This is my homily for yesterday, April 12, 2026, the 2nd week of Easter, Cycle A. Yesterday's readings are here.
Yesterday also was Divine Mercy Sunday. I have to confess, I've never quite glommed onto Divine Mercy Sunday. Part of it is that I've never been a follower of St. Faustina, have only experienced the Chaplet of Divine Mercy once or twice and have never adopted it as a spiritual practice. Deacons preach on this Sunday fairly frequently (I think pastors want to give themselves a week off after the intensive homilizing during the Triduum), and I'd expect quite a few of them consciously try to incorporate Divine Mercy into their homilies. Just speaking for myself, I've never found myself led down this road. I tend to think of this Sunday more as the culmination of the Octave of Easter. Not sure whether this is the Holy Spirit or my own intransigence. Perhaps a bit of both.
At any rate, here is my homily:
“Blessed are those who have not seen and have believed.” Or maybe we should amend it: “Blessed are we who have not seen and have believed.” Because that maxim, spoken by Jesus hundreds of years ago, applies to us as much as to Thomas and the other disciples gathered in that room.
We face the same problem as Thomas: we haven’t seen the risen Jesus. If we’re going to accept Jesus as our Lord and Savior, it’s going to be via faith, not via the kind of proof that would be admissible in a courtroom or printable in a scientific journal.
And this is a problem for some people. I am sure all of us know people, perhaps family members, who were reared and formed in our faith, but have walked away, not to join a different church or another religion, but have simply stopped practicing and, perhaps, have stopped believing. As for ourselves: even if we are confident that our faith is solid, who among us hasn’t experienced moments of doubt or skepticism? It’s hard to believe without seeing, or touching, or hearing. Moments of doubt are understandable. We need help to strengthen and sustain our faith.
The traditional Christian way to provide this help is via faith communities. And what’s interesting about today’s readings is, we are given two sketches of faith communities. One of those communities, as described in today's first reading from the Acts of the Apostles, is free and flourishing. The other one, from John’s Gospel, is persecuted – they must meet in secret, behind locked doors. Two seemingly different situations, but what they have in common is: they are sustained by faith in the risen Jesus. And the faith community – the church – is the medium through which these early believers encounter Jesus and are given the love and grace they need to sustain their faith.
Today I want to focus on that faith community from our first reading, as described in the Acts of the Apostles. That passage mentions four habits of holiness that this community cultivated. Significantly, those are some of the same habits of holiness that we continue to practice right here at St. Edna, a couple of millenia later and halfway around the world.
The first holy habit is, they devoted themselves to the teachings of the apostles – that is, Jesus's followers who had walked with him and knew him personally. The first converts and believers in this earliest of Christian communities in Jerusalem were in the same boat as us: they didn’t know Jesus first-hand. Like us, one of the ways they came to believe was by hearing stories of Jesus. In their case, those stories were told to them verbally by the apostles. In our case, those same stories have been collected and written down in the Bible. But whether remembered and recounted verbally, or written down and read aloud, they are the same stories, and they feed the same faith.
The second holy habit of this earliest of churches was taking part in communal life. The first reading gives us an idea what this consisted of: they gathered daily in the temple area; they shared meals together; they supported one another financially. In short: they formed a genuine community within the larger community, supporting and sustaining one another. We try to provide a similarly sustaining community here at St. Edna today. Personally, I think my faith would be considerably weaker without a faith community like St. Edna to help sustain it. You strengthen my faith; and perhaps I can help to sustain the faith of some of you as well.
The third holy habit of this first faith community is the breaking of the bread. “The breaking of the bread” is the term used by these early believers of biblical times for the celebration of the Eucharist. At that time, they didn’t gather in public Catholic church buildings as we do today, and they didn’t have the ritual books and ritual texts that we have today. The church hadn’t developed those practices yet. But these first Christians faithfully followed the Lord’s command, as we do today, to take and eat and drink in memory of him. And through the breaking of the bread, they experienced, as we do today, sacramental closeness – union - with Jesus. The Eucharist is as close as we can get to touching his nail marks and putting our hand into his wounded side, from which sacred blood and water flow.
The fourth holy habit of this first faith community did was pray. Undoubtedly, they prayed together when they gathered in the temple area, and perhaps they prayed alone in the solitude of their bedrooms as well. They may well have prayed the same Our Father prayer that we pray today – the prayer that Jesus taught these same apostles who were instructing this first faith community. And of course, the community was able to pray psalms and canticles of the Hebrew Scriptures, which continue to make up so much of our prayer even today. They may well have sung “Alleluia!” in praise of the risen Jesus, just as we do today.
We haven’t seen, yet we’re called to believe. I hope you can see that, when we gather together, we practice the same holy habits that these very first Christians practiced. For us who live without having seen Jesus ourselves, these holy habits – scripture, the communal life, the Eucharist and prayer - are proven ways to build up and sustain our faith in the risen Jesus. Let us give thanks that we are able to gather in our own community of faith which sustains and strengthens our own faith.
Jim, good homily, I like the concept of the four holy habits of the first Christian community, which continue to this day in our own faith communities.
ReplyDeleteAnd the doubting of Thomas, and subsequent belief, is something that deserves to be preached on. In some ways maybe it's easier for us with two millennia of history of belief, than to be the first ones to believe.
