2nd Sunday of Easter (Divine Mercy Sunday)
Acts 2:42-47; 1 Peter 1:3-9; John 20:19-31

"I Trust in You"

by Fr. John Martin Shimkus, O.S.B.

      In this time of Coronavirus, our community has been praying daily the Chaplet and the Litany of Divine Mercy.  We offer these prayers to call down God’s mercy upon the world and especially on those who suffer most from this plague.  And as we have repeated again and again the litany’s response, “I trust in you!”, I began to reflect on the true meaning of this prayer.  Because “I trust in you” can only be words directed to a person, not a thing.  “I trust in you” refers to a “Divine Mercy” that is therefore, a person and not merely some impersonal object or attribute.  And so as we prayed, I came to sense most deeply that Divine Mercy must be God himself, manifested most powerfully and meaningfully in the Crucified and Risen Lord.

     Isn’t that the meaning of the Apostle Thomas’ encounter with Jesus in the gospel?  Was this not an encounter with the Mercy of God, who comes to us in person?  True, when Thomas voices his protests to the other apostles he sounds more like a coroner rather than a disciple: “Let me see the body so I can poke around in the wounds.”  But later, when he got the chance to see them, to touch them, they became for him something more than mere physical injuries; they were truly the precious marks of the Divine Mercy, the signs of the Lord’s unfathomable love for his friends.  Thomas’ ecstatic cry of gratitude and faith says it all: “My Lord and my God!”

     Divine Mercy.  Divine Friendship.  We live each day not surrounded by virus, but by mercy - the mercy of a God who did not think it too much to send his Love in person.  We live each day accompanied by a Divine Friend who has laid down his life for us.  And when we let this reality find its way deep into our minds and hearts, our whole lives can become an unending litany, a litany in which we acclaim again and again “I trust in you!” to the One who is love and mercy himself.