Again, happy Easter, everyone.
Hope you had a wonderful Easter week.

We’re in the Octave of Easter, the eighth day.
Also, Divine Mercy Sunday,
which was instituted a few decades ago
by St. John Paul II.

Some of you are familiar with this Divine Mercy image.
I believe we have an image here at Mercy Home.

Christ pointing to his heart and two rays or two beams,
white and red, kind of coming out of them,
showing about his love and his mercy.

I don’t know if there’s a feast day.
Most Parishes have a feast day when they were founded.

I don’t know if there’s a feast day for Mercy Home.
Father Donahue, you can correct me on this,
but if there isn’t, then maybe today could be the feast day
because this is Divine Mercy Sunday.

Our wonderful home here is obviously based on mercy.
We pour out mercy.

You all pour out mercy to us
because Christ has given us mercy as well.

It’s an image, and especially with St. Thomas,
another icon today,
that just shows how much God cares about us.

I think we know this intellectually,
but sometimes we need to pray with this reality,
really let it sink into our souls.

That God cares for us.
He notices us.

Even when things are difficult,
things don’t go the way we want them to in life,
that God hasn’t abandoned us,
but he’s actually put us on a blessed path.

In fact, the path of suffering and the Cross
is God’s way of really favoring us.

It might seem kind of contradictory or even wrong,
but God pours out his grace and his mercy
to those who are suffering,
just like a parent would care for their child who’s sick
in an even special, more radical way.

So we see this with Thomas.

You might think that Thomas made some mistake
or that he blew this and kind of earned this kind of mishap.

He’s not there with the other Apostles
on Easter Sunday evening.

They’re all gathered in the upper room
where they had been a couple nights earlier
to celebrate the Last Supper
because they’re all terrified.

The doors are locked.

Jesus appears to them after the Resurrection.

They’ve seen Mary Magdalene and the others
who’ve told them that Jesus is alive, but they doubt.

And Jesus, in fact, kind of scolds them for this.

But why isn’t Thomas in that upper room?

In my own imaginative prayer,
I have several reasons for this
and kind of it’s the flavor of the day
why Thomas is in the upper room for me.

But let’s just say he was upset about something.

You know, maybe like the Disciples on the road to Emmaus
who were walking away sort of sad.

Thomas was frustrated by this.
He’s hurting.

Remember earlier when Jesus raises Lazarus from the dead,
which we had on the Fifth Sunday of Lent,
Thomas gives that great line.

He says, “Let’s go to die with him.”

So Thomas isn’t afraid of dying.
He isn’t afraid of the Cross.

He wants to go back to Jerusalem with Jesus to die with him.

Maybe he was hurt that Jesus didn’t let him die with him,
that Jesus went through this by himself.

Who knows?

But either way, Thomas is out in the city.
He misses out on that Easter Sunday evening.

They tell him about it
when he finally returns to the upper room.

He doesn’t believe, as we all know.

And so for that week, that Easter week, he’s lost.

The other Disciples have seen the Lord, but not Thomas.

And you wonder the conflict he was going through.

He was almost living in hell in that moment,
having not experienced the Resurrection.

As lost as he might be, Jesus never lost Thomas.

Thomas was always the apple of Jesus’ eye.

Jesus was noticing him,
caring for him, providing for him,
and giving him what he needed that week,
and then finally showing up the Second Sunday of Easter
and giving him his hands and his side.

Thomas was then brought into an incredible intimacy with God.

So even if you feel lost in your own faith,
or you’re struggling in your spiritual life,
struggling with God, it’s okay.

You might have even kind of done away with God,
but God hasn’t done away with you.

He’s going to find you.
He loves you that much.

Okay?

So I know, again, back to Divine Mercy Sunday, the feast day,
I figure I’ll sing one song for y’all.

I sang a song way back at the beginning of Lent.

I didn’t get rejected from
the Mercy Home subscription here.

So it’s one of my favorite hymns.

It’s like an old kind of spiritual.
It’s called “Blessed Assurance.”

I don’t know.
I think this is going to be a hymn
that’s sung on my funeral day.

Hopefully I don’t die anytime soon, but it just goes.

As I sing the lyrics, hopefully, again,
it’s not torturing you too badly.

It’s just the fact that God cares for us this much,
that he died for us.

He’s not going to let us go.

And that when we can be found in God, we have our salvation,
and that’s really the joy of our life,
being in union with God.

Maybe you’re familiar with this hymn, but it goes like this:

∫ Blessed assurance, Jesus is mine. ∫
∫ Oh, what a foretaste of glory divine. ∫
∫ Heir of salvation, purchase of God, ∫
∫ born of his Spirit, washed in his Blood. ∫
∫ This is my story. This is my song. ∫
∫ Praise him, my Savior, all the day long. ∫
∫ This is my story. This is my song. ∫
∫ Praise him, my Savior, all the day long. ∫

I’ll sing a couple other verses if you haven’t tuned out yet.

∫ Perfect submission, perfect delight, ∫
∫ visions of rapture now burst on my sight. ∫
∫ Angels descending bring from above ∫
∫ echoes of mercy, whispers of love. ∫

∫ Perfect submission, all is at rest. ∫
∫ I in my Savior am happy and blessed, ∫
∫ watching and waiting, looking above, ∫
∫ filled with his goodness, lost in his love. ∫

∫ This is my story. This is my song. ∫
∫ Praise him, my Savior, all the day long. ∫
∫ This is my story. This is my song. ∫
∫ Praise him, my Savior, all the day long. ∫

Amen.