the Old Testament bears witness to Him and His concern for us, helps us understand Him that much better.

It is when we understand that His life on earth was already foreshadowed in the Old Testament, that He was the pillar of fire that went before the Israelites as they fled from Pharoah; that He was the Rock that provided waterfor them in the desert; He was the stream that watered the face of the Earth when it was empty; it is only then that we can understand the rich symbolism of Easter. How He is present in the Easter candle, He is present in the altar, and how above all, He is present in the Eucharist. He can be present in all these ways because through His death and resurrection, He is now the master of time and space. The science buffs among you will well understand this. Jesus Christ can be, and is, manifest in the past, the present, and the future, willingly able to move through time and place, and be really present in the Eucharist, the communion we receive, precisely because He has conquered death and was resurrected. He is not a prisoner of time, He is its master.

It is this mastery over time and space that also allows for “the word of God,” that is for Jesus, the Word made flesh, present in the scripture, to be as St. Paul tells us in his letter to the Hebrews (4:12)

living and active and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing until it divides soul from spirit, joints from marrow; it is able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart.

Jesus, the Christ, is able to touch us in a very physical, corporeal, visceral way, and this can happen not only through the Eucharist, which is a privileged point of contact, but also through scripture. It is for this reason that I urge you, brothers and sisters, to get to know the scripture more intimately, seeing how the two testaments speak to each other, and how Jesus can speak to you, touch you in the core of your heart, if you get to know the scripture more intimately.

I tell you this not from any bookish knowledge, from my years in the seminary, but from the time when I was far, far from it. I had started this practice, when I was still living what might be called a fairly colourful life, where the first thing I would do when I woke up, was to roll over and grab my smartphone, going not for social media, but for the daily lectionary. As time went on, I was able to see the way in which the readings interacted with each other, and before I knew it I could make out patterns, and gasp like I was discovering intimate secrets about a lover. Indeed, I look back fondly to those days because those mornings spent in bed with the lectionary were like time spent intimately engaging with a lover. All of us who have gone through it know the joys of first love, as our love grows the old, initial love is replaced, for something stronger, deeper, more mature, but we still look back with fondness, with saudades, to the heady rush of first love. On this Easter day, and for the rest of the year that follows, I wish for you this kind of an encounter for you, that you may “understand the scripture” for, in the words of Pope Benedict XVI: “Being Christian is not the result of an ethical choice or a lofty idea, but the encounter with an event, a person, which [encounter] gives life a new horizon and a decisive direction.”

Understanding the scripture, the word of God, which is His Spirit is important because it will guide us to be able to distinguish between the old yeast and the unleavened bread that St. Paul speaks about in his first letter to the Corinthians.

As St. Paul points out, we are the dough, and we must keep ourselves from being tainted by “the yeast of wickedness and malice”, so that we may become the “unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.” In fact, St. Paul is sharper, he asks that we do away with the old yeast so that we may be completely new.

Brothers and sisters, our situation in contemporary Goa, and India, is like dough in a kitchen that is completely tainted by the yeast of wickedness and malice. Indeed, wickedness and malice have become the standards through which success is measured. It is all around us, and precisely because it is all around us we are all tainted by this wicked and malicious yeast. Not one of us is untainted by this yeast, and as St. Paul tells us, “Do you not know that a little yeast leavens all the dough?”

There was a time when in Goa the distinction was between Catholics and non-Catholics. In many ways it was a Catholic morality that was dominant. And what a good thing it was. There was a moral clarity, as compared to the moral jugaad that is the norm today. Everything is negotiable and relative. I am not saying that Goan Catholics were saints, far from it, but there was a moral clarity by which people could be judged, by which we could judge ourselves.

This clarity that was so much a feature of the Goa of old did not emerge from some kind of imposition, nor indeed demographic dominance, but through the upright example offered by Catholics in their daily lives. Today, for the same Catholics, anything goes, the cornerstone that was Christ has been rejected.

I would at this point like to compliment the men in this assembly who have come to Mass dressed in a suit, a jacket, or a tie.  Through your dress you have underlined the fact that this is no ordinary day to be treated casually, but the greatest feast in the Christian calendar. You offer to those around you, clarity.

This clarity is abandoned today for the worship of fame, power, money, and above all by the worship of that great false goddess, the nation. As I have said before, the pursuit of none of these, fame, power, money, even work for the nation, is not bad, indeed, they could be very good, but when they are offered worship, worship that is due only to God, this is where things start going wrong.

How do we recover this moral clarity? Or in other words, how do we return to new, and full, life? The answer is a deep and genuine friendship with the Risen Christ. Go to Him in your love for His scripture, and He will reward you with His spirit which will animate your life. Go to Him regularly in the Eucharist and the scripture will act like the double-edged sword that St. Paul promises us that it is, cutting out that wicked and malicious yeast that allows for a cancerous morality to grow in all of us.

It is only when we do at least the two of these Christian actions that we will be able to be act like St. Peter and echo his words in the extract from the Acts of the Apostles today:

He commissioned us to preach to the people

and testify that he is the one appointed by God

as judge of the living and the dead.

To him all the prophets bear witness,

that everyone who believes in him

will receive forgiveness of sins through his name.

This Easter season let us commit ourselves to new lives, actively rejecting the yeast of malice and wickedness that fills our world, and in the process saving the world for Christ. May God bless you all in this noble endeavour, alleluia.

 (A version of this homily was first preached at the parish church of St.Thomas the Apostle, Aldona on 9 April 2023.)