Divine Mercy Sunday

As the “curtain is dropping” on the Gospel of Saint John, Jesus turns to the congregation/audience and says, “Blessed are those who have not seen and have believed.”

With that he summarizes one of the most important themes of the gospel, we must believe in his word. The centurion who appealed to Jesus to heal his son heard Jesus say, “Your son will recover.” And went on his way.

As he was going down, his slaves met him and told him that his child was alive. So he asked them the hour when he began to recover, and they said to him, ‘Yesterday at one in the afternoon the fever left him.’  The father realized that this was the hour when Jesus had said to him, ‘Your son will live.’ So he himself believed, along with his whole household. 

This credence that Jesus demands is not as unreasonable as it may sound at first. We cannot live in this world without putting our faith in others. When I drive across a bridge I trust the contractors who built the bridge; they surely were not cutting corners. When I get on an airplane I believe the pilot knows how to fly this machine. When I travel on the highway I trust all the drivers will obey the laws, driving at a reasonable rate of speed on the right side of the road. When I receive a check for payment from the Veterans Administration, I believe the check is good. I take it to the bank and they accept it. I write checks off my account to pay my bills, trusting the bank to forward payment to my creditors. Without the integrity of millions of people doing the right thing most of the time, our civilization collapses.

Fundamental to this “social contract” that we make with one another, is the credibility of truth. If there is no Truth, if truth is a relative thing based on what most people think, then we are doomed to build our houses on the shifting sands of opinion. As the ambassador from God who is Truth, Jesus teaches us to live in the truth. The truth will set you free.

So virtue is fundamental to the social contract. A nation built on dishonesty, which uses bribes and threats instead of honest currency, knows nothing of freedom. Jesus sent us from Jerusalem to these United States to be a people who know the truth, who live in and by the truth, and who enjoy the freedom truth gives us. We must be a light even in the dark, and the city on the hill. We dare not dabble in dishonesty lest we betray our God, our selves, and our nation.

P.S -- On this Holocaust Memorial Day, let us pray that the world will never see another horror like the Shoah.