Peace be with you!  Jesus greets His disciples with peace not just once but three times.  Our Lord always brings us assurance of His love and mercy despite of our doubts and fears.  Jesus gives us peace wrapped up in loving God, ever ready to embrace and forgive us.

Thomas is not different from other disciples – they didn’t believe till they saw the proof, either. However, doubting Thomas in all his honesty, what he needed was to encounter Jesus and to meet the Risen Lord heart to heart.   Likewise, we, as the new generation of disciples need to see Jesus with the eyes of our heart.  God loves us.

Many of us struggle with doubt and fear that can seem to destruct the very life out of us.  We can fall into a pit of despair and we do not know how to cope up with it.  On locked door of ourselves we tend to doubt.  When we feel afraid we often want to hide away and retreat to a safe place but Jesu again and again.  Our moment of doubt and fears eventually pour our hearts to God, as we receive the Holy Spirit, a calming presence is embracing us.  Doubts become the deepest peace.  Fears become the encouragement.  The sadness becomes the great joy.  God is always there, if we just open our hearts in all our fears and doubts we will find peace – peace coming from the Lord.  There are times when we are wounded, sorrowful, and afraid and sometimes we are the reason to hurt others.

Sometimes our faith wavers.  Each of us hide behind closed doors losing courage. However, no matter how we hide behind locked doors, Jesus comes knocking.  God offers us peace, love and mercy.  God gives us courage and restore broken relationship to love other people.  God gives us new life to encounter Him.  God provides community to enfolds us.  On our doubt with Him, God forgives us.

The truth is that God leads us in knowing and encountering the good news.  In his time and in his way, Jesus Christ graciously draws us near to His heart to know His love and grace.  The one who gave His life for us that we might be forgiven.  Only God can transform us, when misery overwhelms hope, when faith dissolves to doubt, when fear become courage, when sadness devours us, God comes and finds us wherever we are.  We may not recognize and doubt Him, however God will forgive us and comes over and over again through kind deed from a stranger, in words of encouragement from colleagues, in the embrace of a friend and through love from our family.  God comes to us.

We have received the Holy Spirit.  We are to leave behind our fears and doubt to begin a new life.  Today in the Second Sunday of Easter and Feast of Divine Mercy let us cry out the words of Thomas “My Lord and my God!”

Source: Neo Jeremiah Voice of the Young Prophet Newsletter April 08, 2018 issue.