St. Philip Catholic Church: Well, as Father said at the beginning of Mass, today is Divine Mercy Sunday. And that's the perfect feast to celebrate the end of the Octave of Easter, the eight days that we celebrate just as if they were Easter. And this is a perfect feast because the Paschal Mystery The passion, death, and resurrection of Christ that we celebrated a week ago is the ultimate example of God's great mercy to sinful humanity. A word about mission, mercy, and compassion. In our gospel reading, We find the apostles living in fear with the doors locked. And what happens? Christ comes through those locked doors and says what might be the most important words in the Bible. Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you. With these words, the followers of Christ are commissioned, sent forth into the world to be bearers of divine love. You see, the essential, the core mission of the Church, and the Church is us, every one of us. is to be bearers of God's love to the world. In John's gospel, which we read on Good Friday, Jesus says, I have given you a model to follow so that as I have done for you, you also should do. Not a suggestion, not a recommendation, That's our mission, to love as God loves and to love whom God loves. God's love manifests itself in mercy. Thomas Aquinas said, mercy is compassion in regard to someone else's suffering. God's mercy is his compassion reaching out to us in our suffering. The word compassion comes from two Latin words, meaning to suffer with someone. You see, God is not an uninterested bystander. God is intimately aware of and involved in our suffering. That's why Paul says in his letter to the Romans that God proves his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. That's divine mercy. Once when I was a hospital chaplain, I was paged by a nurse to go see a patient. He had just been told that he had cancer. It was widespread, terminal, and there was nothing they could do. The nurse said, he's just sitting on the edge of his bed. He won't look up, doesn't answer us, won't say anything. Chaplain, you've got to do something. So I went to the room, knocked on the door, introduced myself, went in, no response from the patient. no acknowledgement that I was even in the room. So I pulled up a chair, sat down across from him. and I just sat there. He said nothing and I said nothing. And after what seemed like hours of sitting there, but it was probably only 15 or 20 minutes, he looked up at me and said, I don't know what to do. I looked at him and said, I don't know either, but I'll sit here with you till we figure out what to do. That day I learned what compassion is and I realized what keeps us from being compassionate. Two things, fear and time. So often, fear keeps us separated from the people that need our compassion. Fear that our hearts will be moved if we have direct contact with them. Fear that they will suck up all our time and resources. Fear that it's practically useless, that the magnitude of the problem is so big that there's nothing we can do. And time. Compassion takes time. Time we too often don't have. Ever have someone ask you, do you have a minute? And the first thing we do is Look at our watch. We're always in a hurry, always overextended, always have too many things demanding our attention. And when we're in a hurry, we can't see anything except our own agenda. So what's the message for us on this Divine Mercy Sunday? Don't be afraid to take the time to be compassionate. So many people are suffering. So many people are in need of our compassion. We don't have to look far. Family members, relatives, neighbors, parishioners. We just need to take the time, the time to be with them. even if it's just on the phone or a text message. Take the time to be with them and listen. We don't need to have an answer or a solution. We only have to be with them, willing to listen. willing to be compassionate. Be merciful as your father is merciful.