SECOND SUNDAY OF EASTER - APRIL 27, 2025

SECOND SUNDAY OF EASTER

In the same year Pope Francis was elected to the papacy, Vinicio Riva made his way to St. Peter’s Square for a planned Wednesday audience with the Pope. As he was pushed along in a wheelchair by his aunt, Vinicio was urged on further and further, getting closer to the Holy Father than he ever imagined. To his great surprise, Francis did not merely shake his hand as he did with the hundreds of others he was meant to meet that morning; instead, he embraced Vinicio and did not let go. Vinicio never experienced this kind of behavior from strangers since he suffered from neurofibromatosis, which caused tumors and growths to develop all over his body. But Francis saw Vinicio for who he was–a child of God worthy of being loved just as any one of us.

READ THIS SUNDAY'S MESSAGE

Francis’ moment with Vinicio was perhaps the warmest of his papacy. It has been almost a full week since his death, and as he was laid to rest early Saturday morning, we said one final goodbye to a man who desired more than anything to emphasize the total mercy of God, especially for those who might have been overlooked by the Church in recent history. On this Sunday after Easter, we celebrate an even more special moment: the Second Sunday of Easter is the Sunday of Divine Mercy, when we reflect on the message given to St. Faustina by Christ that he desires the world to know and understand that God’s mercy is endless. All we need to do to receive this mercy is to seek Him. Every year, we have the opportunity to celebrate this wonderfully generous Solemnity, and on every Divine Mercy Sunday, we hear the same Gospel story of Thomas, who doubted Christ’s resurrection until he saw and touched the wounds in his hands and feet. In his perfectly resurrected and glorified body, Christ was not immediately recognized by many of his followers. In fact, Thomas himself states that he would not believe Christ resurrected even if he stood in front of him. For Thomas, he needed to see the marks in his hands and in his side in order to believe that this was truly Christ in flesh and bones, who had conquered sin and overcome the finality of death. And even in that perfect body Christ had after his resurrection, he retained the marks of his earthly life because they molded and formed his identity in the eyes of his Father. What part of our own earthly bodies will we retain when we experience the resurrection of the body? Will we retain those things that made us self-conscious, or made us the object of bullying or ridicule? Will we retain the scars of a life fully-lived? If those things contributed to what our identity became, and if those things were the crosses we carried in life in order to emulate Christ, we will retain them. But they will be symbols of our participation in Christ’s victory over sin and death. They will be battle scars we delight in.