Mass Readings Audio
https://bible.usccb.org/podcasts/audio/2021-11-04-usccb-daily-mass-readings
Second Sunday of Easter – Divine Mercy Sunday – April 11, 2021
Happy Easter and welcome to the one hundred and fifty-ninth episode of By Your Life. I’m Lisa Huetteman and I know that you have a hundred different things you could be doing right now, so I thank you for choosing By Your Life.
My goal is to inspire, empower, support, challenge, and encourage you to connect Sunday, with Monday-Friday, in a secular business world. It’s my desire to help you live our Catholic faith in the marketplace. I hope to offer you practical ways to go forth and glorify the Lord by your life.
In this edition, we’ll reflect on the readings for the Second Sunday of Easter, also known as Divine Mercy Sunday. This week, we heard John’s Gospel account of Jesus appearing to the disciples in the evening of that first Easter and again a week later. We heard that Thomas wasn’t with the others when the resurrected Jesus appeared on that first night. As a result, Thomas wasn’t on the same page as the rest of the team. We hear the disciples trying to convince Thomas, but he demands proof.
Imagine if Thomas went on unbelieving. He’d likely have challenged, questioned, and belittled the others, until they started to question too. Think about how he would have continued to cause disruption within the team and likely undermined their work in the field. He may even have accused them of being crazy! Nothing would have made the competition happier than to have an insider contradict the Truth. Oh, how they would have exploited that! I can hear the breaking news now, “One of the 12 accuses others of lunacy. Details at 11!”
Jesus knew that unity was essential for the Church to grow. He knew that everyone needed to share the same beliefs. In business, we call these common beliefs “core values.”
In the first reading from the Acts of the Apostles, we hear that “The community of believers was of one heart and mind.” (Acts 4:32) We know that this unity – of one heart and mind – was essential for the first Christians overcome a lot of obstacles. This unity gave them “great power” to bear witness to the resurrection and “great favor was accorded them all.” (Acts 4:33)
Sharing common values and beliefs is powerful. Along with a common vision and mission or what you are going to do – in other words, being of one mind – it is essential for long-term success that everyone shares core values or how you will do what you do – being of one heart. Being of one mind and one heart is essential to the success of any organization, team, family, company, community, or country. We know division causes destruction. On the other hand, unity generates powerful results.
It’s not easy to create unity of mind and heart. We are a people who God created with the ability to reason. We think critically. We analyze data. We evaluate scenarios. We consider alternative possibilities. And we all bring a unique set of knowledge and experience to bear when trying to make sense out of what the world presents to us. As a result, when accepting a common vision and mission, some of us are more willing to believe until proven wrong and others need proof before coming on board. We all have different thresholds for trusting others.
And that’s okay. It is okay to doubt. It is okay to question if your skepticism leads you to seek the truth. In our Gospel, Thomas didn’t say “I’ll never believe.” He just wanted to see for himself. He didn’t turn away and go back to his former way of life, instead, he returned and sought out the Lord.
It is also okay for people to question you. Sometimes, when people question, it isn’t because of a lack of trust or lack of respect for authority; it is because they want to understand. They are seeking to learn why something is the way it is. They are seeking to understand why something is true. Questioning is good in our work and in our spiritual lives.
I was working with a team of people who were planning an event. When they approached the boss with the agenda for the two days, they were told that they would have to change the plans because what they proposed was not possible. The team was disappointed in his response because the change the boss demanded was going to affect several other items on the agenda and it would have an overall negative impact on the effect they were trying to create throughout the event. Besides this, what they had originally planned had been done several times before, so the boss’s assessment that it was “not possible” didn’t seem reasonable.
When the team asked the boss to explain why their original plan was not possible, the boss took it as if the team was questioning his authority. In reality, the team just wanted to understand his reasoning. They needed to know why in order to accept his decision and develop a new plan. Because he failed to explain his decision, he lost the opportunity to teach this team what other important factors they had failed to consider when they created their agenda. Because he failed to explain his decision, he opened the door to resentment.
Being of one heart and one mind is difficult because we’ve been created with naturally different human tendencies. In my coaching practice, I use assessments to help people understand these natural differences that are at the same time complementary and cause conflict.
One of the assessments I use is a DISC behavioral style assessment. In DISC, the D scale measures how you respond to problems and challenges. The I scale measures how you influence others to your point of view. The S scale measures how you respond to the pace of your environment. And the C scale measures how you respond to rules and procedures put in place by others.
