Healing plays a huge role in our society. As a nation, we spend billions of dollars annually on healthcare. Like our physical health, our spiritual health also needs attention. Throughout the Gospels, physical and spiritual healing are major characteristics of the ministry of Jesus. Some healings are recalled in great detail, while others are simply mentioned in passing. Yet, all of these healings are signs of the Kingdom of God.
In today’s Gospel (John 20:19-31), we hear the ministry of spiritual healing being passed on to the eleven remaining Apostles through the gift of the Holy Spirit. Remember that Judas had not yet been replaced after having taken his own life out of the grief of having betrayed Jesus. This Gospel passage is one scriptural basis for the Sacrament of Reconciliation (Confession). John tells us that the risen Jesus appears to the Ten on Easter Sunday (Thomas was absent) as they hid in the Upper Room where they had celebrated the Last Supper three days earlier. No doubt the air was thick with fear and apprehension as the Apostles believed that they might be next to be arrested and crucified. But Jesus appears among them like a fresh breeze filling the room. After twice greeting them with the words “Peace be with you” to calm their fears, he instructed them: “As the Father has sent me, so I send you.” He breathed on them and said: “Receive the Holy Spirit. Whose sins you forgive are forgiven them, and whose sins you retain are retained.” The Apostles were given a holy responsibility to share God’s healing and forgiveness with others in Christ’s name. They become instruments of the very mercy and forgiveness that Jesus so abundantly and generously bestows on all who come to him with a contrite heart.
A week later, John shows how Thomas personally experienced this life-changing mercy. Thomas had found it hard to believe what the other Apostles had told him about their encounter with the risen Lord. So Jesus appears in the Upper Room a second time a week later when Thomas is present, and invites Thomas to probe the wounds of crucifixion in his hands and side. Thomas is brought from doubt to belief and makes one of the great declarations of faith: “My Lord and my God!”
The need for that mercy and healing is just as great today as it was in the first century. Perhaps that is why during his pontificate, Pope St. John Paul II declared today to be Divine Mercy Sunday, based upon the revelations of Our Lord to St. Faustina Kowalska. Among those revelations is another great declaration faith found inscribed at the bottom of the image of Divine Mercy: “Jesus, I trust in you!” At the heart of our faith is the recognition that we need the risen Christ; we need his healing and above all his steadfast mercy. Without these we are lost, still in our sins – unable to be reconciled with God. As we continue to celebrate the Resurrection, let us each open our own hearts to that healing, particularly through the Sacrament of Reconciliation (Confession) and then commit ourselves to be channels of that healing for others in our words and actions, inviting them to embrace the great mercy of God, through his Son, Jesus Christ.