Today, Divine Mercy Sunday, suggests itself as a special day of thanksgiving to God for all the benefits that flow from Jesus’ passion, death and resurrection.

In 1995, John Paul II described this second Sunday of Easter, which brings to completion the celebration of the Church’s greatest octave, as “the Sunday of thanksgiving for all the goodness that God has shown us in the whole Easter mystery.”

It is through this awareness and acceptance of what Christ has done for all humanity in vanquishing suffering and evil “at their roots”, as Pope Benedict XVI says, that the Feast of Divine Mercy can best be understood and appreciated.

Suffering and evil are with us in conspicuous ways today, as the Pope illustrates in his message to the city of Rome and the world on Easter Sunday. They visit the world in “natural calamities and human tragedies that cause innumerable victims and enormous material destruction”, the Pope said.

He lamented the scourge of hunger and incurable diseases, terrorism and kidnapping, and the “thousand faces of violence” in the name of religion.

He drew reference to the unconscionable suffering and evil present in several parts of Africa and in the Pacific, as well as in Afghanistan and Iraq from where “nothing positive comes”. Evil and hardship afflict Christian communities as well as non-Christian peoples.

The world will always have need of God’s mercy but these dire situations make the world particularly ripe for God’s mercy. Because Christ is alive in the world and his power and healing can be experienced through men and women living today and because he has left the world the supreme example of love, we have an opportunity for mercy and peace and, therefore, hope.

The Caribbean region is no stranger to the suffering and evil of which the Pope speaks. His words resonate easily with us here in Trinidad and Tobago.

Defying sickness and death

While the public must be grateful for any drop in the crime rate, this is hardly the time for groups that have worked with gangs in the troubled areas of our country to give themselves kudos for a job well done. To get at the root of our crime problem will take more than this or that programme, however well-intentioned.

The Feast of Divine Mercy celebrates, in a manner of speaking, the gut-wrenching pain of a God who cannot bear to see his children suffer. It is for this reason that Christ came among us, endured the Passion and rose from the dead.

The nation needs men and women filled with the fire of Christ’s Spirit to counter the evils that confront our people. Because of what Christ has done, the celebration of Divine Mercy is as much a celebration of thanksgiving as it is an expression of confident trust and hope in the future.

This feast, in addition to petitioning God to intervene in our lives with his mercy, demands that believers show his mercy to all; that we ask God to grant to all citizens the grace to confront suffering and evil wherever they exist in the country.

In the first reading today from the Acts of the Apostles 5: 12-16, Peter and the other apostles – renewed by the power of the Spirit promised by Jesus – can be a wonderful inspiration for us all as they go about defying sickness and death, working “many signs and wonders”.