Year C Divine Mercy Sunday

          Today is the Second Sunday of Easter otherwise known in the Roman Catholic liturgy as Low Sunday being the last day, a Sunday, a Lord ’s Day, of the Octave of Easter.  While a novena is a nine-day celebration-preparation for a very important day such Christmas, a Patronal Fiesta and Easter, an octave is an eight-day prolongation of that same important day.  A single day is in a way multiplied into eight days to emphasize its importance in our liturgical and religious lives.  So after Christmas Day we have an octave an after Easter Sunday we also have an octave.  That is for example the reason why we sang the Glory to God these passed eight days and we exclaim alleluia, alleluia during the Dismissal as the Holy Mass comes to an end.

          Today is also the Dominica in Albis Depositis.  As early as ancient times until today the Roman Catholic Church prepares the catechumens, those adult who were not yet baptised but who wish to be baptised during the forty days of Lent.  They are eventually baptised during the Easter Vigil and are given white garments to wear the whole of the Easter Octave symbolising their cleansing from original sin during Baptism and their being members of the Church, all of these because they are now children of God.  Not only children of their parents but more importantly children of God, a very high dignity and honour, hence the white garment.  Today is the day when the newly baptised would give back to the Church their white garments and return to their ordinary everyday clothes.

          More recently, today is also known as Divine Mercy Sunday.  Pope John Paul II dedicated this Sunday to the Divine Mercy on the year 2001 during Saint Faustina Kowalska’s canonization.  Sisters and brothers, let us ponder more on this devotion and the spiritual and practical fruits we can enjoy therefrom.

          Nowadays there is a big mistake being circulated quietly in many circles and even among us Roman Catholics and this big mistake we start to see in tangible ways in our churches and we start to hear being repeated even by esteemed women and men among us.  This big mistake, this big lie, is that there is no more evil in this world, that there is no more sin, and that there is no more transgression unto our God.  Consequently everything is regarded as ok, anyway the Lord will understand they say; no more need for confession anyway you can confess directly to our Lord they say, that is why there are fewer and fewer confessionals in our churches and fewer still go to confess one’s sins to the priest; it is ok to make mistake they say because these missteps are even necessary for our growth so go ahead make them and these mistakes you will learn.  The additional complicating element in this big lie is that it is candied up with truth but at the end it is still a lie and we need to stump it out before the flames becomes a wildfire and engulfs us to our damnation.

          Sisters and brothers, there is evil in this world.  It has entered it since Adam and Eve first sinned and unto today it wreaks havoc, especially to the Catholic Church.  We abhor it, as we said when we renewed our Baptismal Promises last Easter Vigil.  We avoid it as the saints give us examples to do.  Instead we try our very best to be saintly and holy and this is what we pass on to our children, that we in our weaknesses, we have to try to be better persons nonetheless.  As Saint Paul puts it, we have to die from our old selves and rise again unto our new selves.  Now weak as we are and we fall and we commit mistakes, these sins are forgiven us by God when we ask Him forgiveness.  God, the Divine Mercy, understands yes but we must be sincerely contrite and really promise to strive harder next time not to sin again, not to betray the trust and love again of our God.  It doesn’t matter when we fall, what matters is when we stand up again and again and again every time we fall.  During confession our sins are taken away by God, washed away by the Blood of Jesus and we are restored and we are strengthened.  One particular grace of the Sacrament of Confession is that we are strengthened where we are particularly weak.  It is not true that our sins we confess are the same ones over and over again because if they were not confessed in the first place they will become worse sins and from bad we go worse, degrading our dignity and honour as children of God.  Inside the confessional the Divine Mercy gives us the antibiotic to fight, conquer and vanquish the evil sin in us and He also gives us the vitamins to remain steadfast.  As long as we live there will be falls and some of these falls really smash us rock bottom but, also, as long as we live, we have the opportunity given by the Mercy of God to stand up again and say we abhor the evil, we will confess our sins and we will rise from sin to God.  Would that we do not fall because falling, because committing sin offends the Divine Mercy; would that we do commit mistakes, because mistakes wound us and wound our God; would that we remain steadfast at all times with God, because true love means we are with our loved one and we would not want to be separated from the one we loved.  True, sweet is to be reunited and to be reconciled with God, but sweeter still is not to have been separated from Him in the first place.  Amen.