Allocution Second Sunday of Easter
We appreciate the collaboration of all those who make this radio broadcast possible, today, the second Sunday of Easter, April 11, also called Thomas Sunday and Divine Mercy Sunday. Christ is risen, truly risen! We listen to the Gospel according to Saint John chapter 20, verses 19 to 31.
(GOSPEL)
The first greeting of the resurrected Christ to his apostles is “Peace be with you.” And that is what it also says to us: “Peace.” Peace comes from knowing that God loves us, and if He loves us, why fear and be afraid? Peace comes from feeling that the mission that God has entrusted to me in the family, in the Church, in society, I can fulfill despite many difficulties because God himself has given me gifts to fulfill what was entrusted to me. And whenever God gives a gift he gives it as a task.
Peace is present in the midst of suffering, because before I suffered, the Son of God was nailed to the cross and showed us the way to follow. Peace comes from knowing that after suffering, failure, death, comes resurrection. The last word is life, God who is eternal, Jesus Christ, conqueror of evil and death, the Holy Spirit, capable of making us eat in peace, work in peace, suffer in peace, die in peace.
The good news of the resurrection fills us with peace in the face of the death of those we love.
Pope Francis tells us:
“The Catechism explains that the saints ‘contemplate God, praise him and do not stop caring for those who are left on earth. (…) Your intercession is your highest service to God’s plan. We can and must beg them to intercede for us and for the entire world. In Christ there is a mysterious solidarity between those who have passed on to the afterlife and us pilgrims in this one: our deceased loved ones continue to care for us from Heaven. They pray for us and we pray for them, and we pray with them.
”The first way to face a moment of anguish is to ask our brothers, especially the saints, to pray for us. The name we were given at Baptism is not a label or a decoration! It is usually the name of the Virgin, of a saint, who wants nothing more than to ‘lend us a hand in life, lend us a hand to obtain from God the graces we need most. If in our life the trials have not surpassed the last straw, if we are still able to persevere, if despite everything we continue forward with confidence, perhaps all this, more than to our merits, we owe to the intercession of so many saints, some in Heaven, other pilgrims like us on earth, who have protected and accompanied us because we all know that here on earth there are holy people, holy men and women who live in holiness. They don’t know it, we don’t know it either, but there are saints, everyday saints, hidden saints or as I like to say: the ‘saints next door’, those who live with us in life, who work with us and lead a life of holiness.”
(SINGING)
If we have peace we can share it and be instruments of peace.
(SINGING)
Today we can also call this Sunday, Sunday of Happiness. Happy are those who believe without having seen. Happy you who were not there when the world was created, but when you see nature you realize that it is the work of the creator God. And we join José Martí who said: “God does not need someone to defend him, nature defends him.”
Happy are you, who have not seen the crucified with your eyes, and believe in him knowing that he is light for the meaning of your life. Happy you, who have not seen love because it is invisible to the eyes, but you have felt and experienced it in your marriage, in your parents, grandparents, friends, neighbors. That love comes from the fact that we are the image of God, who is mercy and love. Happy are you, who when you see a pregnant woman know that inside her, even if you don’t see it, there is a blessed fruit, engendered, loved by her parents, loved by her grandparents. Happy are you, who have not seen Christ, but have discovered him in the poor, sick, prisoner, in the one who asks you for something and you serve him. Happy your church that praises God, announces the Gospel, teaches love and practices the fourteen works of mercy. Happy is the Church that lives like this, as chapter 4 verses 32 to 35 of the Acts of the Apostles tells us.
(GOSPEL)
(SINGING)
Christ is risen, truly risen! Like Saint Thomas we want to say: “My Lord and my God.” My Lord and my God, you created me in your image and likeness. My Lord and my God with you everything, without you nothing. My Lord and my God, present in my sorrows and sufferings. My Lord and my God, you are at my side and help me build a beautiful family, a beautiful Church, a beautiful people. My Lord and my God, present in the Tabernacle of the temples, to whom I can speak and you console and encourage me. We want to place in the open side of the heart of Jesus and in the hollows of the hands of the crucified the people who worry us, make us suffer and cry, have done us harm, so that the blood of Christ may heal them, cure them and give them a new life. We want to place ourselves in the open side of Jesus’ heart and in the hollows of his hands, so that the mercy of the Lord forgives our sins, cleanses us of our sins and we can begin, like every day, a new life more full of faith and more full of love. My Lord and my God.
(SINGING)
The Lord Jesus Christ suggested to Saint Faustina Kowalska the devotion of the Chaplet of Divine Mercy. We pray a dozen of said chaplet:
VOICE: “Eternal Father, I offer you the body, blood, soul and divinity of your most beloved Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, as a propitiation for our sins and those of the entire world.”
For his painful passion, have mercy on us and on the whole world. (IS REPEATED)
Voice: “O eternal God, in whom mercy is infinite and the treasure of compassion inexhaustible, turn your kind gaze upon us and increase your mercy on us so that in difficult times we may not despair or become discouraged, but with great confidence we Let us submit to your holy will, which is love and mercy themselves.”
Amen.
To the Virgin, with the prayer typical of this Easter time, we tell her to carry and protect all mothers, all their children, all families, all the sick and we do it by praying:
(SINGING)
We bow our heads to receive the blessing. At the end of each invocation we pray, Amen.
“May Almighty God bless you on this solemn Easter Sunday, and may His mercy keep you from all sin.”
Amen.
“And he who has redeemed you by the resurrection of Jesus Christ may enrich you with the prize of eternal life.”
Amen.
“And to you who celebrate these Easter Sundays, may the Lord also grant you to rejoice with the joy of eternal Easter.”
Amen.
“And the blessing of Almighty God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, come upon you and remain forever,”
Amen.
“You can go in peace. Hallelujah hallelujah!”.
(SINGING)