Awesome Mercy

Homily for the Second Sunday of Easter

During the Easter Season, two particular books of the Christian Scriptures or New Testament receive priority whenever we celebrate the Eucharist. Each time we celebrate the Eucharist during this season that lasts for fifty days, we read from the Acts of the Apostles and the Gospel of St. John. In addition to these two readings, during the A cycle of the Lectionary for Sunday Mass, we also read from the first letter of St. Peter. In today’s homily, I want to focus on just a few verses from those three readings.

In today’s reading from the Acts of the Apostles, we read: “Awe came upon everyone, and many wonders and signs were done through the apostles.” The adjective “awesome” might just be one of the most overused words at this time in our history. If one understood the true meaning of the word “awe,” I doubt that we would use it so frequently as in “that was an awesome movie,” or “that was an awesome concert.” I doubt very much whether we would use the word to describe another person - as in “you are awesome.” The best definition that I could use for the word would be “fearful wonder.” We often attribute awe to our God who inspires in us a what the Scriptures call a “fear of the Lord.” In other words, truly awesome things or people would leave us at a loss for words.

The early Christian communities were overcome by awe at the thought of what God had done for them in the person of Jesus Christ. As they reflected upon the passion, death, and resurrection of Jesus, and as they realized that his sacrificial death was for our sake, they were rightly overcome with a sense of awe. God’s willingness to sacrifice his Only Begotten Son was almost incomprehensible. Truly, this was the greatest act of mercy ever displayed by our God.

This sense of awe gave rise to the opening words of St. Peter’s first letter: “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who in his great mercy gave us a new birth to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, …” Scripture scholars believe that this letter was probably a sermon of St. Peter on the occasion of a baptism. If they are correct, all of us who are baptized can echo the words of St. Peter, words which give glory to God for his great mercy for us. Through the sin of Adam, the human race had lost all access to God as symbolized by the expulsion of Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden. However, through a great plan of salvation, Jesus Christ gained us renewed access to God through baptism and faith in the Lord Jesus.

With the apostle St. Thomas in the Gospel reading from the twentieth chapter of St. John’s Gospel, when we realize the great gift of that we have been given, we fall down in worship using the very same words, “My God and my All.” In the final verse of chapter twenty, not only his Gospel but all of the Gospels of the Christian Scriptures, “Are written that you may come to believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that through this belief you may have life in his name.” Quite literally, the Paschal mystery of Jesus Christ – namely, his passion and death and resurrection – are the gift of life lived with God for all of eternity. Without this gift of faith, we would continue in our loss of access to the mercy of God.

This Sunday has become known as Mercy Sunday. Pope St. John Paul II, through the writings of St. Faustina Kowalska, instituted the Second Sunday of Easter as Mercy Sunday. God seems to have approved of this by the calling the Holy Father to himself on Mercy Sunday in 2005. As we gather to worship today, we recall and remember the great mercy that God has shown for each and every one of us by calling us to faith and to baptism and bestowing upon each of us the gift of eternal life through that faith and that baptism.