Homily for Sunday, 12 April 2015– Second Sunday of Easter

Divine Mercy Sunday

Readings of the day: Acts 4:32-35; Psalm 118:2-4, 13-15, 22-24; 1 John 5:1-6; John 20:19-31

This homily was given during the monthly Mass for Pax Christi, a Catholic movement to promote peace, at the Federal Building in downtown Rochester, NY.

“Peace be with you.” Is this not a beautiful and yet very simple greeting? How appropriate that we hear the risen Jesus greet his disciples, on “that first day of the week” after his resurrection: “Peace be with you”! We here are dedicated to the peace of Christ. We are a movement named and entrusted with bringing into; witnessing in our world to the peace of Christ, Pax Christi. And so, on this day especially, “Peace be with you.”

But can this greeting not also be somewhat off-putting? In a few moments, just before we receive Christ in our Eucharist, I will invite us, in Christ’s own words, to offer one another a sign of peace: “Peace be with you.” But have some of us, especially those of us who remember the Mass before Vatican II, ever found the sign of peace where it is now during Mass to be off-putting? It is fairly new to us to “offer a sign of peace” just before receiving communion. The sign of peace just before communion is only about fifty years old, dating back to Vatican II.

Have any of us heard, mainly from Catholics a generation or two before my time, but from some younger faithful, too, words like “unnerving,” “off-putting,” “embarrassing,” and even “distracting” to describe our exchange of a sign of peace just when we are preparing reverently to receive communion? There sometimes seems to be no “right” way to give and receive the sign of peace. Have we not seen timid handshakes, the peace sign to somebody across several pews, or the people who wander to try to shake hands with every person in the building? Alright, perhaps this might be a bit excessive…

Yet our sign of peace has deep roots in our Catholic liturgy. Dominican Fr. Timothy Radcliffe, who lives in Oxford, England, speaks of this history in a humorous way. Fr. Radcliffe says that in the 1200s the newly-founded Dominican and Franciscan orders were sent to preach peace and unity among people from divided city states in northern Italy. Before communion at Mass, there would be a pause for “a solemn moment of reconciliation.” Each person would embrace the person next to them: “Peace be with you.” How is this for off-putting; unnerving; embarrassing?

“Peace be with you.” This ritual sign of peace as we know it was recovered at Vatican II as a symbol of our peace with all people. Fr. Radcliffe also tells the story of two of the “fathers” of Vatican II, the French theologians Marie-Dominique Chenu and Yves Congar. Congar’s sign of peace “was a grave and formal gesture,” Radcliffe says, “whereas Chenu” would “affectionately” punch and hug his neighbor and tug on his hair! How is this for off-putting, unnerving, and embarrassing? And yet this is nothing compared to medieval northern Italians reconciling and wishing Christ’s peace to the people they had just tried to kill in battle!

“Peace be with you.” Why is this such an off-putting, unnerving, maybe embarrassing gesture, even for many of us today? Why, perhaps, should it be? What are the effects of Christ’s peace, of wishing Christ’s peace, to one another? Let us return to our Gospel reading today. What was the effect of Christ’s peace on Jesus’ first disciples, gathered behind locked doors a few days after Jesus’ resurrection?

Imagine for a moment being one of these first disciples. We hear from John that “the doors were locked” to the room where they were gathered, for fear of the religious leaders of the day who had put Jesus to death; for fear of their own lives! And then Jesus enters the locked room and greets them: “Peace be with you.” Does this not raise off-putting, unnerving, and embarrassing, not to mention frightening, to a new level?

The first effect of this peace that the risen Christ gives to his disciples is the gift of the Holy Spirit. “Receive the Holy Spirit,” Jesus says. And what does the Holy Spirit empower us to do? The Holy Spirit empowers us to go out to the world; to evangelize the world with Christ’s peace for one another; with the same gift of the Holy Spirit for one another: “As the Father has sent me, so I send you.”

Christ sends us forth with his peace; his gift of the Holy Spirit, a gift that empowers us to forgiveness and, at the same time, conviction and accountability: “Receive the Holy Spirit. Whose sins you forgive are forgiven them, and whose sins you retain are retained.” The Holy Spirit enables us to keep God’s commandments, the sign that we love God and one another according to our second reading today, from the First Letter of John. The Holy Spirit is “the one who testifies”; the one who bears witness to the truth through us. The Holy Spirit bears witness to the truth that, with God, peace is possible and indeed our responsibility as baptized Christians. “The Spirit is truth.”

The Holy Spirit empowers us to be what is impossible without God’s presence and action in our lives: To be “of one heart and mind” in bearing witness to the resurrected Christ. “Peace be with you”: This is not a peace that is a mere absence of violence or war; a peace that means keeping one foot on the throat of our enemy. This is a peace that seeks one another’s good; a peace borne out of true love of God and of one another. Christ’s peace, given us by the gift of the Holy Spirit, empowers us to love in this way; to love as God loves us. Christ’s peace and gift of the Holy Spirit also empower us to bold words and actions of faith.

When Jesus stands among his disciples and greets them the first time, “Peace be with you… receive the Holy Spirit,” the Apostle Thomas is not present with the others. Why is Thomas not present? This could be for many reasons: Perhaps fear; perhaps a feeling of being wounded by his own guilt, which had broken down his faith. But the risen Christ does not give up on us; does not give up on Thomas. “A week later,” when Thomas is present with the other disciples, Jesus appears and greets them once again: “Peace be with you.”

Is Thomas unnerved; embarrassed; frightened? He is probably all three. Thomas speaks what the other disciples are probably all feeling: “Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands and put my finger into the nailmarks and put my hand into his side, I will not believe.” Jesus invites Thomas to put his hands in Jesus’ wounds. Jesus invites Thomas to make physical contact with his and our own woundedness; our own sin that, with Jesus Christ, was put to death that day on Calvary.

This is the condition for true healing for Thomas and for us: To touch our own woundedness; our own sin; our violence done to our own human dignity; our own lack of peace. This is the only way for us to true forgiveness; to true peace. Only then is Thomas able to exclaim with possibly the most beautiful and profound profession of faith in all of Scripture: “My Lord and my God”!

For Thomas and for us, is this way to peace, to receive the gift of the Holy Spirit of witness; of faith; of forgiveness; of peace; of God’s love for us, not off-putting; unnerving, or perhaps embarrassing? I imagine so.

And yet to be in touch with our own woundedness is the only way for us to be healed; the only way for us to “receive the Holy Spirit”; the only way for us to receive the peace of our risen Christ, a peace the world cannot give. It is the only way for us to be able then to exclaim boldly with the believing Apostle Thomas: “My Lord and my God”!

“Peace be with you.”