The Mercy Of God Locks Up Death And Hades Series

Sunday of Divine Mercy 2025

When the Church gets really excited about one of God’s wonderful works, She commits Liturgy over and over. So last Sunday was our celebration of Christ’s Pasch, His rising from the dead, and for the entire week we have been celebrating that same Mass every day. This octave of Easter (which, believe it or not, was once called “Low” Sunday) is like a little Easter. In fact, every Sunday of the year is like that, a new celebration of Easter. Today we hear the deacon send us forth for the last time until Pentecost with the command, “Ite Missa est, alleluia, alleluia.”

The Scriptures for the week have all begun with a pericope from the Acts of the Apostles, which summarizes the Church’s work after Pentecost. That’s just another way in which the Church shows Her excitement. We must remember, Jesus poured Himself out for us, all the way to the most shameful death, so He could vanquish sin and death, rise in a glorified body, finish the apostles’ apprenticeship over forty days, and be transformed (ascended) to sit at the right hand of the Father so He could pour out His spirit on all of us. We, then, are empowered to continue Christ’s mission of healing and teaching and praising God through the sacramental life. That is summarized in today’s reading from Acts, where we see that the faith spread so quickly that the sick sought healing just by sitting in the shadow of Peter as he passed by them on the street.

The Church gets really enthusiastic about psalm 118 all during this “Resurrection Month.” Over and over She sings about God’s ????? chesed, His steadfast love, and about Jesus as the foundation stone of His Church, the stone rejected by the Jerusalem leaders, but accepted by the Father to begin a new creation.

St. John writes in the Book of Revelation (Apocalypse) about that new creation, and He begins by introducing his seven churches, all in Asia Minor, to the risen Christ. He is the “first and the last, who died but is living forever.” He bears the keys that have locked up “Death and Hades” so that we no longer can fear dying, so that when we close our eyes for the last time here, we can look forward to seeing Our Lord in that New Life.

But we don’t need to consider our heavenly destination as the only wonderful aspect of our baptismal life in Christ. Not at all. Even after baptism we are still fallen creatures who can and do sin. So Jesus thought of everything. When He appeared to the apostles after the Resurrection, He breathed His Holy Spirit on them, and gave them the authority to hear our confession of sin, and if we are truly sorry and determined not to sin again, be sacramentally forgiven of that sin. “Whose sins you forgive are forgiven; whose sins you shall retain are retained.”

Thomas appears a week later, having doubted the tales of the Resurrection, and sees and touches the Risen Christ. We still hear his confession of faith in Jesus not just as Messiah, but as Messiah-Lord (?????? kurios) and God (?e?? theos). Many of us silently pray that during the Eucharistic prayer each Sunday when we hear the words of institution. Until Jesus comes again, this is the enduring presence of Our Lord we celebrate and consume so we may have eternal life in Him.