March 30, 2008<\/p>\n
Second Sunday of Easter<\/p>\n
Acts 2: 42-47; 1 Peter 1: 3-9; Jn 20: 19-31<\/p>\n
Presented at Westminster Tower 3\/27\/08<\/p>\n
Dc. Larry Brockman<\/p>\n
I want to ask you a simple question.\u00c2\u00a0 Do you believe that the sun will go down tonight?\u00c2\u00a0 Well do you?\u00c2\u00a0 (Pause for response)\u00c2\u00a0 Yes, of course you do.\u00c2\u00a0 But you know something- \u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0You don’t actually “believe it”,\u00c2\u00a0 Rather, you know it-\u00c2\u00a0 you know it.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s a sure thing, isn’t it?\u00c2\u00a0 You have seen it, over and over, so you say you “believe it”; but your experience has shown it to be so, and what you really mean is that you know it.\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n
Indeed, there is a big difference between “knowing” and “believing”.\u00c2\u00a0 Believing involves an act of faith.\u00c2\u00a0 It means accepting something you can’t prove.\u00c2\u00a0 It means accepting something you don’t know as a fact; something you accept as a fact- without hard evidence, without proof.\u00c2\u00a0 Like the fact that there is a God; like the fact that Jesus is God become man;\u00c2\u00a0 Like the fact that Jesus is the Christ, the Messiah;\u00c2\u00a0 Like the fact that Jesus Christ died and rose from the dead; and like the fact that you receive the body and blood of Jesus at Communion.\u00c2\u00a0 These are all things that you have to believe, they are not things that you “know”.\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n
Today is Divine Mercy Sunday.\u00c2\u00a0 Each year, the second Sunday of Easter is designated as Divine Mercy Sunday.\u00c2\u00a0 Peter talks about Divine Mercy in the second reading.\u00c2\u00a0 Peter says, and I quote:\u00c2\u00a0 “Blessed be the God and father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who in his great mercy gave us a new birth to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead”.\u00c2\u00a0 There are two key things that Peter said: he talks about God’s great mercy, and he talks about the new birth to a living hope we all receive through the resurrection.\u00c2\u00a0 Now the mercy part of Peter’s statement is very important.\u00c2\u00a0 You can’t earn everlasting life through your own efforts.\u00c2\u00a0 No, it is a gift from God- \u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0And that is the essence of the great mercy Peter is talking about.\u00c2\u00a0 God freely gives us that gift.\u00c2\u00a0 He gives us that gift out of his Mercy alone.\u00c2\u00a0 But, only if you believe- believe that he is the one God, that Jesus is God and man; that Jesus was his Messiah; that Jesus died on the cross and rose from the dead, and that his life after that resurrection will be shared with all of us, and indeed, is already being shared with all of us through the Eucharis.\u00c2\u00a0 That is the living hope that you all receive through the resurrection- if you believe.\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n
We are told two stories today about faith and belief:\u00c2\u00a0 First, the story of Thomas.\u00c2\u00a0 If your honest, then you know that there is a little bit of the doubting Thomas in all of you.\u00c2\u00a0 Each year the Church goes through Advent, Christmas, Lent, Holy Week, and Easter celebrations to remind us of the essentials of our Faith.\u00c2\u00a0 But do we really believe them?\u00c2\u00a0 Do you really believe them?\u00c2\u00a0 Most of us would rather have the kind of proof that Thomas said he wanted, because most of us only want to accept what we know.\u00c2\u00a0 The real challenge you have as Christians, though, is to believe without seeing, just as Christ tells Thomas.\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n
The other story is the one from Acts.\u00c2\u00a0 This is a story about the early Christians.\u00c2\u00a0 These people actually believed.\u00c2\u00a0 Most of them were not eye witnesses themselves, no.\u00c2\u00a0 But, they believed on the strength of the teaching of the Apostles.\u00c2\u00a0 Just as you are called to believe on the strength of the teaching of the Apostles recorded in the Scriptures and handed on in the teachings of the Church.\u00c2\u00a0 These people experienced the awe and joy of the Easter promise.\u00c2\u00a0 They waited in joyful expectation of the second coming of the Lord, because they actually believed in that promise.\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n
The Easter season is a time for all of you to abandon your need to know that Jesus was resurrected, and embrace your faith in the fact that Jesus was raised from the dead.\u00c2\u00a0 It is also a time to reflect on the Divine Mercy of God.\u00c2\u00a0 Because no matter what you have done- no matter how great your sin and whatever hold it might have on you, all you need do to merit that gift of Divine mercy is to ask for God’s forgiveness, and believe in him.\u00c2\u00a0 Know that in just a few minutes, you can experience the living hope of the resurrected Jesus when you go to Communion.\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
March 30, 2008 Second Sunday of Easter Acts 2: 42-47; 1 Peter 1: 3-9; Jn 20: 19-31 Presented at Westminster Tower 3\/27\/08 Dc. Larry Brockman I want to ask you a simple question.\u00c2\u00a0 Do you believe that the sun will go down tonight?\u00c2\u00a0 Well do you?\u00c2\u00a0 (Pause for response)\u00c2\u00a0 Yes, of course you do.\u00c2\u00a0 But […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[6],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.deaconlarry.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.deaconlarry.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.deaconlarry.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.deaconlarry.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.deaconlarry.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=11"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.deaconlarry.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.deaconlarry.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.deaconlarry.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.deaconlarry.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}