Breathing Mercy

Podcast Reflection on Breath, Resurrection, and Divine Mercy

I reflect today on the themes of breath, resurrection, and divine mercy. We explore how breath, providing 80% of our energy, symbolizes life and divine presence. On this Resurrection Day, we consider the disciples’ confusion and guilt, contrasting it with the steadfast faith of the women. Jesus’ appearance in the locked room, offering peace, highlights His transformative love. His intimate act of breathing on the disciples signifies personal encounters with God. As we embrace divine mercy, we are called to share this grace, becoming agents of healing and reconciliation in our communities.

00:00:00 Breathing, of course, is a very significant thing that we do to receive that breath that allows us to experience life. You know, about 80% of our energy comes from our breathing, not from the food that we eat or from the water that we drink, from the breath of life, the breath that allows us to experience that presence. I’ve often spoken about breath because it is such a central part of our experience and what is essential for us to encounter God. So on this day, the first day of the week, it’s Resurrection Day. When the gospel opens, the evening of that first day, the disciples are still overwhelmed. Even though some of them have already been to the tomb, some of them have seen that it was empty. Some of them have had encounters with angels, with divine messengers from God telling them, why are you looking for the living among the dead? And yet it’s so hard for them to believe, so hard for them to make sense of all that had unfolded in that those few days of that weekend, they were so concerned about what they had done.

00:01:39 So overwhelmed by their whole experience of shame, of guilt, of denial, of running away even though they had professed that we would be there. We will stay with you, we will guard you. We will defend you. All of them had run away. Runaway. All of them. Except the women. The women had stayed. The women remained faithful. And John the Evangelist. The one who’s telling this story. He had remained faithful. He was still there. But all the rest, all of them were still experiencing just the grief, the loss, the confusion. And it’s into that space that Jesus is suddenly there, even though the doors are closed. Even though they’ve tried to protect themselves, to barricade themselves as best as possible. You know, we so often still do that. We put up our defenses and make sure that if God was to come, then we will let him into this little part of our life. This little section of our experiences. But no further. That’s enough, that’s enough.

00:02:55 And yet Jesus is suddenly there in the midst. Shalom. He says, peace be with you. That peace is what we all need to receive. The constant requirement that we have to experience God to be transformed by that love, and that peace that allows us to experience what we have been called to do, what we were created to do. All of that is the essential opening movement. And as the disciples begin to realize that it’s not just a ghost, it’s not just an imagination. It’s not just some phantom that is is happening. That Jesus, the Risen One, is is there. And they’re beginning to make sense of all the things that they’ve been trying to make sense of all throughout the day, as they’ve experienced the empty tomb, as they’ve heard the wonder of the first witnesses, as they’ve heard Mary Magdalene’s declaration that he was there, and I hugged him at the end when he called me by my name, and I finally was able to recognize him. The slowly this is beginning to happen to each of them.

00:04:15 And we’re told that Jesus then begins to to breathe on them. And when I imagine this, I kind of look at the rest of the Gospels. You know, Jesus will teach the crowds. He will give instruction. He will offer insights. He will do things that impact the whole community at once. But whenever someone needs their heart changed, whenever someone needs to experience his mercy and his kindness, it’s always one on one. Jesus goes to each person to forgive their sins. Jesus goes to each person to heal their wounds. There’s nothing generic about that ministry of Jesus. It’s always deeply personal. It’s one of the reasons that we’re offering prayer ministry in our parish from today. This possibility of encountering God personally with two people from the parish, praying with you, invoking the Holy Spirit upon you, inviting Jesus to be present in this situation, in this wound and whatever it is that you’re experiencing. In our first reading today. We heard that people would line up just so that the shadow of Peter might fall upon them.

00:05:44 It’s a wonderful image, isn’t it? That sense of connection that they know that somehow that in someone like Peter, so broken, so wounded, and yet now deeply changed and transformed by God’s grace and God’s goodness, that he is able to stand before people and just his shadow is enough to bring about healing. Why? I think it’s so much because of this day. Because of this day when Jesus went around one by one. Peace be with you and breathed this new life into them. And again, I don’t imagine that it would have been just at a distance. I imagine that Jesus would have come up to each person, drawn near to their face and breathed directly into their mouth, their nose. So that they could experience that direct sense of the connection of God. They were able to then experience this transforming power of his love that’s available to each one of us. that all of us can allow the breath of God to fill us. All of us can allow this Pentecost moment to begin to be experienced within our lives, no matter how broken we imagine ourselves to be, no matter how great our sins might be.

Speaker 1 00:07:14 The mercy of Jesus is available to us, and it’s as close as the breath that he longs to pour within us. The spirit that is available to change us and transform us into the people that he’s called us to be. So on this Sunday of Divine Mercy, on this Sunday, when we experience his grace and his kindness, let’s indeed allow Jesus to talk to us, to command, to wish, to bestow this gift of shalom, of peace, to change us, to create us, to renew us, to reinvigorate us. And let’s allow his breath to be felt by us. Let’s allow his breath to sustain us and remember that he doesn’t just leave the disciples there in that little ecstasy of having that personal encounter. Immediately he commissions them. Go and do the same. Go and share mercy. Go and forgive sins. Go and offer reconciliation. Go and be ministers of grace. Go and be ministers of mercy within your own lives. Go to those who we. We realize that there’s a brokenness in that relationship.

00:08:34 We need to change that. We need to transform that. We need to pray the mercy and the breath of God into those spaces as well. So on this Sunday, let’s just begin to ponder how can I allow God to bring that healing, to bring that breath of life into me? But how can I share that with those around us as well?