“Lord, let your mercy be on us as we place our trust in you.”
The psalmist today perfectly synthesizes the spiritual grace from this past Divine Mercy Sunday: “Lord, let your mercy be on us as we place our trust in you.” God’s mercy is a gift to those who believe and are willing to entrust their lives into his loving hands. It is a gift we do not deserve but can trust in completely due to who Christ is and what Christ has done for us.
In the Gospel passage, we hear a story of this grace from the psalmist lived out by the disciples on the boat. From the tumult of the sea, the darkness that surrounded them, and not recognizing the Lord on the water, the disciples were afraid. Fear cannot be helped in life, it will be an emotion that is present within our hearts, sometimes justifiably so. It is what we do with this fear that is the question. Jesus invites us to trust in him: “It is I, do not be afraid.”
The grace of the second week of Easter is an invitation to a greater experience of God’s Mercy in our lives and in response a greater trust in the Lord. A trust that is grounded in God’s great mercy for us through Christ and a mercy that is constantly being offered to us in our prayer, our Church, the Sacraments, and through others. Let our prayer today echo the words of the Psalmist: “Lord, let your mercy be on us as we place our trust in you.”