TEXT: Divine Mercy Sunday, Second Sunday of Easter, April 12, 2026
April 12, 2026 Father De Celles Homily
2nd Sunday of Easter (Divine Mercy Sunday)
April 12, 2026
Homily by Fr. John De Celles
St. Raymond of Peñafort Catholic Church
Springfield, VA
Today we celebrate the end of the Octave of Easter.
For eight days we’ve celebrated the greatest day
in the history of the world, the day our Lord Jesus Christ,
after laying down His life for our sins and dying on the Cross,
took up that life again and rose from the dead.
Nowadays a lot of people doubt this actually happened.
It used to be only non-Christians who rejected the Resurrection,
but today, sadly even a lot of self-proclaimed Christians do also.
And yet, faith in the bodily resurrection of Jesus Christ is, in fact,
one of the central tenets of our faith.
The Scriptures insist that it really happened,
and the apostles taught their followers throughout the world
that it was historically and physically true.
Still, many find it impossible to believe in this today.
Why should we be surprised?
It’s been like that even from the very beginning,
even among those who knew Jesus best of all.
This is the situation Thomas, one of the twelve apostles,
finds himself in in today’s Gospel.
The other apostles were telling him, “We have seen the Lord.”
But all he could respond was,
“Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands
and put my finger into the nail marks …I will not believe.”
Fortunately, a week later, Jesus appeared to them again.
Standing face to face with the “Doubting Thomas,” He said,
not in anger but in His great mercy,
“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.”
Still, He did give Thomas a very gentle but clear reproach:
“Have you come to believe because you have seen me?
Blessed are those who have not seen and have believed.”
_____
The reality is that the Resurrection is hard for us to accept also;
it’s difficult to grasp.
But as St. John Henry Newman once wrote,
“Ten thousand difficulties do not make one doubt.”
So, even though it’s difficult to understand, we come here today as those
“who have not seen and have believed.”
Still, wouldn’t it be great to actually see Jesus face to face?
Then there would be no “difficulty,” not even the shadow of a “doubt.”
And why not?
After all, over these last 2000 years Jesus has,
in fact, appeared face-to-face to different people.
It began in the very first century.
In the Book of Revelation St. John tells us that
one day, sixty years after the Resurrection,
he was praying, and for some reason he turned around
and saw Jesus standing right there!
St. John tells us,
“When I caught sight of him, I fell down at his feet as though dead.”
In His Divine Mercy, it’s happened lots of times since then.
Among many others, Jesus has appeared and spoken to
St. Benedict in the 6th century, St. Francis in the 12th century,
St. Catherine of Sienna in the 14th century,
and St. Margaret Mary in the 17th century.
And in the 20th century, on February 22, 1931,
He appeared to a 25-year-old nun named Sr. Faustina Kowalska
as she prayed in her convent chapel in Krakow, Poland.
This apparition has a particular importance to us today
because it was in this appearance to St. Faustina
that Jesus asked that this Second Sunday of Easter
be celebrated as Divine Mercy Sunday.
He told her of His sorrow
that the world did not recognize and trust in His great Mercy–
did not believe in Him.
He told her of His sorrow
that the world was looking for answers to its manifold problems
every place but where they should—in Him.
Think about it.
The 20th and 21st century have seen human beings desperately searching
for answers to so many problems and questions.
So many times they place their faith and trust in the strangest places.
Many people have turned to science
—they believe it has all the answers and trust it like it never fails.
And yet, as great as it is, science fails all the time.
So many times, what most people think are scientific laws
wind up being mere theories that change with passing generations.
And while science provides a lot of information and facts,
that’s not the same as giving answers.
Scientists have developed all sorts of modern weaponry,
and even all sorts of ways of creating and manipulating
embryotic human life.
But science can’t tell us the honorable way to use our weapons,
or the moral way to treat human embryos.
Many others have turned to political oreconomic systems for answers.
In the 1930s it was National Socialism
that many thought would be the savior of mankind.
For almost seventy years much of the world thought Marxism or Communism
would give us the answers.
Sadly, today many Americans are taken up into the Marxist lie,
or embrace a “woke ideology” manufactured by Marxist arguments.
To a lesser extent some folks today treat unfettered Capitalism,
or even a hybrid, a sort of “woke Capitalism,”
as the be all and end all of human wisdom.
But just because the market will buy something, that doesn’t make it good.
And just because 51% or 52%, or even 75% of the people
vote for or approve of something, that doesn’t make it right.
Andmaybe it’s not science or politics, but it’s drugs, promiscuity, or greed.
In one way or another, the world is desperately searching for answers,
something to believe in, something to trust.
This is exactly the world Christ was crucified for and the world He rose for.
He is the way, the truth, and the life, the beginning and the end.
The one who would rather suffer and die in the flesh
than see us suffer and die in eternity.
The one who offers not a culture of death, but a culture of life
—life of abundant grace in this world–
and life of perfection in heaven and the resurrection!
The one who in a world of sin and pain, and doubt and fear,
is Divine Mercy, in the flesh.
This is the Jesus who appeared to St. Faustina in the year 1931.
And this is the Jesus who appeared to St. Thomas
and the other apostles in the year 31 [or so].
This is the Jesus who comes to the world in MERCY and says,
“Peace be with you,” and, “Do not be afraid.”
The Jesus who doesn’t abandon us to fears and death,
but who remains forever alive in our midst,
here to believe in, here to give us hope,
and here to love us and shower us with His mercy.
Jesus lives with us in His word, as St. John tells us today,
“These are written that you may come to believe
that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God,
and that through this belief you may have life in his name.”
He lives with us in His Church, both among all the baptized,
and among those called apostles and their successors in ministry,
the bishops and priests, of whom Jesus said,
“As the Father has sent me, so I send you.”
But most especially, Jesus lives with us in the sacraments.
He comes to us personally in the sacrament of penance,
as we believe and trust His words when He told His apostles
that day in the upper room,
“Whose sins you forgive are forgiven them,
and whose sins you retain are retained.”
And he comes to us, most sublimely, in the Sacrament of the Eucharist,
as we believe and trust His words when He told them
just a few days earlier in that same upper room,
“This is my body…This is my blood.”
At every Mass Jesus comes into this Church to be bodily present to us,
just as surely as He came into that upper room 2000 years ago
to be bodily present to His apostles.
We can’t see the nail marks in His hands and feet—but they’re there.
We can’t see His merciful heart pouring grace upon grace out on us
—but it’s there.
We can’t see His glorified face looking at us with love—but it’s there.
And as we struggle to see with the eyes of faith
what the eyes of the body long to see, Jesus tells us,
“Blessed are those who have not seen and have believed.”
____
Do we believe?
Will we be like Thomas and doubt our Lord until he physically appears to us
as He did to St. John, St. Thomas and St. Faustina?
Or will we simply trust in Jesus?
In all the hardships of life, and in the midst of all our sins,
will we trust in the Divine Mercy
of our Crucified and Risen Lord Jesus Christ?
Will we trust and accept the promises and the grace
He so desperately wants to give us?
Today, as our Risen Lord, in His Divine Mercy,
comes to us in the flesh in the sacrament of the Eucharist,
He says to us,
“Peace be with you.”
“Be not afraid.”
“This is my body,” and
“Blessed are those who have not seen and have believed.”
Let us respond with the words of St. Thomas, “My Lord and my God!”
and with the words of St. Faustina, “Jesus, I trust in you.”