As we’ll hear in this Sunday’s Gospel, Jesus, on Easter Sunday evening, walked through the closed doors of the Upper Room where the apostles were huddling together out of fear and said to them, twice, “Peace be with you!” Jesus had come down from heaven to earth and given his life to give us a special kind of peace, one the world can’t give or take away.
We’re called to recognize our need for it, come to receive it, conform our life to it and, according to our state in life, share it.
He preaches three times in the movie, in a talk at a prison, in a reflection as a seminarian at Mass, and at his ordination, and each time describes that God in his mercy cares for us all. In the movie, when he’s being interviewed for the seminary, the future Father Stu mentions God’s calling Saints Paul, Augustine and Francis of Assisi to prove that sometimes God’s most effective ambassadors of mercy are those whose being and history exude it. Stu’s unlikely calling manifests the power of God’s mercy in calling sinners to become ambassadors of his mercy. Bishop George Thomas of Helena, however, after much prayer decided to ordain him a priest anyway, convinced in prayer that the Lord wanted Stu to be an icon of Christ, the Suffering Servant, and show the redemptive power of Christian suffering. Around that time, he started to experience various physical difficulties, which were eventually diagnosed as inclusion body myositis, a progressive disease that eventually takes away one’s control over one’s muscles such that one is practically paralyzed and even can lose the ability to breathe. He acted on that call, eventually entered seminary and was ordained a transitional deacon a dozen years later at 42. As he was being baptized at the Easter Vigil in 1994, he felt God calling him to become a priest. A desire to wed his live-in girlfriend, Cindy, who would only marry in the Catholic Church, led him to enroll in classes to become a Catholic. When he recovered, he was convinced that his life had been saved for a reason. This fun-loving, strong, self-confident, kind big boy had his life upended in a life-threatening motorcycle accident at the age of 30.
MERCY MK 11 MOVIE
He was the son of nominally Protestant parents, a football player, wrestler, Golden gloves championship boxer, and English major, who ended up moving to Hollywood in search of movie stardom, only to work as a bartender, bouncer and security guard. He is an extraordinary icon and ambassador of Divine Mercy. I’m not sure whether you’ve had a chance to see Mark Wahlberg’s new movie called Father Stu, which focuses on the inspiring true story of Father Stuart Long, a priest of the Diocese of Helena, Montana, who died in 2014 of the debilitating disease after only six-and-a-half years as a priest. That’s why since 2000, this Sunday, the exclamation point of the Easter Octave, is called Divine Mercy Sunday, and is meant to help us focus on and enter far more deeply into that great mystery and gift. It’s a colloquy that reveals Jesus’ true priorities, why he entered the world, why he suffered, died and rose. It’s a dialogue that happened on the night Jesus triumphantly rose from the dead. Roger Landry and it’s a joy for me to be with you as we enter into the consequential conversation the Risen Lord Jesus wants to have with each of us this Sunday. To listen to an audio recording of this short Sunday homily, please click below:
Retreats for Priests, Deacons, and Seminarians.
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