Collect for Second Sunday of Eastertide Year A

COLLECT SERIES

The Mass: Collect series Icon.

COLLECT

The Collect for the Second Sunday of Eastertide reads as follows:

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 my grasp and right understand in what font they have been washed,

by whose Spirit they have bee reborn,

by whose Blood they have been redeemed. 

Through our Lord Jesus Christ, Your Son,

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

one God, for ever and ever.

REFLECTION QUESTIONS

1.    What does God’s mercy mean to me?

2.    How will I celebrate Mercy Sunday?

3.    In what areas of my faith does my faith need kindling?

4.    What does it mean to me be to be reborn in the Spirit?

5.    What difference will it make to my life this coming week to have been redeemed by Jesus?

GOSPEL REFLECTION.

The Gospel which tells the story of doubting Thomas is so well known and for many people so well loved.  I think it is so well loved for many because we  can relate to Thomas.

Imagine we were the disciples and we were told by some of the other disciples, after knowing that Jesus had died on the cross that He has risen. What would we say?  Surely, we would have questioned it.  Thomas therefore did the most natural thing a human would do. Remember no one ever before had risen from the dead. Why would the disciples expect anything else even though Jesus had told them numerous times during His three-year ministry?

The other aspect about Thomas refusal to believe is that he wanted proof.  There are many people who refuse to believe because they want Christians to prove and show them the existence of God.

Yet faith does not need proof. Faith believes.  Thomas came to belief because he saw but Jesus says’ Happy are they who believe yet not see’.

However, even though Thomas came to belief through seeing Jesus, he still had the choice to believe and to respond to his belief.  He could have acknowledged that Jesus is risen and left it at that. No, he humbled himself and from the core of his being cried out ‘My Lord and my God’.

When life is difficult, especially now with the Covid 19 crisis in the world, we may be tempted to think ‘where is God in all of this?  Why has He allowed this to happen to the world?  Some people’s faith may be shaken through this crisis.  Some may even lose their faith by not making the effort to keep Jesus no 1 in their lives.  They may not bother to attend a live stream Mass on Sunday or continue to communicate in prayer to Jesus. 

We as Catholics know that Jesus said ‘ I am with you always until the end of time’.  We are living in trying times right now but we need to stay strong and reaffirm our belief in the risen Lord.  We need to cry out from the depths of our hearts ‘ My Lord and my God’.