One of the most significant sites for human history is the Upper Room, located in the Mt. Zion area of Jerusalem. It was in this room that Jesus ate the Last Supper with the Apostles. It was here that Jesus appeared to his disciples after his resurrection, when they were hiding behind closed doors. And it was in the Upper Room that the Holy Spirit was poured out upon the disciples at Pentecost. The original building is no longer there, but in the 12th century, the Crusaders, who worked hard to preserve the holy sites of Christianity in the Holy Land, erected a new structure in its place.
Today, the Upper Room is under the control of the state of Israel. Pilgrims and tourists are welcome to visit the building, but Christians are usually not permitted to hold services there. One rare exception was Pope Francis, who was allowed to say Mass in the room. Today, Christians are limited in their access to this holy place; whereas the first disciples were afraid to leave it, for fear of being arrested.
In the Gospel passage for this Sunday, the Second Sunday of Easter, which is also known as Divine Mercy Sunday, we see Jesus appearing to the disciples in the Upper Room on the evening of Easter day, after his resurrection. He had appeared to some of the disciples already and now he appears to the apostles gathered together. He greets them with the words "Peace be with you" (John 20:19).
We should remember that all but one of the apostles had abandoned Jesus as he was being tortured to death upon the Cross. If we were in a similar situation, would our first words be so peaceful toward our friends who had run away in our time of torment? I know I would struggle to be so gracious. One might argue that the great miracle of Easter is not simply that Jesus rose from the dead, but that he still wanted to be with us after his resurrection. But Jesus underwent his suffering out of love for all of us, offering his pain for the spiritual healing of all of humanity. He took our sins upon himself so that we can be cleansed.
Instead of anger and chastisement, when Jesus appears to the disciples, he offers them his peace. He shares his divine peace, not the uneasy peace of the secular world, which is a mere, temporary absence of conflict. By contrast, the peace of Christ is our participation in the divine order - right relationship with God and right relationship with one another and all of the created realm. The Church is to be a sign, example, and conduit of the divine peace of Christ in the world.
During his apparition in the Upper Room, Christ also breathes on the disciples and says to them: "Receive the Holy Spirit" (John 20:22). His words have deep, cosmic significance. In Genesis, when God creates Adam, he forms him out of the dust of the ground and blows into him the breath of life. Later in the Book of Ezekiel, God gives the prophet a vision of dry bones coming back to life through the breath of God, as a prophecy of the remaking of fallen humanity.
In the Gospel of John, we see that the incarnation, the coming of Christ into our world, is compared in significance to God's creation of the world. Through his incarnation, through his taking on our human nature, God begins the process of restoring and remaking all of creation. Through his death and resurrection, human nature is restored and all of humanity is offered this new life through baptism into Christ. The process of the remaking of the world will conclude at the end of time, when Christ returns in glory and creates a New Heaven and New Earth, the New Jerusalem.
All this and more is contained in Jesus breathing the Holy Spirit upon the disciples in the Upper Room. Christ then also says: "Whose sins you forgive are forgiven them, and whose sins you retain are retained" John 20:23. The Church has always understood these words to have been spoken to the Apostles and their successors, as Christ entrusted to them the power and responsibility of governing the Church.
The First Reading for this Sunday, taken from the Acts of the Apostles, gives us a description of the life of the early Church: "They devoted themselves to the teaching of the apostles and to the communal life, to the breaking of bread and to the prayers" (Acts 2:42). The disciples formed a Christian community, rooted in the teachings of Christ, which they received through the apostles. They cultivated a life of prayer, focusing especially on the breaking of the bread, that is to say, the Holy Mass.
We can see that the life of the community was simple, yet profound. They followed a beautiful routine, which did not vary much from day to day. Reflecting on the life of the early Church is instructive for us. They did not follow strange and sensational prophecies. They kept on with the humble practice of their faith every day. Today, especially in light of tumultuous events in the Middle East, we might be tempted to engage in esoteric interpretations of prophetic texts regarding current events, seeking to decipher elements of the end times. But such exercises are not the practice of the Church and are likely to become a serious distraction from the consistent daily living out of our faith.
We also see in the description found in the First Reading that the first Christian community, in its early days, was idyllic, a foretaste of Heaven. However, due to human sinfulness, the perfect harmony was soon broken. Ever since then, the human side of the Church has experienced disharmony over the centuries. But the divine side of the Church, which is Christ himself, is perfect and will forever be. Our challenge as the Church is to embody the divine perfection of Christ in our communal life. We will attain the fullness of that perfection only in Heaven, but we need to strive for it continuously, every day.
We must also remember that divine perfection comes only from Christ. We cannot make it happen on our own. In modern times, various movements have attempted to build a perfect society without Christ. Such efforts are doomed from the start. The hippie communes fell apart after degenerating into unbridled over-indulgence. The socialist and Communists systems that were intended to be utopias instead came to be characterized by oppression, exploitation, and horrific violence. Humanity without God will always be the polar opposite of perfection.
The imperfection of human communities brings us back to the question of mercy. As Christ showers his divine mercy upon us, he expects us to be merciful toward each other too. At the heart of Christ's teaching is love - loving even our enemies. Christ teaches us to respond to evil with good, to hatred with love. Human history has been characterized by a cycle of violence, an ever-escalating cycle of revenge, with more and more terrible retribution. But the love of Christ puts an end to the cycle. When we respond to hatred with love, the violence stops. When we allow the merciful love of Christ to flow into the world through each of us, we change the course of human history.
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The readings for Divine Mercy Sunday, Cycle A, are:
Acts 2:42-47
Psalm 118:2-4, 13-15, 22-24
1 Peter 1:3-9
John 20:19-31
The full text can be found at the USCCB website.
Photo Credit: Church of the Divine Mercy, bird's eye view from Wikimedia Commons.
