The second Sunday after Easter is designated Divine Mercy Sunday. It’s a recent feast in the Church, instituted in 2000 by Pope St. John Paul II. He felt that immediately after Easter, while the Paschal mysteries were fresh in our hearts, we needed an opportunity to reflect more deeply on God’s great mercy manifested in the Resurrection.
The two disciples on the road to Emmaus in today’s reading came to know the Lord in the “breaking of the bread”—the Eucharist. We can see that their encounter with Jesus that day parallels the way Jesus comes to meet us in every Mass.
We like the idea of Jesus as the Good Shepherd, but we seldom like the idea of being sheep—people who blindly follow anyone or anything. However, that’s not what sheep and shepherds are like in real life.
While our salvation was won by Jesus’s Death, our lives in Christ are not completely fulfilled until we receive the Advocate, the Spirit of truth, that Jesus promised to send us. That Spirit of truth is the Third Person of the Trinity, the Holy Spirit. It is only through the Spirit that we are ab...
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