Look at that

Bishop Scott Bullock
Second Sunday of Easter (Sunday of Divine Mercy)
April 27, 2025

“Look at that!”

One of the highlights of the Good Friday service, which we completed last week, is the adoration of the cross. As you might know a large cross is carried in procession from the entrance of the church and left at the foot of the altar. Three times, the deacon who carries the cross then sings out, “Behold the wood of the Cross, on which hung the salvation of the world!” to which the congregation replies, “Come, let us adore!”

Last year, when I was in my previous assignment, as the cross approached the altar, there was a particularly poignant expression of adoration. Sitting near the front, one of our youngest, a boy of about two years old, spied this large cross coming down the aisle, and he shouted out, for all of us to hear, “Look at that!” His awe was admirable, as was his desire during the adoration of the cross, to follow his mother’s kissing of the cross with his own. During the remainder of the adoration, his mother reported later that he asked if he could, “go do it again?”

While the Holy Triduum of Holy Thursday, Good Friday, and Easter Saturday and Sunday are primarily our year’s great prayer of adoration, since Easter extends for eight days until today, the adoration continues this weekend, particularly our adoration of God as mercy itself. When our faith speaks of the mercy of God, the opening of the Divine Heart to the needs of humanity, the focus is centered naturally on the death and resurrection of Jesus. We can see that adoration, that awe, at work in the recount of the gathering of the early disciples, still basking in the light of the resurrection, for what we are doing — the breaking of the bread, the Eucharist — they adore the Lord there. In this act, we are told, “Awe came upon everyone.” 

Literally, the biblical word is phobos — which sounds like “phobic.” While a primary meaning might be “fear,” or “panic,” or “terror,” it also suggests “awe.” The disciples are in awe. 

Awe is also central in today’s Gospel, when St. Thomas adores the risen Jesus with “My Lord and My God!” His awe too comes from a gazing upon the Crucified One. Thomas’ act of Adoration includes specifically the probing of the marks of the Crucifixion — the nail marks in the hand and feet, and the wound in his side that was pierced by that soldier’s lance. While Thomas adores the risen Lord, in particular his adoration, his awe, focuses on the Crucified One that is now risen.  

So then this is what we are to do, we followers of Jesus do: we stand in awe of the mercy of God that is the crucified and risen Lord, crucified in the perfect sacrifice of mercy at Calvary and then raised to save us from death. 

On this Divine Mercy Sunday, then, we take the lead of St. Thomas, who looked upon the Crucified One and replies with adoration and awe, “My Lord and My God!”

The Cross. The Cross the Mercy of God. So, let us look, once again, with love and adoration, at what the Lord has done for us. With St. Thomas, let’s probe the wounds the cross produced by Jesus’ passion with eyes of faith and devotion. And let us touch the cross in communion, whether actual or in a spiritual communion, for “when we eat this bread and drink this cup, we proclaim the death,” his mercy until he comes again. 

Let’s do now what Christians have done since the breaking of the bread described in today’s first reading in the Acts of the Apostles. Let’s look upon Him, God’s mercy itself, and let’s look with awe! 

God could have left us to our own efforts. He could have left us alone and orphaned. Yet, he gives us what we don’t deserve. He gives us Divine Mercy. He gives us Divine Love through Christ’s death and resurrection, when he drew deep into our dying and then took us with him into life with him in his mercy! Let us look upon the one crucified in death and raised in transfigured glory, and “Come, let us adore him!” 

The Eucharist is the very mercy of God — God’s life — given to us. It’s God’s perfect mercy contained under the form of bread and wine. 

Look at that and look at it with awe!