But Believe

But Believe

April 7, 2013

Second Sunday of Easter 2013 C (Divine Mercy Sunday)

By Rev. Joe McCloskey, SJ

Yet more than ever, believers in the Lord, great numbers of men and women, were added to them.  Thus they even carried the sick out into the streets and laid them on cots and mats so that when Peter came by, at least his shadow might fall on one or another of them.  Acts 5:14-15

He touched me with his right hand and said, “Do not be afraid.  I am the first and the last, the one who lives.  Once I was dead, but now I am alive forever and ever.  I hold the keys to death and the netherworld.  Write down, therefore, what you have seen, and what is happening, and what will happen afterwards.  Revelation 1:17-19

The disciples rejoiced when they saw the Lord.  Jesus said to them again, “Peace be with you.  As the Father has sent me, so I send you.”  And when he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, “Receive the Holy Spirit.  Whose sins you forgive are forgiven them, and whose sins you retain are retained.”  John 20:20b-23

Piety

Piety is the truth that we believe in the Resurrection.  There is an eternal dimension to anything we do when we act in love.  Christ claims all of the activity that flows out of our love for God.  How much of the activity of our lives flows out of our love for Christ is the measure of our piety.  Christ teaches us how to love.  We are called by the hope of the Resurrection to live all of our lives with Christ as the living force behind what we do.  The Contemplative in action is one who lets Christ have 100 percent of their activity.  We work as if everything depends on Christ.  We pray as if it all depended on us.  We know that wherever there is love God is there.  Even locked doors cannot keep Christ out in the Resurrection.  Fear is a need of Christ.  Christ appeared to them without the common limitations of the human body.  The Resurrection body does not know space limitations.  Christ is everywhere we are.  And our piety is our being with Christ with heart and soul.  Our piety touches the humanness of Christ in heaven.  It shows itself in our respect for the Sacraments that continue the humanness of Christ here on earth.

Study

We study how to find Christ in the goodness of each other.  It is a study that goes on by osmosis.  We are attracted to the goodness of each other.  There is something special in the way people give their lives for one another.  How we offer our time and energy to others reflects the love of our hearts and brings Christ into each relationship.  We are Christians because we are men and women of love.  We deserve to be called Christians by loving the same way Christ loved.  When we doubt the love of one another we are like Thomas who needed to see the wounds of Christ to believe.  In so many ways love begets love in the offer of self with no strings attached.  We move into the Christianizing of our world by giving ourselves without counting the cost or heeding the wounds of neglect.  Love is our free gift to give and it beats justice.  Justice gives to another what is deserved.  Love gives beyond what is deserved.  We are all challenged to love when we follow Christ.  Christ is like the sun of God which shines on the good and the bad alike.  When we give to even our enemies in the challenge of Christ, we become just like his love for another.

Action

We are called to be the expressions of divine mercy.  We live divine mercy when we love in each moment of our lives.  We are God’s love for one another when we put all of ourselves into what we are doing.  The Sacrament of the Present Moment puts us on duty in each breathing moment of our lives.  We try to live the moment we are in as if it were the last moment of our lives.  We know where to spend each moment by the calls of family and vocation of life.  Our real vocation is to be the presence of Christ in all that we do.  The beauty of Christ’s Resurrection is the fact that there is enough of him for all the people of the world because he lives on in us.  Goodness makes us his Mystical Body.  Blessed are we because we believe without having to see the Resurrected Christ of two thousand years ago.  He lives on in each of us.  We are the Resurrection of Christ in the love of our hearts for each other.   We are blessed because we believe without our own vision of the Resurrected Christ of two thousand years ago in the goodness of the Resurrected Christ we find in each other.