Opening Prayer series: Collect for 2nd Sunday of Easter Year B

The Collect for the Second Sunday of Easter Year B reads as follows:

Let us pray,

God of everlasting mercy,

who in the very recurrence of the paschal feast

kindle the faith of the people You have made Your own,

Increase, we pray the grace You have bestowed, 

that all may grasp and rightly understand in what  font they have been washed, 

by whose Spirit they have been reborn,

 by whose Blood they have been redeemed. 

Through out Lord Jesus Christ Your Son, 

who lives and reigns with You  in the unity of the Holy Spirit 

one God for ever and ever.

In making this prayer tangible, the following reflection questions emerged:

1. What does God being a God of everlasting mercy mean to me?
2. What does my faith mean to me?
3. How may I kindle my faith during Eastertide and throughout the year?
4. How will celebrate Divine Mercy Sunday?
5. What does it mean to me to be redeemed by the blood of Jesus?
6. What does it mean to me to reborn by the Spirit?
7. How does being reborn by the Spirit make a difference in my life?
8. What difference will being God's child who is washed, reborn in the Spirit and redeemed in His blood  make in my life this coming week?

The Gospel account of Doubting Thomas highlights the need to have faith, but shows Christ's patience with those of us who come to faith through experience. We all have times when we want something extra..a sign, a direction, a clue from God.  Christ encourages us to walk by faith and not by sight. We are also confronted with doubting Thomas- a persona we can all take on at some point in our spiritual lives. However, like St Thomas we need to be able to say from our hearts ' My Lord and My God'.