This Sunday, Divine Mercy Means We Are Hell-Bound Without Jesus

We would have no salvation without Jesus — in other words, we would be bound for hell. That’s Church teaching, but after years of de-emphasizing salvation, it seems almost scandalous to say it. All the same, if we don’t believe that, then the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus loses all its power.

Here are five takeaways for this Sunday, the Second Sunday of Easter (or Sunday of Divine Mercy), drawn from Sunday Readings columns at this site and the Extraordinary Story podcast.

First: Jesus’s opening words after his Resurrection were absolutely necessary for the apostles to hear.

John sets the scene with: “On the evening of that first day of the week, when the doors were locked, where the disciples were, for fear of the Jews,
Jesus came and stood in their midst.”

The disciples feared everything at that moment. They didn’t understand the Resurrection and they didn’t understand what their future held. So they feared the people who brought charges against the Messiah they had proclaimed, they feared the Romans who had executed him, and, now after hearing reports of his resurrection, they feared the Messiah too.

What would he say to them? What would he do to them? They had heard the warnings from Jesus: “O faithless generation, how long will I be with you? How long will I endure you?” he had said. Now, they had been utterly faithless. How could he endure them?

They especially remembered the stories he told before his death, in Matthew chapter 25.

• First, there were the foolish bridesmaids who fell asleep instead of keeping watch for the Bridegroom, and got locked out. Now, the apostles themselves had fallen asleep instead of keeping watch with the Lord, and they too were stuck behind a locked door.
• Then, Jesus had told them that those who failed to use their talents for him would be bound and hurled into the darkness — and now they had buried their talents and fled into the darkness when he was captured.
• Third Jesus had told them that he would return and separate the sheep who helped him and were bound for heaven from the goats, who didn’t help, and were bound for hell. Now, he really was returning — after they had failed to help him.

Surely this would be the moment the Lord would make good on his promise and treat them as they deserved!

So the first thing Jesus does when he sees him is say “Peace be with you” to reassure them that he was there for mercy, not vengeance; then he proceeds to “show them his hands and his side,” to prove that he is the very Jesus who died after all their faithlessness.

At that moment, as St. Peter Chrysologus put it in the 400s, “by saying  ‘Peace,’  Christ had granted forgiveness for these transgressions.” They feel the full weight of their unworthiness, and the experience of their great sin being lifted away transformed them.

Jesus had told them earlier that those who have been forgiven much love much, and those who are forgiven little love little. After this encounter, these disciples loved Jesus a lot.

Second: But if we don’t think his forgiveness’s matters much, we will probably love him a lot less.

The apostles were convinced they had been saved from “fiery Gehenna” by Jesus’s unexpected mercy. But many of us — most of us? almost all us? — simply don’t believe that it’s true that we are “hell-bound without Jesus.”

We think that people used to believe in hell and damnation but that we are smarter now. Surely the God of love wouldn’t let people be punished. And we think: Didn’t Vatican II say that, too? That everyone is fine now, without needing to feel guilty all the time?

In fact, Vatican II said the opposite. The Second Vatican Council document  Lumen Gentium said, “The Church, now sojourning on earth as an exile, is necessary for salvation.” If others reach heaven, it is only through Christ.

The Council document Gaudium et Spes says, “The Christian who neglects his temporal duties …  jeopardizes his eternal salvation” and adds:

“A monumental struggle against the powers of darkness pervades the whole history of man. The battle was joined from the very origins of the world and will continue until the last day, as the Lord has attested. Caught in this conflict, man is obliged to wrestle constantly if he is to cling to what is good, nor can he achieve his own integrity without great efforts and the help of God’s grace.”

Yet, as every pope since Pope Pius XI has pointed out, loss of the sense of sin is the crisis of our time. As Pope Leo XIV put it, “To deny the possibility that sin truly breaks unity with God is, in reality, a failure to recognize the dignity of man, who is — and remains — free and therefore responsible for his own actions.”

We are really free, with “the power to make choices for ever, with no turning back,” as the Catechism puts it (No. 1861), adding:

“Mortal sin is a radical possibility of human freedom, as is love itself. … If it is not redeemed by repentance and God’s forgiveness, it causes exclusion from Christ’s kingdom and the eternal death of hell.”

