April 11.   Sunday Easter 2.  Divine Mercy Sunday.  Fr Bryan decided to share some of his thoughts on this day. “How did the early Church grow?” he asked.  “Were the disciples all fired up immediately or did they need extra help, like we all do all the time. This Divine Mercy Sunday is celebrating God’s mercy as an extra something also available to us as a special devotion emphasizing the need to put our trust in God’s mercy.  We also invite the Holy Spirit to help us examine our lives and, in justice, acknowledge ourselves to be sinners and in need of mercy and forgiveness.  We, priests, have been given special sacramental powers to forgive sins in the name of God and in all humility. I do wish that more people would appreciate what that can mean for them. It can even be a way of ‘touching” Jesus who is the Face of God’s mercy, as we reflected on during the Year of Mercy in 2016.  Jesus said, Peace be with you.   As the Father has sent me, even so I send you.   And he breathed on them and said,   “Receive the Holy Spirit.  If you forgive the sins of any they are forgiven. If you retain the sins of any they are retained.” John 20:19-31.  Pope Francis:   Justice is properly sought solely out of love of justice itself, out of respect for the victims, as a means of preventing new crimes and protecting the common good, not as an alleged outlet for personal anger. Forgiveness is precisely what enables us to pursue justice without falling into a spiral of revenge or the injustice of forgetting.   FT252Reflect, share, pray.   The Sacrament of Reconciliation has been quite widely forgotten this last year with churches closed but its value should be reemphasized