SECOND SUNDAY OF EASTER (DIVINE MERCY) – Year A –
Fr Paolo Consonni, MCCJ
Last month, the news reported that the vast majority (up to 90%) of foreign domestic helpers in Macao endure potentially traumatic living circumstances and are at risk of unhealthy behaviors. Many helpers are exposed to precarious working conditions, long periods of separation from family, and difficulties in supporting themselves. These circumstances have a lasting adverse impact on their psychological well-being. Hopefully, the increased awareness of this issue will help improve their situation and offer better support.
Reading the article, I thought of how easily we can overlook the effect of traumas in our lives and in the lives of others. While most of the time we manage to cope with life’s difficulties and move on without lasting negative effects, at other times traumatic events deeply affect us for long periods of time, even for one’s lifetime. Most of us, maybe all of us, have inner wounds that need healing.
There is no doubt that the disciples experienced Jesus’ death on the cross as a traumatic experience. The first encounter of the Risen Lord with His disciples, and especially with Thomas, which will be proclaimed in this Sunday’s Gospel (the Sunday of Divine Mercy), confirms this impression (see John 20:19-31). Jesus finds the disciples fearful, isolated, and even barricaded with doors and windows tightly closed. They feel ashamed of their cowardice because they abandoned and even denied Jesus. They are literally and figuratively in darkness, with their dreams shattered and unable to know what to do next. How many times have we gone through the same feelings when we hit a low?
It is not easy to deal with trauma. Most of the time, we try to bury it in the unconscious to suppress the pain it provokes. There are memories in our hearts we would rather not touch because when triggered they can cause havoc in our lives. Though hidden, our inner wounds are, however, still active and influence our moods and choices.
The Risen Christ, appearing to the traumatized disciples, didn’t allow them to deploy any avoidance mechanism: “Jesus came and stood among them […] then he showed them his hands and his side. Then he said to Thomas, ‘Put your finger here and see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it in my side. Do not doubt but believe’” (vv. 20-27).
Jesus’ wounds, the horrible marks of the massive traumatic events of the Cross He Himself endured, were healed by His faith and trust in the Father. On His risen body, those wounds though healed were still visible. Jesus did not want to “forget” the pain of the Cross. The Resurrection is not simply the overturning of the cross, as if His death was a defeat and the Resurrection the reversal of that defeat. Both the cross and the Resurrection are part of one act of love, mercy, and redemption.
By looking at Jesus’ wounds, besides recognizing the reality of the Resurrection, the Apostles were therefore forced to process their own traumatic experiences but no more with shame and guilt. Jesus’ gift of peace (Shalom) and the breathing of the Holy Spirit upon them allowed them to face their weaknesses and failures in the light of God’s Mercy. Those imperfect disciples understood that Jesus forgave them and that His love is more powerful than their sins, fears, and cowardice.
By sending these traumatized Apostles into the world, Jesus invited them to “move on” from the paralysis caused by their traumas, trusting Him as He trusted the Father, more than relying on their own ineffective coping mechanism. Similarly, by humbly recognizing our fragility, and our need for help, we can open our wounds to the healing power of Christ’s mercy and become ourselves instruments of healing and reconciliation in a wounded world: “Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven”. (vs. 24) Wounded people are the best healers because they themselves have gone through the traumatic experience to be wounded. The Apostles became witnesses of the Resurrection and truly evangelizers, not despite their wounds, but thanks to those wounds which allowed them to experience the extent of God’s mercy.
I remember that many years ago Pope Francis said that “the narrow path to encounter the Risen Christ are his wounds”. There is no other. Not our knowledge or prayers, not our moral and ascetic efforts are in themselves enough to lead us to experience the power of the Resurrection in our lives. Only when we see in Jesus’ wounds the reflection of our own inner wounds, and also the wounds of our brothers and sisters which await to be nursed and tended with the Mercy flowing from the Cross, then healing is possible, and life can have a fresh start. That is the way we concretely experience the Resurrection. As St. Peter affirmed, looking at his own experience: “By his wounds you have been healed” (1 Pt 2:24).
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