We can reject God forever, and when we embrace sin, we do.

Third: It is easy to see sin’s consequences in the world.

Look at the history of the United States and you will see that the Americans who pushed westward were often brutal, uncaring, and starkly unjust in their treatment of the American Indians. But then, look further back and you will see that the American Indians themselves had been brutal, uncaring and starkly unjust to each others’ tribes for generations.

In fact, look at any nation’s history and you will find that it is a history of brutality and injustice. Every nation is founded in sin — sometimes as a victim and sometimes as a perpetrator.

Sin has shaped each of our personal histories also.  Children are beautiful, open and loving — but are also prone to scheming and lying. When we were children, we learned how cruel and sinful others could be, and that we were sinners, too. Many of us are nearly crippled with shame at a sin committed by us or against us in childhood.

We grow up wounded by sin and our personality develops, in part, by sinning even more to compensate. Sin made us feel unlovable, so we became vain and dressed and acted in ways designed to attract some sin-tainted approval — a flirtatious look, a sarcastic laugh, or begrudging respect.

As we entered adulthood, our sin dominated our life in new ways: Our anger drove our unforgiveness, our greed drove our busyness and overspending, our lust became a fire that never goes out — especially since we have fed  it with fresh fuel constantly. We sin against our family, and simultaneously refuse to overlook our family’s sins against us.

God’s presence is a place where people who sacrifice for others belong  — people who turn their gaze up and out from their own egos. In heaven, I will never be the center of attention, I will never get to insist on “my way” — everything will be His way. A lot of us will have a hard time agreeing to that.

Sin makes us ugly, trapped, and tainted. Easter is so joyful because Christ’s loving sacrifice restores our beauty, freedom and innocence.

Fourth: This is why the readings position the forgiveness of sins as the key to Christ’s life.

The restoration of innocence was exactly what the Old Testament world was looking for. We pray with the Psalm, “Let those who fear the Lord say, ‘His mercy endures forever.’” And St. Peter describes our current circumstances in the Second Reading, saying God “in his great mercy gave us a new birth to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.”

John’s Gospel describes how confession was the only sacrament instituted after the Resurrection, making forgiveness of sins the whole point of his incarnation, death, and resurrection. He tells the apostles “Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you,” then breathes on them saying “Receive the Holy Spirit. Whose sins you forgive are forgiven them.”

But Divine Mercy is not just something priests give and lay people receive, it’s something we share, and the First Reading, from Acts, describes what Divine Mercy did for the first Christians: “They devoted themselves to the teaching of the Apostles and to the communal life,” or, in other words, they lived Spiritual Works of Mercy, including Instructing the ignorant, forgiving offenses, bearing wrongs patiently, and comforting the afflicted.

They also “would sell their property and possessions and divide them among all according to each one’s need” in other words living the Corporal Works of Mercy including feeding the hungry, giving drink to the thirsty and clothing the naked.

The message is clear: sin shaped the world as we know it, but mercy will transform the world if we let it.

Fifth: And it worked. Divine Mercy started a worldwide revolution of grace.

“And every day the Lord added to their number those who were being saved,” the First Reading concludes. He has done that, every day, including today. Christianity is still booming worldwide — not just in the high number of converts in so many American dioceses this year, but in the explosion of the faith in Africa and Asia.

It expanded precisely because mercy took the place of “an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.” The Christian faith gave dignity to women, ended the practice of infanticide, treated the enslaved as full human beings, and made care for the sick an expectation instead of an exception. Today, after millennia of Christianity, treating all people with decency and care is no longer just a Christian virtue; it’s the international standard.

And it all got started with baptism, confession, and one other sacrament.

“They devoted themselves … to the breaking of bread and to the prayers,” says the First Reading; and, “They ate their meals with exultation and sincerity of heart, praising God.”

That is a description of the Mass above all, and Mass is the first place to imitate the early Christians. They had been forgiven much and so they loved much. We also have been forgiven much, and our love is fed at the table of the Lord and spread to all of our neighbors.

After all, as St Peter says in the Second Reading, “the goal of your faith [is] the salvation of your souls.”

Image: Bischheim Temple, wikimedia

By Tom Hoopes