“Put your finger here and see my hands, and bring your hand and put it into my side and do not be unbelieving, but believe.” -John 20:27
Easter is easily one of my favorite holidays. I love that Easter is in springtime, the joy and new life of blooming trees and flowers reveals the hope of Resurrection in God’s created world. I love being able to walk and run more outside, and you might even catch a good UV index day around Easter. Churches are filled with Easter lilies and tulips, families who come to celebrate have replaced the winter apparel of sweaters and layers to sundresses and khaki shorts, and the music is triumphant and exuberant. The purple veils from the statues and icons are lifted, and the cross wears a white shawl signifying that He is truly Risen indeed. Alleluia, Alleluia!
Peace. Hope. Victory. Joy. Resurrection. It feels infectious, and maybe it’s also the perfect blend of it being springtime, where the seasonal depression is ending and the NBA playoffs are also beginning. And the Easter season is 50 days long- the Church carries her renewed peace, her renewed hope, her renewed victory in Christ, her renewed deep joy from the Resurrection of our Lord. Alleluia is her song.
One aspect of the Easter season that I have recently fallen in love with is Divine Mercy Sunday- the Sunday that follows Easter Sunday. I wish I had known about Divine Mercy earlier in life. I think I encouraged my family to pray the novena with me sometime during 2020, but if I recall correctly, most times we had “The Last Dance” docuseries on in the background. I knew the image of Divine Mercy Jesus but had never understood the message and beauty of it until a few years later.
My then boyfriend (now husband) Tom and I had just ran a half marathon in London, Ohio in the spring of 2023. We stayed in Columbus for the weekend and happened upon (Holy Spirit led to) some random church in the city. As we entered, I was taken in awe by some of the most beautiful artwork I’d ever seen in a Church, especially the Stations of the Cross. The Stations were all mini statues, and we happened to be sitting by the station where Jesus is nailed to the cross. In the image, you see the soldiers about to pierce that first nail in our bloodied and bruised Lord’s hands, and He’s looking- at me.
I choked up immediately at the power of the image. The eyes of our Lord were in such agony, such distress, but they also had this look as if He were to say “this is my body, given up for you.” In His moment of deep suffering, He was looking as though His love for me was even deeper than the pain- that I was worth His wounds, His stripes, His final breaths and His death. I was reminded of words from John 15:13,
“Greater love has no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.”
I was feeling overwhelmed by the deep and intimate love of our Lord when I turned to see a massive image of Divine Mercy Jesus at the front of the Church. Our broken and beaten Lord now appeared beautiful and made new in His Resurrected state. The image struck me in a way it had never before.
During the priest’s homily, He began to talk about the origins of Divine Mercy Jesus from St. Faustina, that she saw these visions of Jesus with blood and water gushing forth from His side. During prayer, Our Lord told St. Faustina, “In the Old Covenant I sent prophets wielding thunderbolts to My people. Today I am sending you with My mercy to the people of the whole world. I do not want to punish aching mankind, but I desire to heal it, pressing it to My Merciful Heart” (Diary of Saint Maria Faustina Kowalska, 1588).
The priest further shared how odd it was that, as the image of Divine Mercy shows, that Jesus still has those wounds in His hands and in His side. That in His Resurrected state, He chose to keep the wounds still open, as we see Jesus instruct Thomas in John 20:27,
“Put your finger here and see my hands, and bring your hand and put it into my side and do not be unbelieving, but believe.”
Jesus could have closed up those wounds, but He did not. And I think that’s just what makes the image of Divine Mercy so beautiful and why it struck a cord that has to this day changed my relationship with Jesus. The open wounds show that the blood and water that gushed forth as a sign of mercy after Jesus had expired from the cross still outpour on us. His love and His mercy are never ending, so much so that it continued to flow out of our Lord after He expired on the cross.
