Homily for the Second Sunday of Easter

Divine Mercy Sunday

April 12, 2026
Confirmations in Sacred Heart Church in Seymour; St. Joseph Church in Rhineland; and St. John Paul II Church in Denton

Acts 2:42-47
Psalm 118:2-4, 13-15, 22-24
1 Peter 1:3-9
John 20:19-31

Saint Thomas not only doubts the Resurrection of Christ; first, he doubts and disbelieves the witness of the other Apostles who have received the gift and power of the Holy Spirit as breathed upon them by Christ Himself. He sets his own conditions for belief by establishing the criteria that he first probe the wounds in Christ’s hands and side with his own fingers and hands in order for him to believe. It is only after Thomas encounters Jesus Christ risen from the dead that he comes to recognize the pride of his own disbelief and he repents and converts. The Resurrection of Christ and the gift of the Holy Spirit given to Thomas and the other Apostles for the sake of sharing with their successors and with all the followers in the Church introduces an entirely new reality in which truth, love, and mercy conquer deception, hatred, and sin.

The story of today’s Gospel shows the necessity of the presence of the Holy Spirit to understand who Jesus Christ truly is and what He has truly accomplished through His death and Resurrection. The story also reveals that in the gift of the Holy Spirit and with it the power to teach in Christ’s name and to forgive sins, the Apostles gathered together form not only the Church, but the teaching authority of the Church. Thomas first doubts what the other Apostles have told him authoritatively about the truth of the Resurrection of Jesus. He first doubts the Church and Her teaching authority in favor of the criteria of his own spiritual experience. The Church and her teaching authority are essential to living a Catholic life of discipleship. Without the Church, we cannot truly be Christians.

In a few moments, as a Successor of the Apostles, your bishop, I will invoke the Holy Spirit and His seven gifts to imbue your soul with the mercy of God to enable you to live an authentic Christian life as a member of His Church. The Grace of the Holy Spirit seals you as members of His Church and offers you the wisdom to have faith in the authentic teaching of the Church, even more than the authority you would claim for your own religious experience just as Thomas came to do after he received the gift of the Holy Spirit from Christ and proclaimed, “My Lord, and my God.” Jesus speaks about you and about all of us as members of His Catholic Church when He proclaims, “Blessed are those who have not seen and believed.”

It is in the exhilaration of the reality of the Resurrection that transforms the old reality that was fraught with error and deception and replaces it with the clear vision of faith, in which Saint Peter writes in our second reading: “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who in His great mercy gave us a new birth to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, to an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you who by the power of God are safeguarded through faith, to a salvation that is ready to be revealed in the final time.”

Thomas hears the authentic witness of the Apostles; then he encounters Christ in His glorious wounds; then he sees. Thomas begins by thinking that seeing leads to believing. Yet, in encountering Christ in the gathered presence of the Apostles whose testimony he has heard and come to accept, Thomas comes to know that it is faith that leads to vision. In the words of St. Bernard of Clairvaux, “You wish to see, listen. Hearing is a step towards vision.”

The glorified wounds of Christ are manifested in the presence of the Church, gathered in that room, and gathered here today — the wounded Apostles, the wounded Church is glorified as well in the wounds of Christ. They are not the wounds of sin. They are the wounds of mercy and of love. The Love of Christ through the Cross engenders the eternal life and peace afforded us as His Church in His Resurrection. It is this Church, Christ’s Church, the wounded Church, and the glorified Church, His One Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church, into which you are confirmed and fully initiated with the authentic vision of faith handed on exclusively from the Apostles to this day.