In Mercy, Hope!

A Homily for Divine Mercy Sunday & In Memory of Pope Francis

Pope Francis once remarked: “Let the church always be a place of mercy and hope.” If you recall, back in 2013, the pontificate of Pope Francis began with the Year of Mercy. This past week it ended with his death right in the heart of the Jubilee Year of Hope. So, perhaps it is fair to say an enduring legacy of Pope Francis can be summed up with the simple phrase: In Mercy, Hope!

I have always been fascinated by the Resurrection Narratives across the 4 gospels, narratives we’ve been hearing once again these Easter Days. And what has always captured my imagination is how the Risen Body of Christ still bears, and is identified by, the wounds of his crucifixion. If Jesus is raised to a totally transformed and utterly new life: Why must his body still bear the wounds of suffering and death? Why is he primarily identified and recognized by his wounds?

I believe this is because the Resurrected Body of Christ is the embodiment of the truth at the heart of our own lived experience of faith: In Mercy alone do we find Hope.

Pope Francis also once said that, “Mercy is the closeness of God to his people.” That closeness, I believe, is best expressed in a shared woundedness. But not a wallowing in woundedness, but rather a transformed woundedness. It is as if the Risen Christ, by his wounds, is telling each of us: “I am close to you in your woundedness and I desire nothing more than to draw you close to me by those wounds and transform them into new life! And then I ask you to bear that transformed woundedness in the world by drawing close to those who are also most in need of healing.” And it is out of this closeness of Mercy then that true Hope is born.

And Hope, then, as the Holy Father once taught, would have us “recognize that there is always a way out, that we can always redirect our steps, that we can always do something to solve our problems.” This isn’t optimism or positive thinking this, as St. Paul once wrote, is learning to Hope against Hope, because as Christians we are always hoping for something that in Christ has already been fulfilled, though we too often live in the delusion that it is not!

Like Thomas in the upper room, Jesus is inviting each of us to enter into closeness with him through the wounds in his resurrected body, so our wounds might be transformed and become portals of hope for others who are most in need. The Risen Christ invites Thomas to touch the wounds, and to touch the wounds requires that Thomas must draw close, and in doing so Christ draws close and touches the woundedness of Thomas and in that mercy Thomas is healed. Thomas finds hope! Without mercy there is no hope and without radical hope in God’s mercy life is reduced to despair.

Let us pray on this Divine Mercy Sunday, that we might come to know through God’s closeness to us, and our closeness to one another, that by his wounds we are healed. In his Mercy alone we find Hope!