Our Resurrected Jesus, though having conquered death, still gives us access to those wounds from which His mercy overflows. As St. Faustina was creating the image, Jesus shared with her that through the image of Divine Mercy, “I am offering people a vessel with which they are to keep coming for graces …that vessel is this image with the signature, ‘Jesus, I trust in You.’ By means of this image, I shall be granting many graces to souls.” (Diary of Saint Maria Faustina Kowalska, 327, 742)
I think it’s also so beautiful that Jesus lets Thomas touch His wounds. I almost wonder if Thomas’ unbelief was not necessarily doubting that Jesus rose from the dead, rather that Jesus died and rose for him– for his salvation. As a dear follower and friend of Jesus who could not stay awake for Him during Jesus’s agony in the Garden of Gethsemane, who was not there in Jesus’s final moments on the cross, He probably felt deep sadness and shame. In John 11:16, Thomas is quoted in saying,
“Let us go, so that we may die with Him.”
Thomas was not there to die with Him. But Jesus, through having Thomas feel His wounds, showed that He died for Him. His hands were nailed, His side was pierced, for the salvation of Thomas’s soul, to give him in his weakness and sin access to our Heavenly Father, to eternal life, to Divine Mercy. And even in Thomas’s doubt- Jesus still invited Him to touch His wounds. He first invites Thomas, the one who needed His mercy the most, to receive from His fount of Divine Mercy.
What’s so incredible about the gift of the Eucharist, the true Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity of our Lord, is how we too are given access to be one with Jesus for the salvation of our own souls. Every time we receive the Eucharist, that most intimate communion with our Lord, He invites us to feel those wounds as a sign for His unconditional love and never ending, divine mercy for us.
I love that Jesus instructed St. Faustina to include “Jesus, I trust in you” at the bottom of the image. Trusting in the Divine Mercy of Jesus has changed my life. As I have grown in devotion to Divine Mercy, I have been overwhelmed in knowing more the love that God has for me. And in knowing more the love that God has for me, I have more confidence in His plans for me, in His constant presence with me, that He is always holding me, sustaining me, and loving me. When you know someone loves and cares for you deeply, you know they are always for you and will always have your back.
Trusting in Jesus’s Divine Mercy also helps me when I feel weak in my sins. Recently, or really my entire adolescent and 20 something life, I’ve struggled with a phone addiction. The more I confess this sin, the more convicted I am of the idol that I’ve made my phone- yet I still constantly struggle to not check the weather 17 times a day, or look at pictures of my dogs when I’m bored, or shoot my mom or sister a game of WordHunt (this is at least when I don’t have social media, because even in removing social media I still fall short).
In my constant struggle to not make my phone an idol, or when I am snippy to my husband that was just trying to be nice, or when I have spent the entire day thinking of myself rather than others, I often feel shame and defeat. And I used to let my weakness to sin define me and think I could not draw near to God. I would put myself in a “spiritual timeout” because I was embarrassed and ashamed of my sins. But trusting in Divine Mercy means that in our sin, Jesus only invites us to draw closer- that in our sin, He deeply delights to cover us with His blood and water, to save and cleanse us, and show us that even in our sin, we are loved beyond our wildest dreams. Jesus delights and even thirsts to pour His mercy on sinners who draw near to Him.
As I mentioned earlier, Easter is a beautiful season of feasting and rejoicing after long weeks in the desert. But the message of repentance from Lent should carry over into Easter- for repentance brings us closer to those wounds that Jesus bore on the cross, the wounds that are our access to salvation, to His Divine Mercy and Love. I heard in a priest’s homily once that “repentance leads to joy.” I think this is truly the message of Divine Mercy in the Easter season- through repentance in Confession and the Eucharist, those Sacraments that bring us closest to the Divine Mercy of Jesus, we can have that Easter joy in this abundance and abyss of love- Alleluia is reigns our song.
Going back to the Gospel where Jesus meets Thomas, I invite you to picture yourself in that upper room. Jesus enters and says, “Peace be with you.” He sees your fear, your anxieties, your struggles, your doubts about yourself and your worth, all of your sins, and all of your dignity and beauty, and invites you to touch His hands and His side. Feel the holes, pierced for you. Deep suffering, done out of deeper love. You are worth the wounds. Jesus invites you, even thirsts for you, to receive His Divine Mercy.
“Eternal God, in whom mercy is endless and the treasury of compassion inexhaustible, look kindly upon us and increase Your mercy in us, that in difficult moments we might not despair nor become despondent, but with great confidence submit ourselves to Your holy will, which is Love and Mercy itself (Diary of Saint Maria Faustina Kowalska, 950).”