Move on.  One of the most debilitating problems that we face in life is the inability to move on.  We can so easily become stuck in our lives and rehash over and over again personal situations of pain and suffering in our lives.  We get stuck in the past and cannot let go of past situations.  Sometimes we become overly nostalgic for the past and recreate the past in our minds, conveniently forgetting all of our struggles and difficulties and painting an idyllic, though unreal, picture of the past in our minds.  We collect old things and memories and we choose to live in our memories and in our minds rather that in the present real world.  Sometimes we identify ourselves with a painful event that happened to us and we see ourselves as powerless victims of the past, reliving over and over again our traumas.  We hold on to that event as being forever responsible for all of my personal failings and struggles with life.  We keep searching for a justice that will never come and any attempt at recompense is seen as too little and too late.  Sometimes we just cannot find our way to forgiveness and we keep digging up the lifeless bones of past conflicts.  Caught in this trap the weight of our lives becomes almost unbearable.

     Living in the past gives us a false sense of control.  It gives us an illusion of power.  The world of today becomes so complex and so rapidly changing that we fear moving forward.  We can’t keep up with the present pace and the demands that life makes upon us and so we retreat and seek shelter in a past that we can control in our minds.  We can know the past and we are not surprised by its events for we have created them in our own memories and assigned them meaning.  Even if they are painful, we are familiar with that pain.  There is no sense of mystery in the past.  We retreat from mystery because it frightens us with its unknowable characteristics.  We can easily become locked into this upper room of the past and nostalgia, locking out anything that is new and therefore threatening.  We develop a deep sense of doubt, suspicion, skepticism and cynicism for anything that might challenge the way that we think and perceive the world to be.

     The empty tomb of Easter morning is an enigma for us.  We don’t know quite what to make of it.  What it challenges is our thoughts about the finality of death.  When we are confronted by the empty tomb we are forced to conclude that there is a “something more” here that is beyond our understanding.  We must go beyond death to even begin to understand the implications of the empty tomb.  It awakens within us a sense of doubt, fear and uncertainty.  Doubt that is brought on by an intense experience or trauma, such as Thomas and the apostles experienced with the crucifixion and death of Jesus, can cause us to lose our sense of faith and to fall back only upon experience.  Faith allows us to move forward but doubt consigns us to the past, to things that we have touched.  Jesus challenges Thomas not to cling to things of the past that he can touch but to move on into the future with a true belief and trust in the word of truth. 

     What is needed to move on into a future of hope?  Our celebration of Divine Mercy Sunday gives us a key to moving forward in faith.  The key is trust.  “Jesus, I trust in you.”  Trust opens the way to faith and to moving forward into God’s divine mercy.  Trust allows us to leave justice behind and to make room for mercy.  In trust we are able to open a way for the “new” of God to enter our lives.  In trust we are able to make room for forgiveness.  Trust in the divine mercy of God opens the way to freedom and allows us to move forward into a future of hope.  We trust that God’s mercy will sustain us.  Today is a new day, a day to be reborn, a day to enter more fully into God’s divine mercy.  Trust in the Lord and move on.

     Our Holy Father, Pope Francis, has let go of everything and moved on into eternal life.  He goes to the periphery and beyond to carry the word and work of mercy to all people.  He now entrusts his passion and work for the poor to all of us.  We must continue on with his work of the merciful encounter with the poor in whom we meet Jesus.  Pope Francis, you taught us to walk with Jesus as a friend and fellow shepherd of the beautiful sheep of the Father.  May your journey now take you home with Jesus to the eternal pastures of new and abundant life.