Feast of Divine Mercy (Second Sunday of Easter), Year C

The Uniqueness Of The Biblical God

Rev. Marcel Divine Emeka Okwara, CSsR

Feast of Divine Mercy (Second Sunday of Easter), Year C

Church of St. Bridget of Minneapolis, MN

Sunday, April 27, 2025

On Easter Sunday, I said while preaching that Africans are hardly atheists or agnostics. In the words of an African scholar, John Mbiti, “Africans are notoriously religious. Wherever the African is, there is religion. He carries it to the field where he is sowing seeds or harvesting a new crop; he takes it with him to the beer party, or to attend a funeral ceremony; and if he is educated, he takes religion with him to the examination room at school or in the university; if he is a politician, he takes it to the house of parliament.” What does that tell us? It tells us that long before the advent of Christianity in Africa, Africans were already religious people. But what made millions of Africans convert to Christianity? It is the good news-ness of Christianity. Whenever and wherever the good news of our Lord Jesus Christ is preached and presented as good news, people convert and believe in the Lord Jesus. When I was coming of age, I witnessed this religious paradigm shift. People who, from generation to another, believed they could relate and made contact with the Supreme Being through lesser deities and ancestors and divinities, began to convert and gave their lives to Jesus Christ. 

Africans gods, much like the Greek gods, Roman gods and other lesser gods worshipped by people across the ages, were brutal and lethal. Their justice is swift and deadly. People feared them deeply. When they broke into human affairs, something had to give; they destroyed things, killed or harmed people. Why? Because they were in a competitive relationship with this world. For them to assert themselves, something in this world had to vacate. But this is not the modus operandi of the God of the Bible. The moment the good news of our Lord Jesus Christ landed in the soil of Africa, people started converting. Why? Apart from other reasons, Africans could see the uniqueness of the Biblical God. Although he is all powerful, he is also all merciful. In many African Traditional Religions, what is mostly emphasized are the power and control of deities. While concepts like mercy, love and compassion are in some ways present in the understanding of the Supreme Being and in some ancestral spirits, African Traditional Religions are not traditionally seen as religions of grace in the same way as Christianity. The God of the Bible is inherently merciful, so said Pope Francis. But long before Pope Francis wrote those words, St. John said, “God is love” (1 John 4:8 and 16). 

With this mind, let us turn to today’s Gospel, which is the Second Sunday of Easter and famously called the Divine Mercy Sunday (John 20:19-31). Staying in the Upper Room were the disciples of Jesus who at the moment of truth had denied, betrayed and abandoned their Master. Seized by fear of the Jews and I add, shame and remorse for what they did, Jesus came and stood in their midst. When they saw him, their fear was intensified. He may have come back for some kind of revenge. Instead, Jesus speaks the simple word, Shalom! which means “Peace!” After the greeting of peace, he shows the wounds on his hands and side. Why is the showing of his wounds so important? By showing his wounds, Jesus reminds them and everyone not to forget what we did to him. The Author of life came, and we killed him. So, the next time you hear people brag and say, “I am okay!” “You are okay!” do not believe them. The wounds of Jesus are signs of our spiritual dysfunction. After he has shown his wounds, what follows? Not vengeance! If you are watching a movie of a poor man who was betrayed, denied, abandoned by everyone at the moment of truth and was later put to death, and after a few days he rises from dead, would you not expect that he is going to unleash more vengeance on those who betrayed him and put him to death? As for the Risen Lord, what he does after showing his wounds is astonishingly breathtaking. He utters the word of healing and mercy— Shalom! Shalom sums up what God intended for the human race from the very beginning. What sin interrupted in our lives is Shalom. What sin disrupted in the world is Shalom. Shalom is wellbeing at every level— physical, spiritual and emotional. Rather than unleash vengeance on those who denied, betrayed and abandoned him, he offers forgiveness and peace. The terrible disorder of the cross, of the crucifixion of Jesus is addressed not through more disorder, not through more violence, not through more aggression, not through an explosion of divine vengeance but through a radiation of divine love and redeeming mercy.

What does this imply? What does it mean to us? It means there is no sin that God in principle cannot forgive. There is finally nothing that can separate us from the love of God. St. Paul says in his Letter to the Romans that he is certain that neither death nor life, neither angels nor principalities, neither heights nor depths or any other power can separate us from the love of God. How does St. Paul know that? Because we killed God and God returns with forgiving and redeeming love. After speaking Shalom for the second time, Jesus breathed on them and said to them, “Receive the Holy Spirit. Whose sins you forgive are forgiven them, and whose sins you retain are retained” (John 19:22-23). In other words, after offering mercy to his disciples, Jesus commissions and sends them to communicate the same mercy to the world. This is the foundation of the sacrament of Penance, and it has existed in the Church from that very moment till this day as the privileged vehicle of Divine Mercy. When the English philosopher and theologian, G. K. Chesterton was asked why he converted from the Anglican Church (The Church of England) to the Catholic Church, he answered, “To have my sins forgiven.” Chesterton recognized the sacrament of Penance as the privilege vehicle of Divine Mercy. This sacrament is not a burden but the grace of reconciliation, the restoration of divine friendship, and the forgiveness of our sins. I believe that the greatest damage caused by secularism and secularist ideology is the insistence that each of us is okay without God. Going to confession is not a burden but precisely as a privilege expression of Divine Mercy. On this Feast Day of Divine Mercy, feast in Divine Mercy but don’t just feast in it and entertain it intellectually, I strongly recommend you use the sacrament of Penance. For it is the best way to bask in the Divine Mercy.

May Divine Mercy bring you peace!