For the last week we have been celebrating the Octave of Easter in our Church. The celebration of the joy of Easter, simply put, is impossible to fit in to just one day. On the eighth day of the Easter Octave, we celebrate a truly extraordinary gift: the Mercy of God. In a very real way, the Church is telling us that the celebration of Easter should lead us to a recognition of the Divine Mercy of God.

If you think about it, this makes total sense. Jesus, our Christ and Messiah, died on the Cross not to make us feel bad, not to guilt us into living holy lives, but so that we might be freed from bondage to sin, which is also bondage to Death. Ultimately, it was the result of the sin of Adam. When he chose to follow Satan instead of remaining in union with God, it condemned all of humanity to suffering the impacts of sin on our lives.

The greatest consequence of sin is the power that Death gained over us. If you read the Bible, Death is often referred to not as a thing that happens but a malevolent force or being that hates humanity. Until our Messiah came, Death ruled over us like a tyrant. The ancient civilizations, cultures, and religions did not know how to deal with it. Even Judaism struggled to understand death. There were many theories about the afterlife within Judaism even at the time of Christ!

This is why the Resurrection of our Lord is so incredibly important. Death tried to swallow up Jesus, but because he is God and the source of all life, instead Death was conquered and its power over humanity destroyed. Death, even as an angelic type of being, could not have known that God himself took human flesh and united himself with humanity. Death could not have known that Christ would walk into what we have traditionally called the underworld or sometimes Hades and free the just ones from Death’s grasp. Death was conquered not just because of his arrogance in enslaving humanity, but because God saw the plight of humanity and said, “NO! This will not stand for my children!”

So, in his great kindness, God to Son willingly and out of love came down to earth. He suffered and died so that Death might take him, and then conquered Death itself. Then, he invited us to repent, to turn back to him and be unified with God.

This is the message of Divine Mercy. The God came and conquered Death itself for us. If he is willing to do that, is there any sin he cannot forgive? Is there any mistake we have made he is not willing to overlook?

The love of God is like an ocean, and our sins, merely the smallest molecule of dirt. Nothing from this earth can stand in the way of God’s love for us, nothing can stand against his will for us to join him in eternity, nothing except for us. God respects our free will. If we choose, like Adam, to turn away, then he will allow it. And we can go back to the tyranny of Death if we so choose.

But instead, let us follow the example of Peter. Who denied the Lord at his darkest hour, but later repented. (Literally, in the Greek sense of turning back, if you read the Passion accounts.) From his repentance, he was given the great task of being the rock for the other apostles and for feeding and caring for Christ’s flock: us.

This Divine Mercy Sunday, let us thank God for his incredible gift of mercy by giving our hearts to him so that they might be healed.