Second Sunday of Easter (Divine Mercy Sunday)
/Dominica II Paschae A
12 April 2026
Divine Mercy Sunday
We Catholics follow a different pattern or rhythm of life. We would each do well to arrange our personal and family life around these same patterns of observances of the faith. We have Advent as a time of preparation such that Christmas has not begun as soon as the Thanksgiving Dinner table is cleared. And when the world is ready to toss the Christmas Tree to the curb on December 26, we celebrate Christmas Day as an octave, and we continue celebrating Christ’s birth for a season of about three weeks. When it comes to Easter we observe Easter Day as an Octave, meaning that for eight calendar days we are observing Easter Sunday. That Octave Day of Easter concludes with this Sunday. But we continue celebrating Easter as a season for seven weeks, that concludes with Pentecost.
So, why do we catholics observe Easter for seven weeks? Because it is the Resurrection of the Lord Jesus, our Savior and, as St. Paul says, “[I]f Christ has not been raised, then … your faith is in vain…. If Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins” (1 Cor. 15:14, 17). And what are we catholics observing for seven weeks of Easter? We are celebrating newness. We are celebrating new life! We observe the new life of Jesus who, by his power as God, could not be kept bound by death. His victory over death and the tomb gives us hope and joy. It is a great reason to observe Easter for so many weeks. In this holy season we celebrate the new life given to the newly baptized and to those received into the sacramental life of the Church. By extension we are celebrating the new life that began in the rest of us at baptism however many years ago. New life is worth celebrating!
You and I will die in the body, barring some unique intervention from God. But, while bodily death is our common lot one day, we need not die a second time. That is, we need not die in the soul; the death that is called “eternal”. That’s the promise of the Lord’s Resurrection. That’s the promise of Easter. That’s worth celebrating! By conformity and union with Christ we have the hope of participating in his victory. It is a victory we already have pledged to us at baptism. It is a victory into which we are called to continuously mature so that one day we have that victory’s full fruit – eternal life in Heaven!
Brothers and sisters, for as much as we are tied to sin we are not living in newness. We are not living new life in Christ. For as much as we are tied to sin, we are living the old life and we are tied to the eternal threat of the tomb. We don’t have the new life of the Lord for as much as we are dwelling in sin. I don’t mean that we won’t struggle with sin. Rather, when I say “being tied to sin” and “dwelling in sin”, what I mean is settling for sin. I mean, cooperating with sin and failing to treat it seriously. That’s when we aren’t living the new life of the Risen Lord.
This Gospel passage shows us two resurrection appearances of the Lord in the same place, one week apart. The first appearance was in the evening of the day of the Resurrection itself, that first Easter Sunday. The Lord appeared in the locked upper room where just days before he had eaten the Last Supper with the Apostles. The Risen Lord’s actions in that appearance show us his deepest desire, what is of prime importance to him. It shows us what is on his mind as his plan is unfolding to commission his apostles to continue his work in the Church. What is evident among his deepest desires and concerns? To forgive sins. He speaks peace to the Apostles in their fears and in the way they had sinned by abandoning him. The Lord continues his work of re-creation, harkening back to creation in Genesis, when he breathes on the Apostles giving them new life in the Holy Spirit and, at the same time, giving them his authority to impart new life to others by the forgiveness of sins.
The Risen Lord’s desire to give new life in place of sin and in place of its consequence of condemnation comes as no surprise. It was the Father’s plan from the beginning to heal what Original Sin inserted into the blessing of His creation. In the fullness of time, as God the Son was gestating in the womb of Mary, it was revealed to St. Joseph in a dream that “you shall call his name Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins” (Mt. 1:21). St. John the Baptist pointed out the Lord by saying, “Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world” (Jn. 1:29). Jesus began his own preaching by saying, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand” (Mt. 4:17). You can think of examples of miraculous healings – like the paralytic – who, when he is brought to the Lord, the Lord’s first interest is not the physical healing, but he says instead, “your sins are forgiven” (Mt. 9:2). No surprise that when the disciples are sent they preach repentance. And no surprise that when the One whose name means “God saves”, when he shows himself risen and victorious over death, his first order of business in that locked upper room is to establish that gift that we call confession for the forgiveness of sins. The Apostles receive the authority to forgive sins so that the Lord’s power and mission to save us from sin is accessible to us in every age. “Whose sins you forgive are forgiven them, and whose sins you retain are retained” (Jn. 20:23).
We celebrate resurrection and the hope of new life in this season. For as much as we settle for sin, ignore it, or make excuses for it, we are tied to sin, tied to old ways, tied to the grave. We are only locked in the tomb and tied to eternal death for as much as we stay away from repentance and from the Lord’s gift of confession. But by our regular practice of confession we receive the peace of forgiveness. Confession restores our baptismal dignity. We grow in greater maturity in the new life begun in us in baptism. Confession breathes the new life of the Holy Spirit into our places of illness and spiritual death. And we share in the victory of the Risen Lord and the hope of eternal life in Heaven!