Pope on Divine Mercy Sunday: 'Contemplate boundless love'

Source: Vatican Media

Today, the Second Sunday of Easter is Divine Mercy Sunday. Pope Francis celebrated Mass with pilgrims in St Peter's Square. During his homily, the Holy Father focused on Doubting Thomas who eventually "falls in love with the Lord."

It is by seeing Jesus' wounds that the disciples of all time know that we have been forgiven because we "contemplate the boundless love flowing from his heart" - a heart that beats for each person, the Pope said.

When Thomas touched the Lord's wounds, Jesus became "My Lord and my God."

Pope Francis described the Gospel account as a "love story." The uncertain, wavering disciple falls in love with the Lord telling him: "You became man for me, you died and rose for me and thus you are not only God; you are my God, you are my life. In you I have found the love that I was looking for, and much more than I could ever have imagined," Pope Francis said.

We can begin to savour this new found love through the same gift Jesus granted on the evening of his Resurrection: the forgiveness of sins. Before forgiveness we may hide behind the doors of shame, resignation and sin. Grace helps us understand shame as the "first step towards an encounter" and as a "secret invitation of the soul that needs the Lord to overcome evil," Pope Francis said.

Resignation tempts us to believe that nothing changes when we find ourselves lapsing, like the disheartened disciples after the " 'Jesus chapter' of their lives seemed finished." At a certain point, Pope Francis said, "we discover that the power of life is to receive God's forgiveness and to go forward from forgiveness to forgiveness."

The last closed door to open is sin. Pope Francis said, Jesus "loves to enter precisely 'through closed doors,' when every entrance seems barred." When we go to confession, we will learn that the very thing we believe separates us from God - sin - instead "becomes the place where we encounter him. There the God who is wounded by love comes to meet our wounds."