OMIWORLD

As every year in the second Easter Sunday, we celebrate the “Divine Mercy Sunday.” The message of this day is a proclamation and at the same time an invitation. Pope John Paul II in the homily during the Mass on this Sunday in 2000 said… “Give thanks to the Lord for he is good; his steadfast love endures for ever” (Ps 118: 1).  “So, the Church sings on the Octave of Easter, as if receiving from Christ’s lips these words of the Psalm; from the lips of the risen Christ, who bears the great message of divine mercy and entrusts its ministry to the Apostles in the Upper Room: ‘Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, even so I send you…. Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven….’”

As Oblates of Mary Immaculate, we hear this good news proclaimed to us, as we need God’s forgiveness and mercy since we are still on the way on which very often, we fall. We know well our Oblate story, which is full of heroic activities and events, but also not free of painful and even shameful tragedies. God is coming to us with his tender love, offering us forgiveness and calling us to conversion.

“As Father sent me, even so I send you…,” that is also for us an invitation. Saint Eugene de Mazenod wrote to Father Guigues on February 20, 1837: “We are the ministers of his mercy, and so let us always have the tenderness of a father towards all”; that is the invitation not only to announce to the people God’s great mercy, but also to be for them as loving father. One of the elements of our Oblate charism is to spread God’s mercy among his people.

In these days in Rome, we held meetings of three general committees: Commission for Ministry with Youth, General Finance Committee and Permanent Committee on Constitutions and Rules.

I was reflecting: could we connect all these meetings, which are linked to the process of synodality we are living in the Church with God’s message of mercy? I think yes! Listening to the others, hearing different experiences, good and painful, taking decisions after knowing the stories of the people is sign of love and mercy.

Happy Easter Time!

Antoni BOCHM, OMI