Discussion Questions

First Reading

Acts 2:42-47

1. How could the early Christians “sell their property and possessions and divide them among all according to each one’s needs”? Pope Francis says they “received mercy and lived with mercy: This is not some ideology: it is Christianity.” Is it time to eliminate all inequalities and heal injustice?

Pope Francis homily for Feast of Divine Mercy
April 19, 2020

2. In the midst of the pandemic did your idea of community include all your brothers and sisters in the world? How is your faith strengthened by the faith of others? They ate their meals “with exultation.” What fills you with “awe”?

Second Reading

Peter 1:3-9

1. According to Pope Francis in Evangelii Gaudium, #276, was Christ’s resurrection just an event of the past?

Where all seems to be dead, signs of the resurrection suddenly spring up. Each day in our world beauty is born anew, it rises transformed through the storms of history. Values always tend to reappear under new guises, and human beings have arisen time after time from situations that seemed doomed. Such is the power of the resurrection, and all who evangelize are instruments of that power.

Evangelii Gaudium, #276
November 24, 2013

2. Hans Urs von Balthazar says this: “We are not the ones who grasp Christ and anchor ourselves to him. Rather, Christ has caught up with us and grasped us.” Which of these “graspings” makes you feel more secure? How does Balthazar’s sentence relate to this reading’s sentence, “God … gave us a new birth to a living hope through the resurrection”?

Gospel

John 20:19-31

1. “Jesus came in, although the doors were locked, and stood in their midst.” Can any doors be locked tight enough to keep Christ out? Explain. Do you have any “locked doors”? How is peace connected with forgiveness of sins?

2. Resurrections weren’t an everyday occurrence at the time this Gospel was written. Was it unusual for Thomas to be skeptical? Does mercy abandon those who stay behind like Thomas? Would John’s Gospel story of Thomas help those through the ages who may have doubts about Jesus’ resurrection?

Anne Osdieck

**From Saint Louis University