Celebrating Divine Mercy Sunday on Pilgrimage.

Early Christian World Pilgrims are keeping all of you at Good Shepherd in prayer as we celebrate Mass on this beautiful Second Sunday of Easter, Divine Mercy Sunday.  In the Eastern Churches, this is called "Thomas Sunday" because of the event narrated in today's Gospel at Mass.  This photo of Fr. Tom celebrating Mass in an ancient "cave-church" in Cappadocia, Turkey, was taken during the 2007 Early Christian World Pilgrimage by Roger Schulte.


A few of us, representing all of you, are traveling through Turkey visiting a land made holy by a history of great Christian saints, and is now a modern secular republic that is 99% Muslim.  Our Early Christian World Pilgrimage explores all facets of our heritage and our experience both as Christians and as men and women living in our world today.  In establishing Divine Mercy Sunday ten years ago, Pope John Paul II emphasized that, in Christ, God's mercy expends to all people, without exception. 

In a society and culture where that vast majority of people do not believe as we do -- and I'm speaking about the USA as well as Turkey -- our role is not to proselytize and convert, but to bear witness.  To let our actions as well as our words speak, faithfully and clearly, out of our own experience of the mercy and love of God.  And that's what this feast is all about.  To seek a deeper trust and dependence  on God's overwhelming mercy, which we can claim because of our Savior, Jesus Christ.

Yesterday (Saturday) we visited Troy and Gallipoli , both sites of famous battles -- one brutal and ancient, the other brutal and modern -- and we pray for peace in our troubled world.  Today we go to Pergamon, site of a famous Hellenistic center for healing, as well as place of the "throne of Satan" mentioned in the book of Revelation (Rev. 2:13), and pray that we all maybe faithful in living the call of Christ to give witness to our faith by works of service.  Midweek we will be in Ephesus, the ancient city graced by both St. Paul and St. John, and we will celebrate Mass at the house of the Blessed Virgin Mary, a shrine that is equally revered by both  Christians and devout Muslims.  We pray in a special way that Mary, loved in both religious traditions, may intercede to bring understanding and reconciliation among peoples.

The end of the week will find us in the Lycus Valley, the site of three cities -- Hierapolis, Laodicea, and Colossae -- whose Christian communities had a special relationship to St. Paul (see his letter to the Colossians and to Philemon).  A week from today, next Sunday, after Mass at the tiny church of St. Paul and Thecla downtown, we'll visit the tomb of the great Sufi mystic, Rumi, who founded the Whirling Dervishes.  Then we will spend time exploring Çatalhöyük, excavations of a 9,000-year-old neolithic settlement.  We seek to discover the surprising hand of God even in ancient human history.