Deacon Mike Meyer / Monday, April 25, 2022 / Categories: Blog, Homilies Divine Mercy Homily for the Second Sunday of Easter On September 6, 2018, Dallas police officer Amber Guyger returned home after a fourteen-hour shift. Tired and distracted by a phone call, she parked her car in the garage and walked to her apartment. When she opened the door, Officer Guyger was startled by a man sitting in the living room. Ignoring police protocol, she drew her gun and shot Botham Jean twice in the chest, killing him. Botham Jean was sitting in his living room eating ice cream. Amber Guyger was in the wrong apartment. Officer Guyger was tried and convicted of murder a year later. At her sentencing, Botham Jean’s younger brother Brandt spoke to Amber from the witness stand. He forgave her and told her he loved her as a person, he wanted the best for her, and he didn’t want her to go to jail. Then, in a remarkable gesture of grace, Brandt Jean asked the court for permission to hug Amber Guyger. The judge agreed, and the two exchanged a long embrace punctuated by words of remorse and forgiveness, comfort and gratitude. Brandt Jean extended Divine Mercy to Amber Guyger. Jesus calls everyone of us to do the same. Today is Divine Mercy Sunday, the day we celebrate the great gift of God’s abundant mercy. Today’s solemnity originated in an appearance Jesus made to Polish Sister (now Saint) Faustina Kowalska on February 22, 1931, in which he asked Saint Faustina to tell the whole world about his inconceivable mercy. The Divine Mercy image we have hanging near the confessional depicts Christ as Saint Faustina saw him. So what is Divine Mercy and what’s so special about it that deserves its own day? Our readings offer some insight. In our Gospel, the disciples are terrified, hiding behind locked doors in the Upper Room for fear of persecution. Jesus appears to them and mercifully offers them peace—not just any old peace, but shalom, the eternal peace that reconciles us with God, drives away fear, and gives us the strength and courage to carry that same mercy and peace out into the world. And what happened? Our first reading from Acts tells us—filled with the peace of Christ, Peter and the disciples emerged from hiding. They freely walked about Jerusalem, preaching and curing the sick, no longer afraid of the persecution and death many ultimately would suffer. Then there’s Thomas. Thomas wasn’t with the disciples when Jesus first appeared to them, so he didn’t believe that they had seen the risen Christ. Now, we might say “too bad so sad, Thomas. That’s what you get for not sticking with your homies,” but not Jesus. Jesus mercifully returns, offers his peace blessing again, and gives Thomas the physical proof he needed. And what happened? Thomas believed. Our readings show us that mercy is the beautiful virtue that extends loving kindness, compassion, or forbearance to all in need. The Latin word for mercy, misericordia is made up of two root words: miseria, which means misery or affliction, and cor, which means heart. So the merciful carry the affliction of others in their hearts and do all they can to eliminate it. As the name suggests, we receive the gift of Divine Mercy first from God, whose “mercy endures forever.” We witness Divine Mercy in Jesus Christ, who healed the sick, made the blind see and the lame walk, and suffered, died, and rose again to free us from sin and suffering. We share Divine Mercy when we “open our eyes and see the misery of the world, the wounds of our brothers and sisters who are denied their dignity, and . . . heed their cry for help.”[1] The world cries for mercy today in so many ways, but I’d like to talk about a particular wound that demands our merciful attention: racism. Now, I’m not talking about racism because I think we’re a bunch of racists. I’ve never heard a prejudiced or bigoted word from anyone in our parish. But while our country has seen much progress over the past 60 years or so, racists and racist systems continue to disregard the God-given dignity of certain people based upon their race, they limit their opportunities and threaten their well-being and lives every day. Racism is a sin. It “divides the human family, blots out the image of God among specific members of that family, and violates the fundamental human dignity of those called to be children of the same Father.”[2] As a predominantly white parish, it can be easy for us to overlook racism—most of us have never experienced it directly, and we do our level best not to cooperate in it or perpetuate it. Racism, then, may seem like a problem that’s out there but not our problem. But we can’t forget that we have brothers and sisters right here in our parish who suffer the effects of racism every day. While many of us may not see it or hear about it, they live it. For Christians, racism is never someone else’s problem. As Saint Paul tells us, when one part of the body suffers, all the parts suffer (1 Cor. 12:26), so the absence of personal fault for racism doesn’t absolve us of responsibility for eliminating it. Racism is our problem because Jesus calls every one of us to resist and undo injustices, lest we become bystanders who tacitly endorse them and thereby share in their guilt.[3] Racism is our problem because Jesus calls every one of us to be merciful just as our Father is merciful (Lk 6:36). How do we do that? We start with a long embrace punctuated by words of remorse and forgiveness, comfort and gratitude, beginning with our brothers and sisters right here at Saint Catherine’s. We educate ourselves to better understand the suffering racism inflicts on them. We invite the Holy Spirit to kindle that spark of understanding into the flame of empathic concern, to help us feel, as best we can, the pain our friends suffer, and to welcome their affliction into our hearts. Carrying their affliction in our hearts, we’ll grow to appreciate that not cooperating in or perpetuating racism isn’t enough. We won’t tolerate it anymore; we’ll call it out for the sin that it is whenever we see it; and we’ll work to build systems that respect the God-given dignity of every person, regardless of race. With the help of Divine Mercy, we can accomplish all of this and so much more. That’s why Divine Mercy deserves its own day. Readings: Acts 5:12-16; Psalm 118; Revelation 1:9-11a, 12-13, 17-19; John 20: 19-31 [1] Francis, Misericordiae Vultus, Bull of Indiction of the Extraordinary Jubilee of Mercy (11 April 2015), 15. [2] United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, Brothers and Sisters to Us: U.S. Catholic Bishops Pastoral Letter on Racism (Washington, DC: United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, 1979), https://www.usccb.org/committees/african-american-affairs/brothers-and-sisters-us. [3] USCCB. Divine Mercy A Community of Witnesses Print 537 Please login or register to post comments.