Today, my dear brothers and sisters, we celebrate the second Sunday of Easter. It is also what we call DIVINE MERCY SUNDAY. The church calls us today to reflect on the mercy and love of God. God is so merciful to humanity; He so loves humanity that He sent His only begotten Son to die for us, so that we may have life in Him through His resurrection.
It is because Christ is merciful and loves us that He died for us so that through His death, we may die to sin and through His resurrection, we may rise to new life in Him.
My dear brothers and sisters, our God is merciful; He is a loving God. His will is never to condemn us, His will is never to punish us, but to save us. And that is why in the Gospel of today, we hear Jesus telling His disciples: “Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you withhold forgiveness from any, it is withheld.” By saying this, Jesus instituted the sacrament of reconciliation. He gave his disciples the power to forgive sins. And it is the same power that is given to priests to forgive sins. So that whenever we go for confessions, we receive pardon for our sins.
My dear brothers and sisters, the sacrament of reconciliation/confession is a sacrament of mercy. It is a sacrament through which Christ washes away our sins. The sins we commit after baptism.
Sadly, we mostly show 2 attitudes towards this mercy of God, this mercy that we receive through confession of our sins. The first attitude is that we refuse to go to confession; we refuse the mercy of God. Why? Because we want to appear good and holy, we don’t want our priest to see us as sinners; we think that the priest will judge us. And because of this, we refuse to go and confess our sins so that God may forgive us. We prefer to stay in sin and appear holy. We forget that the priest himself is a sinner; he himself commits sins. He himself goes for confession. So, my dear brothers and sisters, let us throw away all thoughts that keep us away from God’s mercy. The sacrament of confession is a place of mercy and forgiveness; it is not a place of judgment.
The second attitude we show towards the mercy of God that we receive in the sacrament of confession is that we make a mockery of God’s mercy. How? We toy with His forgiveness when we intentionally sin, knowing that we will go later for confession and that God will forgive us. Or instead of going for confession, we tell ourselves, “if I go for confession now, I will still commit this sin again, so let me wait until I am ready to change before I go for confession”. So, in this way, we continue to live in sin, we continue to sin intentionally, thinking that we will go later for confession. Whenever we do this, we are taking God’s love and mercy for granted.
My brothers and sisters, God wants us to understand today that He is merciful, kind, and loving. He wants us to always approach His throne of grace with true contrition and a repentant heart. His aim is not to judge us, but to free us from sin, to empower us against sin, so that we may fully live the new life that Christ has given us through His resurrection. This is the attitude with which we must approach the Mercy and love of God. We must see him as a loving Father.
Let us pray today that the Risen Christ will continue to strengthen us and give us that thirst, that desire to seek the Mercy of God in our daily life.
Amen!
By: Michael Okunola, M.Afr.