The Second Sunday of Easter (2025)
In those hours and days following the death and burial of Jesus, the Apostles and faithful women were left adrift.
After all, the One who had been their focus and point of reference through years of mission and service was gone.
God had gone quiet.
How could they make sense of everything that had happened to Jesus? Everything that had happened to them?
As their hopes crumbled around them, there was no escaping the darkness brought on by the Crucifixion. The disappointment and disillusionment of Good Friday had not yet been transformed the light of Easter.
Then everything changed.
But not for Thomas… because Thomas had been absent when Jesus first appeared to the Apostles on that first Easter Sunday. Should it be any wonder, then, that he would still be overwhelmed by Holy Saturday sadness? And I don’t think it’s fair for faulting Thomas for being skeptical of the stories that Mary Magdalene and others told about seeing Jesus. With all this in mind, Pope Francis offered these words:
“Doesn’t the same thing also happen to us when something completely new occurs in our everyday life? We stop short, we don’t understand, we don’t know what to do. Newness often makes us fearful, including the newness which God brings us, the newness which God asks of us” (Homily for the Easter Vigil 2013).
Although Thomas did not initially believe in the resurrection of the Lord, he did remain faithful to the call he had received from Jesus—the call to be a part of the community of the Apostles. While his doubts would not allow him to believe that the others had seen the Lord, Thomas never lost faith in their fraternity and it was ultimately in and through that community that Thomas finally encountered the Risen Christ.
When we think of it this way, we see that on this Easter Day, the Church is inviting us reflect not so much on “Doubting Thomas” as on the living and dynamic faith of the community—the Church—of which Thomas was a part.
Like Thomas, we also experience the Resurrection within and through the faith of the Church as we meet the Risen Christ in Word and Sacrament and in one another…
At the same time, while faith is a gift, we also know that believing is not automatic or easy.
It’s often easier for us to relate to the doubt of Thomas than it is to the sublime prayer and contemplation of the great pray-ers and mystics of the Church. Terror, wars, violence within our communities and families, discrimination, and illness all have the power put our faith to the test. And yet, Easter reminds us that there is something more powerful suffering and death. And what is it that is more powerful: it is the love of the God who, in Christ, has taken upon himself our broken humanity. In the end, this is the mystery we celebrate on this Second Sunday of Easter—this Sunday of Divine Mercy.
At the conclusion of this Sunday’s Gospel, Jesus proclaims, “Blessed are those who have not seen and have believed” (20:19).
Blessed are we when welcome Jesus who is revealed in the Scriptures.
Blessed are we when we accept Jesus at work in the sacraments.
Blessed are we when we recognize Jesus incarnated in the lives of the saints.
Blessed are we when we see Jesus present in the little ones of the earth.
God of everlasting mercy,
who in the very recurrence of the paschal feast
kindle the faith of the people you have made your own,
increase, we pray, the grace you have bestowed,
that all may grasp and rightly understand
in what font they have been washed,
by whose Spirit they have been reborn,
by whose Blood they have been redeemed.
Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son,
who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
God, for ever and ever. Amen.
-Collect for the Second Sunday of Easter (or of Divine Mercy)
This homily was preached at Old St. Mary’s Church, Milwaukee, and St. Margaret Mary Church, Milwaukee, on April 26/27, 2025