The Scripture doesn't say if Thomas actually took Jesus up on his offer to touch his wounds. But the picture we always see is that rather graphic one by Caravaggio, "The Incredulity of Thomas".
About Divine Mercy Sunday, I confess that at first I didn't glom onto it, either. It has grown on me over the years, though. I do wish there was a week or two more of separation from the Holy Week and Easter celebrations to give everyone a chance to catch their breath. But maybe we can see it as a continuation of those things.
ReplyDeleteOne thing about Divine Mercy is that it is a private revelation that we aren't obliged to believe. But we can internalize the central message, the infinite mercy of God, which is Scriptural, and has always existed.
I do pray the Divine Mercy chaplet sometimes now. It is like a shorter, simpler rosary. The prayers are repetitious and one can meditate on something from Scripture, or another faith topic, similar to the rosary mysteries.
Divine Mercy is like the Sacred Heart devotion, in that both came about during times of trauma and trouble in the world when people needed a reminder of Jesus' love and mercy.
Our pastor did preach on Divine Mercy yesterday. Apparently reading about it when he was a young priest made a deep impression on him
Thomas - the saint I identify with most. Faustino - a saint because…. she was Polish?
DeleteI don’t like the superstitious practices associated with Divine Mercy Sunday, especially the requirements for gaining “indulgences”, which should join limbo in being simply an historical artifact of church history. I also didn’t like the few passages of Faustina’s writings that I’ve read. It seems very possible that she was mentally or emotionally unwell.
I carefully changed the spelling in her name twice to make sure it ended with an “ a”. But apparently the autocorrect didn’t accept a feminine version of the name the first time it appeared.
DeleteThe only parts of the Divine Mercy devotion that I take much part in are the chaplet, which can be a meditative prayer practice similar to the rosary. Also belief in the infinite love and mercy of Jesus, which I believed in already.
DeleteFaustina was a nun, and led a good life in the face of ill health and extreme poverty while growing up. Her order ran a school for troubled girls, and she showed kindness to them and helped mentor some of them. I don't know if she had mental health issues, but quite a few saints did. It doesn't seem to be a disqualifier!
Yeah, autocorrect is a pain, especially on my phone.
Jim, glad your focused your homily on the Christian community. The General Instruction of the Roman Missal (GIRM) gives a much broader definition of homily than just focusing upon the Gospel:
ReplyDelete65. The homily is part of the Liturgy and is strongly recommended,[63] for it is necessary for the nurturing of the Christian life. It should be an exposition of some aspect of the readings from Sacred Scripture or of another text from the Ordinary or from the Proper of the Mass of the day and should take into account both the mystery being celebrated and the particular needs of the listeners.[64]
If we just focus upon the Gospel, we get a distorted view of Christian community. For the disciples had not yet received the Holy Spirit. We are indeed in post Pentecostal times, so we need the fuller description of Christian community provided by the experience of the Spirit among all the members of the Church. We get that in Acts and the Epistles.
The Breaking Bread Word Aid that our parish uses has the Entrance Antiphon(s) for this Sunday
Like newborn infants you must long for pure, spiritual milk, that in him you may grow to salvation, alleluia. 1 Peter 2-2 related to the second reading.
Or Receive the joy of your glory, giving thanks to God who has called you into the heavenly kingdom. 4 Esdras 2: 36
Both of these antiphons likely resulted from the post baptismal catechesis of the newly baptized, a favorite theme of the Church Fathers. We can always use more homilies on the dignity and glory of Baptism!
The Responsorial Psalm 118 with its response: " Give Thanks to the Lord for he is good, his love is everlasting" is another candidate, especially the verse “This is the day that the Lord has made let us be glad and rejoice in it.” Hymns on this verse would make good Preparation Hymns.
Entrance Antiphons are often from Psalms. Next Sundays is Psalm 66 with Antiphon “Cry out with joy to God, all the earth, O sing to the glory of his name, O render him glorious praise Alleluia
Although the Communion Antiphons are often from the Gospel, beginning with Ordinary Time we often have three Psalms to work with.
On June 14th, the 11 Sunday of Ordinary Time they are
Entrance Psalm 27 "O Lord hear my voice for I have called to you be my help. Do not abandon or forsake me O God my helper."
Responsorial Psalm 110 We are his people the sheep of his flock
Communion Psalm 27 "There is one thing that I ask of the Lord, only this do I seek to live in the house of the Lord all the days of life."
These are all great topics for homilies, especially if the Missal Aids have the texts. Those might also encourage music ministry to select hymns appropriate to these Psalms and Antiphons.
Priests should be encouraged to use their Proper Prayers (Entrance, Preparation, Proper Prefaces or Even Optional Prefaces, and Post Communion Prayers) as topics for the homily. They have the disadvantage of not being printed in our missals. However, the priest might use the liberty of a brief (I am talking phrases, not sentences or paragraphs) introductions to their prayers to tie together everything with their homily.
Don Cozzens who wrote a great book on the priesthood that emphasized preaching quoted Rabbi Heschel's formula for great homilies. "They arise out of prayer (in this case the whole liturgy) and lead us back into prayer (a deeper appreciation for the whole liturgy)".