Visitation of Our Lady

The second reading, from the Book of Revelation, gives us biblical imagery of what Heaven is like. St. John the Apostle, the author of this book, saw a vision of the heavenly city. Just like cities have boundaries and entrances and streets, so does the heavenly one. The last paragraph from this reading tells us something that is quite remarkable. There is no need for the sun or the moon for illumination in Heaven because the lamp of the city is the Lamb. We know that Jesus is the light of the world. St. John, in his Gospel, uses this image more than once. Jesus is the light that has shone in the darkness. This will reach its fullness in Heaven, as the light of the world, Jesus Christ, who is the Lamb of God, will be the light that illuminates everything in Heaven.

Jesus tells us in the Gospel that we are to love others as He loves us. He told the Apostles this on the night of the Last Supper. He displayed the next day what this really looks like, as He suffered and died for us on the Cross. That’s how He loves us. That’s how we are to love. What does love mean? What is the definition of love? A great definition of love means to will the good of the other. Love cannot be a feeling because feelings come and go. We know this just from experience. Do we always feel like loving our parents or siblings when we’re growing up? Do we always feel like loving our spouse or our children when we’re adults? The answer is no. We don’t always feel like loving another person every moment of every day, but if we have come to the intellectual conviction that we have love for another person, to express it we have to will it.

This weekend is the 4th Sunday of Easter, also referred to as Good Shepherd Sunday. We get an insight into how Jesus shepherds His flock, which is the Church. Last weekend Jesus told Peter to feed His flock. Now we see how Jesus tends and cares for His people. This past year the old wound of clerical abuse was opened up again. We heard, yet again, about priests and bishops behaving badly. Numerous priests, including a cardinal, were shown to have abused many youth and vulnerable young adults. Likewise, it was revealed that many bishops handled these situations very poorly, to say the least. They were not following the example of Christ the Good Shepherd.

The first reading this weekend, from the Acts of the Apostles, gives two responses that reveals the transformation that only comes with living in Christ, living a life of the Spirit. We are told by the author, St. Luke, that the Apostles were arrested by the Sanhedrin because they continued to preach Jesus Christ in Jerusalem. Peter simply responds, “We must obey God rather than men.” He is showing us here what it looks like when one possess the Gifts of the Holy Spirit, in particular the gift of fear of the Lord. Fear of the Lord is not being afraid of the wrath of God, meaning how His justice may come upon us due to our sin. If one has fear of the Lord, they are more concerned with the demands that comes with living as a Christian more than anything else. Christians have a certain responsibility because they have been washed by the Blood of the Lamb in Baptism. Part of this responsibility is serving God and not the world, as St. Peter, the first pope, shows us here. The world only has a temporal stake on us, but God has an eternal one.

Today is the 2nd Sunday of Easter, better known as Divine Mercy Sunday. In the year 2000, at the canonization Mass for St. Faustina, the saint to whom Jesus revealed that He wanted the Sunday after Easter to be dedicated to His mercy, St. John Paul II declared the Sunday after Easter Divine Mercy Sunday. Jesus told St. Faustina that on this day the floodgates of His mercy are open to all sinners open to receiving it.