“The enfleshment and suffering of Jesus tell us that God is not apart from the trials of humanity. God is not aloof. God is not a mere spectator. God is participating with us. God is not merely tolerating human suffering or healing suffering. God is participating with us in it. That is what gives believers both meaning and hope.” (p 63, What the Mystics Know by Fr. Richard Rohr OFM)
This Sunday, the 2nd Sunday of Easter the Catholic Church celebrates Divine Mercy. It is a celebration of God’s coming to us in the repeated prayer, “For the sake of His sorrowful passion.” Richard Rohr, in the above cited text, reminds us how incarnational this prayer is and how we, by participating with God in Divine Mercy, grow in the hope of blessing and grace in our lives.
The joy of this blessing is that Jesus asks nothing of us and he asks everything of us in the same moment. Jesus through his death and resurrection on the cross has won the victory over sin and death. We believe this. The Divine Mercy he extends can be seen in his interactions with the disciples after the resurrection. He offers them peace, the Holy Spirit and the Word of God with the freedom of seeing anew as he walks with them. He asks for nothing: no act of penance, no groveling for forgiveness and no sacrifice. Jesus is simply there with them and invites them to remain with him.
Jesus also asks for everything. He asks them to be with and follow him, to preach him for the forgiveness of sin, to baptize in his name, to go out to all the nations, in other words, to participate with him in doing the work of mercy in the world. To live the Divine Mercy in the fullness of our lives at the cost of our own life daily as we take up our cross and follow him.
It is this gift of love we then begin to experience and practice when we are with him. We come to know deeply the person of Jesus and the wonder of his love for us, his sisters and brothers, as the generous gift that is freely and completely given over and over again. It is in this we practice the free will of love as we respond in the same generous gift of our self in love, service and sacrifice to him and our brothers and sisters who cry out in need. When we are able to enter into generosity of God’s creative goodness then we understand more fully the cost of love and mercy is freely given, simply offered and shared in the joy of intimate relation to our God.
Finally, I leave you with this short article from the Catholic News Agency (CNA) that can be found at http://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/survivor-of-brussels-terror-attack-writes-letter-of-hope-to-unborn-baby-54543/ Hope is participating, living and sharing life in and through our Lord Jesus Christ.
For the sake of His sorrowful passion…have mercy on us and on the whole world.
God Bless
Fr. Mark