Sunday Reflection with Canon Robin Gibbons: 27 April 2025

Pope hugs Emanuale. Screenshot

Second Sunday of Easter - Divine Mercy Sunday

1. To please God very much

This is a paschal week unlike any other, having proclaimed the resurrection, Pope Francis is called home to the Lord, his death mourned by many, but his words, teaching and presence vibrant in the touch of the Risen Christ, even his funeral bore the imprint of a humble servant, and we finish this week at his final resting place in Santa Maria Maggiore, a simple niche with a stone slab bearing only his name. But in all his actions with people, the mark of this Sunday, that of Divine `Mercy suffused his interactions particularly with the lost and little ones of life.

You will all have your own favourite Francis images, three of mine are these: firstly very early on in his ministry when he blessed a blind person, but in a gesture of loving care blessed his guide dog as well, then there was his loving embrace of those who had deforming illnesses, hugging them close, much as his namesake did, and of course for me that wonderful interchange with Emanuale, the little boy who asked him if his dead father being an atheist would go to heaven.

His reply was a magnificent exposition of Christ's own teaching done in the simplest of ways. I have included the whole story as part of our lectio because it encapsulates the heart of God's own merciful love as taught by Pope Francis. As he consoled the weeping little boy with these words:"…the pope told the boy. "God surely was proud of your father, because it is easier as a believer to baptize your children than to baptize them when you are not a believer. Surely this pleased God very much." Of course there is more, but what a healing moment lies in those words and the image of Francis and Emanuele for so many of us who have felt cut off from the Church.

2. To be a shadow of Peter

When I reflected on our first reading from Acts 5 this Sunday- suddenly the Petrine ministry of Francis and what he encourages in us really hit home. Here are the words that struck me, maybe they might speak to you as well?

"Thus they even carried the sick out into the streets and laid them on cots and mats so that when Peter came by, at least his shadow might fall on one or another of them. A large number of people from the towns in the vicinity of Jerusalem also gathered, bringing the sick and those disturbed by unclean spirits, and they were all cured".(Acts 5:15-16)

Francis teaches us what the 'shadow of Peter' is for all of us, firstly by example, healing the broken hearts, consoling the mourning ones, touching the sick and lost by gesture as well as personal words, secondly the shadow of Peter mediates the searing light of the `Risen Christ and the burning power of the Healing Spirit, protecting us from thee consequences of our encounter as sinners with the Living God.

This shadow of Peter, the ability to mediate God's presence is the divine mercy of Christ in each of our lives, and we too can be as Peter bringing not our shadow, but that of the shadow of the healing Lord to others. For a shadow such as Peter's is a calming moment, a touch lighter than air that changes all, because God is in that moment, and this shadow keeps the searing heat of Gods presence from harming our sinful selves, but protects and comforts us. It is not our shadow selves, but the redemption of all that needs healing by the gentle bearable touch of God. My hope is that he will teach us still.

May he rest in peace and intercede for a world that needs people like him.

3. Blessed are those who have not seen…yet….

This gift of mercy is of course hidden in our other two readings as well. John on Patmos shares with us the words of his vision to give us hope:… "Do not be afraid. I am the first and the last, the one who lives. Once I was dead, but now I am alive forever and ever. I hold the keys to death and the netherworld'. (Rev 1:17, 18)

This is strong stuff, compassionate, hopeful and evocative. The keys to death and the netherworld are firmly in the hands of the Risen one, the Alpha and Omega. This Christ calls us to himself and stamps his mark on all our days. The last verse of the hymn , 'Hark what a sound' puts this in a way I cannot : "Through life and death, through sorrow and through sinning,
he shall suffice me, for he hath sufficed:
Christ is the end, for Christ was the beginning,
Christ the beginning, for the end is Christ".

That is what we hope, that Christ's mercy be sufficient for us and that we shall be all in all in Him.

As a coda this Sundays gospel about Thomas reminds us that there are many ways to encounter Christ, but 'our most merciful redeemer, our friend and brother' as St Richard of Chichester called Jesus, reaches out beyond Thomas to those of us who have not seen him, or perhaps don't know him or have turned away from him. This Christ forgives, has mercy on us all, and gives this power of mercy to us in several ways, in the sacramental gift of reconciliation, in the journey of this Holy Year , in our ministry to each other whenever we recognise, even imperfectly, that Christ who is the sacrament of the other, for does not this Christ say to us all "' Blessed are those who have not seen and have believed."(John 20:29)

Lectio

Pope Francis and Emanuele

'Emanuele was sobbing by that point, and Pope Francis enveloped him in a big embrace, patting his head and speaking softly to him.

With their heads touching, the pope and the boy spoke privately to each other before Emanuele returned to his seat.

"If only we could all cry like Emanuele when we have an ache in our hearts like he has," the pope told the children. "He was crying for his father and had the courage to do it in front of us because in his heart there is love for his father."

Pope Francis said he had asked Emanuele if he could share the boy's question and the boy agreed. "'A little while ago my father passed away. He was a nonbeliever, but he had all four of his children baptized. He was a good man. Is dad in heaven?'"

"God is the one who says who goes to heaven," the pope explained.

The next step in answering Emanuele's question, he said, would be to think about what God is like and, especially, what kind of heart God has. "What do you think? A father's heart. God has a dad's heart. And with a dad who was not a believer, but who baptized his children and gave them that bravura, do you think God would be able to leave him far from himself?"

"How beautiful to hear a son say of his father, 'He was good,'" the pope told the children. "And what a beautiful witness of a son who inherited the strength of his father, who had the courage to cry in front of all of us. If that man was able to make his children like that, then it's true, he was a good man. He was a good man.

"That man did not have the gift of faith, he wasn't a believer, but he had his children baptized. He had a good heart," Pope Francis said.

"Does God abandon his children?" the pope asked. "Does God abandon his children when they are good?"

The children shouted, "No."

"There, Emanuele, that is the answer," the pope told the boy. "God surely was proud of your father, because it is easier as a believer to baptize your children than to baptize them when you are not a believer. Surely this pleased God very much."

Pope Francis encouraged Emanuele to "talk to your dad; pray to your dad."

Pope Francis on God's caress of mercy
From Andrea Tornielli's article in Vatican News

The pope of Mercy www.vaticannews.va/en/pope/news/2025-04/the-pope-of-mercy.html

In a homily he gave during one of his morning Masses in April 2014, Pope Francis said: "How many of us perhaps deserve a condemnation! And it would be just. But He forgives! How? With mercy that does not erase the sin: it is only the forgiveness of God that erases it, while mercy goes beyond that. It is like the sky: we look at the sky, so many stars, but when the sun comes in the morning with so much light, the stars are no longer seen. So it is with God's mercy: a great light of love, of tenderness, because God forgives not with a decree, but with a caress."