Where Mercy Resides

Homily for the 2nd Sunday of Easter (Divine Mercy):

Where is Mercy? And what exactly does Mercy look like? If you’ve encountered Mercy how would you know? And, if asked about it, how would you articulate your own experience of Mercy?

I would like to suggest, on this 2nd Sunday of Easter, also known as Divine Mercy Sunday, that our gospel passage from John today gives us the definitive answer to all those questions. The “where,” the “what,” and the “how” of Mercy is all found in the Wounds of Christ’s Resurrected Body!

It has always been a question that has fascinated me, intellectually yes, but more importantly spiritually: Why does the Resurrected Jesus return with the wounds of crucifixion still evident in his flesh? Remember, Jesus was not just resuscitated from death to life like Lazarus, but Jesus was resurrected: utterly transformed yet utterly the same, in a totally NEW life. Yet the wounds remain. The marks of crucifixion matter somehow beyond this life. They mark out the reality of Mercy. They are where Mercy resides. And we are reminded that Mercy is not just something God does, or Jesus does… It’s who God is… It’s who Christ is!

So then what about our wounds? Wounds in these still not yet resurrected bodies. They are our School of Mercy.

Take Thomas for example. His wounds are not apparent, that is they are not marks on his flesh, but rather they reside as painful fractures in his spirit and in the sorrowful breaking of his heart. These wounds could easily do Thomas in. These wounds could turn him into a man who will never take the risk of believing again; a man who will never take the risk of loving again. He could become a cynic. A hardened man closed off to the lessons, though painful but deeply beautiful, which the School of Mercy requires.

This is why the Resurrected Christ invites Thomas to probe his wounds, because in his Wounds in a Resurrected Body, Thomas not only finds his own woundedness there, but he finds that woundedness utterly transformed and healed. But Thomas too will still carry those wounds, but now they don’t fester as delusion and despair, rather they become portals of Mercy, entry points for Compassion.

So what about us? Are we willing to see our own woundedness as necessary lessons in the School of Mercy? Are we willing to find our wounds in Christ’s wounds and in finding our wounds in the Wounds of a Resurrected Body, allow them to be transformed in us to we too can become portals of Mercy and entry points of Compassion in the world?

For us the wounds are very real, just as death is very real, just as sin is very real, just as darkness is very real. But what are we assured of right at the very beginning of John’s Gospel? In the Prologue we are told: “The light shines in the darkness and the darkness does NOT OVERCOME it.”

Mercy resides in those places in each of us where we know the reality of our wounds, but they do not overcome us; where we know the reality of darkness, but it does not overcome us; where we know the reality of our own sin, but it does not overcome us; where we know the reality of death, but it does not overcome us. From that place Mercy spills out of us into a world so desperately in need. And we become warmer, more tender, more loving, more giving, more human, more the particular man or woman God created us to be.

As disciples of the Risen Christ, let us follow Thomas’ example, let us reach out and find our own woundedness in the wounds of Christ… as Wounds in a Resurrected Body. And let them be utterly transformed into a Home for Mercy.