Responsorial Psalm – Psalm 118:2-4, 13-15, 22-24
Second Reading – Revelation 1:9-11a, 12-13, 17-19
There is something fitting about the fact that the Church will be celebrating the Sunday of Divine Mercy as the first Sunday Mass without Pope Francis. Francis, of course, made mercy a hallmark of his pontificate, choosing “miserando atque eligendo” (having mercy and choosing [him]) as his motto, instituting the Jubilee of Mercy near the start of his papal ministry, and generally setting mercy as the driving force for all his work as the bishop of Rome.
As the Catholic Church mourns and remembers Francis, the notion of divine mercy provides a poignant reminder of who Francis was and all he taught. The readings for this Sunday therefore give us an opportunity to appreciate where Francis sought to steer the People of God. In particular, two dimensions of mercy stand out in this week’s readings, helpfully informing the work of being the Body of Christ in a way that is shaped by the legacy of our last pope.
First, the readings show how God’s mercy is primarily a response to need. The Gospel story of “doubting Thomas” is the prime example. Thomas displays his insecurities when he questions his friends’ testimony that they had seen the risen Christ and insists that he needs proof. When Jesus appears one week later, he does not chastise Thomas for his lack of faith but instead turns to him with compassion and says simply: If you need this material proof, you shall have it. Come, touch my wounds and know that I am truly with you.
This is an amazing scene (captured so vividly by Caravaggio’s famous painting above) showcasing the fullness of divine mercy. Jesus is moved on a deeply affective level to understand, and empathize, with Thomas’s doubts so that he can see what Thomas needs and respond to that need. Jesus offers a tremendous gift with this understanding, turning what could easily be a stumbling block to a relationship (‘How DARE you doubt me?!’) into an invitation to deeper connection.
Francis, of course, stressed this loving nature of divine mercy whenever he preached about the concept. “The mercy of God is not an abstract idea,” he stressed in his Bull of Indiction for the Jubilee of Mercy, “but a concrete reality with which he reveals his love as that of a father or a mother, moved to the very depths out of love for their child. It is hardly an exaggeration to say that this is a ‘visceral’ love” (Misercordiae Vultus, no. 6, emphasis added). The readings for this Sunday remind us what Francis emphasized, namely that God feels our pain and thus reaches out in mercy and compassion, not condemnation.
Second, the readings remind us that God’s mercy is not merely a response to need but a truly a comprehensive response to whatever we lack. The Gospel showcases Jesus’s mercy on a spiritual level, with Jesus effectively putting the spiritual works of mercy on full display. He also directly offers his followers the forgiveness of their sins and instructs them to go out into the world to forgive others, in a passage understood to be the divine inauguration of the Sacrament of Reconciliation (see Catechism of the Catholic Church, no. 1441). It is clear that mercy operates on a spiritual level.
At the same time, it is also clear in this Sunday’s readings that mercy is not confined to this spiritual plane alone. The first reading, from the Acts of the Apostles, recounts the work Jesus’s disciples did in the earliest days of their ministry after Jesus’s ascension and focuses on the “many signs and wonders…done among the people at the hands of the apostles.” These signs included miraculous healings, prompting people from all around to bring “the sick and those disturbed by unclean spirits” to see the apostles who then cured them with the power of God.
The inclusion of these signs and wonders among the readings for Divine Mercy Sunday underscores that God’s mercy is a response to needs on all our human levels. Certainly, it includes the forgiveness of sins commonly associated with the term and fully on display in the Gospel, but it also includes a no less compassionate response to the physical needs that define our human existence as well. It is for this reason that the Church promotes the corporal works of mercy alongside the spiritual works—they are two sides of the same coin and together reveal the fullness of God’s mercy.
Francis, again, has reinforced this same message, pointing to the corporal works of mercy as self-evident goods for the faithful and describing them together with the spiritual works of mercy as the space where “we put our credibility as Christians on the line” (The Name of God is Mercy, 98, 99).
For this Divine Mercy Sunday, as we mourn the passing of the Holy Father, may we take inspiration from his work as a missionary of God’s mercy in the world and strive to appreciate the fullness of Divine Mercy so that we may better imitate this gift in our lives.