When we consider the I scale, people who are “High Is” are very trusting and those who are low on the I scale, need to be shown. I suspect that Thomas was a Low I because he wasn’t about to be persuaded by the passionate pleas of the other disciples. He needed proof and Jesus knew this. But Jesus didn’t criticize Thomas for doubting. He didn’t dismiss him. Instead, he helped him by giving him the proof that he needed. Jesus said to Thomas, “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.” (Jn 20:27)
I worked with a small business a few years ago where the business owner needed to hire someone who had experience in the industry, understood the reporting requirements, and was proficient with the billing software the company used. But, because she had been burned by the person who held the job previously, she was skeptical and searched a long time for the right person to fill the position. She was thrilled when she finally hired him. The new employee was competent and hit the ground running. But because of her prior experience, the business owner wasn’t immediately trusting that he was doing the job. She needed proof. She kept asking him to run reports and do other tasks to satisfy her concerns.
He, on the other hand, was frustrated by all this extra work which he felt was unnecessary. He kept fighting the boss and resisted completing what he thought were pointless tasks. He felt that he had been hired for his expertise and now that expertise was being questioned.
While I understood the new employee’s frustration, I coached him to invest in developing his new boss’ trust. He knew that he was doing the job, she didn’t. He had to earn the trust he thought he deserved. Unfortunately, his pride got in the way and the more he resisted, the more his boss didn’t trust him. How much more effective would he have been if he just adapted to accommodate his boss’s doubts, as Jesus did for Thomas.
Are you this patient with someone who approaches trust differently than you? It can be frustrating if you are someone who tries to convince others with your passionate words, as Peter and the other disciples did when they said to him, “We have seen the Lord,” (Jn 20:25) only to have the other person demand proof. We tend to think, “Why can’t you just trust me?”
Similarly, the person who demands proof is thinking, “Why can’t you just show me?” And conflict is created. Trust me. Show me. Trust me. Show me.
The trust me/show me conflict wasn’t resolved for my client and her new hire and it didn’t end well for either of them. He’s not working there anymore and that’s a shame because he did have the skills and the knowledge required to do a good job. He just didn’t have the humility he needed to earn his boss’ trust.
When there is a behavioral style conflict, the other person isn’t intentionally being annoying. They are just being who they are…beautifully and wonderfully made. In his book, No Man Is an Island, Thomas Merton wrote, “The beginning of love is the will to let those we love be perfectly themselves, the resolution not to twist them to fit our own image. If in loving them we do not love what they are, but only their potential likeness to ourselves, then we do not love them: we only love the reflection of ourselves we find in them.”
We are all like Thomas. That is, we weren’t there that first day when Jesus appeared to the apostles after his resurrection, so we must rely on the testimony and witness of others. We must trust Sacred Scripture and Sacred Tradition that has been handed down to us over the centuries. But ultimately, we must trust Jesus.
As he did for Thomas, Jesus doesn’t want us to be unbelieving, but to believe. He wants us to trust in his mercy. That is why, in the 1930s, Jesus chose St. Maria Faustina Kowalska to receive private revelations of his Divine Mercy. In her diary, St. Faustina recorded that Jesus told her, “My daughter, tell the whole world about my inconceivable mercy. I desire that the Feast of Mercy be a refuge and a shelter for all souls, and especially for poor sinners. On that day, the very depths of my tender mercy are open. I pour out a whole ocean of graces upon the souls who approach the Fount of my Mercy.” (Diary 699)
In approaching the Fount of his Mercy, we are offered what St. Pope John Paul II referred to as “a personal encounter with the merciful Savior Himself.” We are offered the same mercy that Jesus offered the disciples in that upper room. We, like the disciples who have betrayed, denied, and abandoned Jesus, are offered the same merciful response from the Resurrected Lord. “Peace be with you.” (Jn 20:19, 21, 26) Jesus says to us, trust me, and I will show you. Trust in my abundant mercy and I will show you an ocean of graces. Trust my Sacred Heart, and I will show you love. Trust in me and I will show you peace.
Let’s pray:
Eternal God, in whom mercy is endless and the treasury of compassion inexhaustible, look kindly upon us and increase Your mercy in us, that in difficult moments we might not despair nor become despondent, but with great confidence submit ourselves to Your holy will, which is love and mercy itself. Amen.
May God bless you with his abundant mercy this Easter season so that you may be a witness to his mercy and may glorify the Lord by your life. Amen.
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