Second Sunday of Easter C.  April 15, 2007.  Our Lady of Grace 7:30, 11:30, 6PM.  Acts 5: 12-16. Revelations 1:9-11a, 12-13, 17-19.  John 20: 19-31.

A farmer found an eagle’s egg in what he thought was an abandoned nest.  The egg was still warm, so the farmer brought the egg home and placed it in the nest of one of his chickens. After many days when several little chicks emerged from the eggs, a strange little chick emerged from the eagle egg.  He looked very different, but no one seemed to notice.  Everyone thought of him as one of the chickens.  One day a magnificent adult eagle flew over the farm yard.  All the chickens were afraid and ran to hide. But the little eagle refused to hide; he looked up at the huge bird in the sky and a powerful urge to fly came over him.  All the chickens kept yelling at him, telling him to run for cover.  The little eagle felt the urge to fly despite what his chicken brothers and sisters were saying.  As he flapped his wings he was lifted high into the sky far above the farmyard.   As he flew up high toward the clouds he felt a power and a joy that he had never known before.  What a tragedy it would have been if this magnificent bird had spent his whole life pecking in the dust like a chicken.  The big eagle flying over the farmyard taught the young eagle who he was, – and he would never be satisfied with being a chicken again.

There are many versions of what being a human being is about out there.   Some say that human beings are about pleasure. Some say that being a human being is about being powerful, or popular or successful.  Some say that being a human being is about being weak, lost and sinful.  People Magazine has one vision of being human, and Business Week has another and the Inquirer still another.  We know who we really are and the true measure and significance of our lives only when we have met and experienced the Risen Christ.

Even though the doors were locked because the followers of Jesus were filled with fear, Jesus came and stood in their midst. “Peace be with you,” he said.  Then Jesus showed his first followers the wounds in his hands and his side that had been run through with a lance.  Thomas, one of the Twelve Apostles, was not there when Jesus appeared.  He said that he would not believe unless he also saw the hands and the side of Jesus and put his finger into the wounds. He was not willing to believe unless he experienced the Risen Christ and his wounded hands and side himself.

While Jesus declares blessed those who have not seen and yet have believe based on the word and teaching of others, the response of Thomas to his personal experience of the Risen Christ is very strong.  Thomas said to Jesus, “My Lord and my God!”  This is one of the strongest and clearest affirmations of the divinity of Christ in the New Testament.  Personal experience of Jesus leads to strong and personal faith in Jesus.  Throughout the ages Christians have reached out and hungered for a personal experience of Christ.  The Second Sunday of Easter is often called Divine Mercy Sunday.  Today we remember the experience of Sister Faustina, a Polish nun, who died in 1938 and was declared a Saint by Pope John Paul II in 2000.   In 1931 she had a vision of the Risen Christ. Jesus asked Sister Faustina to remind the world of his unfathomable Divine Mercy and to trust in him. The message is the same message given to the disciples on the first Easter.   What is new is our hunger and our need to touch the Risen Christ here and now and to experience his Divine Mercy today.  Theology, catechisms and creeds are essential for a healthy spiritual life, but they are never enough.  Personal experience of Christ and a personal relationship with Christ make the ageless faith and teachings of the Catholic Church alive and powerfully present here and now.

I studied theology on the college level for eight years.  I have read countless books on theology over the 40 years I have been a priest.  I am grateful for the investment that the Church has made in my education.   The religious education that each of us has received is valuable to the extent that it helps us meet and experience the Risen Christ.  If we have not put our finger into the nail marks in his hands and our hand into his side the danger is that we believe what others have said but we have not really met and experienced Christ in a way that gives deep meaning and power to our Christian vocation.

The Church invites us to meet Christ in the Eucharist each Sunday.  We may need to slow down enough in our routine around communion so that we not only receive communion but we also become deeply conscious of receiving the living person of Christ and we very purposely enter into a loving relationship and communion with him.  We may need to spend additional time in prayer, perhaps in the Adoration Chapel, looking at Christ and listening to Christ in silence until we hear his voice and experience his presence in the depths of our hearts.  Communion without devotions is like theology without a heart.

We may need to look into the face of the poor and the suffering until we see the face of Christ there and experience his powerful presence there as Mother Teresa of Calcutta did in touching Christ in the mangled and hurting bodies of the poor.  Mother Teresa reminded us that Christ often appears to us wearing the troubling disguise of the poor.

To experience the Risen Christ we may need to look at ourselves with as much compassion and kindness as Christ looks on us.  What was Christ doing when I was dead, smelly with the stench of sin?  He was weeping for me and for you. Perhaps we need to meet the Risen Christ in his unexplainable and unfathomable love for us when we are lost and sinful.   Christ shows his loving face to us in forgiving our sins.

“A large number of people from the towns and the vicinity of Jerusalem also gathered, bringing the sick and those disturbed by unclean spirits, and they were all cured.”  They experienced the presence of Jesus in their lives and they believed in the Lord, and great numbers of men and women were added (to the Church)”

For a personal experience of the Risen Christ that goes far beyond creeds and teachings and proof texts, we give God thanks and praise.