By Dr. Dencio Acop
Today is Divine Mercy Sunday, the second Sunday of Easter. It commemorates another great message of the Lord which is MERCY. ‘Peace be with you’ (Shalom!) said the Lord to his disciples, hiding in their fear, especially to the doubting Thomas. Jesus was basically telling his followers that despite everything that had happened about his passion and death on a cross, everything was alright. That they had won. They had not been defeated. Certainly not by the Romans and the Sanhedrin. Not even by Satan and Death, the masterminds of sin whom Jesus had just vanquished with his resurrection from the dead. That the Ocean of God’s Mercy was far greater than any human sin which is but a droplet in the vastness of this eternal mercy. The same mercy that the mystic St Faustina Kowalska reminded us centuries before.
Peace is the fruit of righteousness, as Father Matt preached in his homily at St. John’s in Quincy today. We can never be at peace with ourselves and with one another until we are right with God. There can be no peace without inner peace first. For how can there be peace outside ourselves when our hearts are filled with turmoil? This turbulence within can only project chaos and anarchy without. Father Matt went on to recall how the New England prisoners he annually presides over on Divine Mercy Sunday would worship God with such fervor and devotion even greater than the church-going Christian. And it was because the great mercy of God that wiped away their heinous sins was felt in the innermost core of their being. As most of these prisoners were serving life sentences. They knew they would never see the light of day outside those prison walls but in their spirits they were free. We must be freed spiritually before we can have peace. The fruit of righteousness is peace.
Peace is a foretaste of the divine life. Shalom or ‘Peace be with you’ should always be the standard by which we live our lives on earth. For it challenges what truly lies in our hearts. If righteousness reigns in our hearts, it is projected towards the words that leave our mouths and the deeds that are performed by us. If lies easily come out of our speech and misdeeds do not bother us, such manifest the darkness lurking in our being. If constant truth emanates from our words and actions, such reveal the inner light of conscience living within us. Naturally and supernaturally, peace is attainable. As Father Matt explained, we know the rules, we know the consequences, we are given the grace to do right, yet we continue to fall. Still God says ‘Peace be with you’. ‘You are mine’. And so we are. We really are. Until we choose other than Him: the worldly gods of wealth, power, honor, and pleasure. Not to worry there is the sacrament of confession. And all the other sacraments meant to keep us right with God. Peace be with you.
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