One of the favorite games of many or most children is that of hide and seek. I used to love playing this game as a youngster with my brothers and neighborhood friends, mostly because I enjoyed being alone for a few moments having grown up in a crowded house and busy neighborhood. Although I loved the company of siblings and numerous friends in one of the many 3-decker sections found in Worcester, I also loved hiding from them too. Or, spending some time in seclusion, privacy, or silence, even if only for a few moments through a child’s game, for there wasn’t much of it.

With hide and seek, as many of you folks remember, coming up with a place to hide was pretty easy for the most part, especially when the game was played outdoors, where every child belongs in both sunny and snowy weather. They belong much less in their bedroom with any device before them. Outdoors, a child’s imagination was pretty sharp when thinking about places to hide from the one whose turn it was to seek. You could hide under a car, or behind an oak tree the width of the vehicle you decided not to hide under. You could hide in the yard next door in the middle of a bush, hoping there was not a bee or hornet’s nest also hiding in there, and, that the neighbors were either friendly or not home. A couple bad places to hide would be in the swimming pool, trying to stay underneath for a long period of time, or, in the broken refrigerator that was removed from the house and placed in the side yard, waiting for the junk man to show up and remove it. Anyplace where oxygen does not exist is not a good place to hide for the game of hide and seek.

Eventually, you would be found because the place you chose was not a good one. Trying to hide behind a streetlight pole is not a good place. Obviously, they are too skinny to hide even a child. Or, trying to hide under an old rug that was thrown out is not a good place either, for the bump in the rug gives you away. At least there would be a small amount of oxygen to breathe in under a rug. Or, you would not be found because the place you hid showed your great intelligence and imagination at an early age with your ability to hide from your family and friends until the seeker got tired of searching for you and was forced to yell, ‘Ally, ally unfree.” Or, until one of your friends – the tattle tale - says quietly to the seeker, “Did you check the broken refrigerator? He might be in there.” The tattle tale is someone you hope does not grow up to be a priest hearing confessions one day.

Well, even though they were not trying to, that it was not their intention, they thought they could pull one over on Jesus. I believe in the deepness of their hearts, they were hoping that the Risen Lord, whom they heard was alive from Mary Magdalene and other women disciples, would somehow break down the door of where they were hiding, and find them all together in the Upper Room in his search for the Eleven. The same Upper Room where they sat down a few nights earlier and ate his Body and drank his Blood. We all know the deal with this; none of us can hide from God. We can try and try and try some more, we can travel to the farthest corners of the earth, but the One who created the land, sea, and sky is not beyond our capacity to hide from anywhere in his universal creation.

The Apostles were like kids who, if they hid under a blanket and could not see anything or anyone, believed they would not be seen in turn by anyone else outside the doors of the house in which they hid. “If we cannot see them, then it follows that they cannot see us.” Well, there must have been a tattle tale somewhere along this path of hiding from the outside world on the very evening of our Lord’s resurrection. Someone must have seen them open the broken refrigerator. And it’s a good thing. By this time, they probably felt like they were running out of air. Certainly, running out of courage and

fortitude, if nothing else. They were in a bad way as they hung out together, holding onto each other for dear life, shivering in their bones and flesh, minus Thomas who went out shopping for some fast food. When Thomas left the Upper Room that afternoon, having been chosen (really forced) to go find some sustenance at the nearest food pantry for his hungry friends, they could not open and close the door fast enough when he left. They must have pushed poor Thomas out the door. They just hoped that no one who was searching for these disciples of Jesus recognized Thomas, or saw Nathaniel open and close the door in less than two seconds. This, of course, expresses their level of intense fear on that evening.

So, when Jesus the Seeker found them all together in their hiding place, minus Thomas who was paying for eight bags of food with only two hands to carry them, they became even more afraid. Naturally, they thought they were seeing a ghost, like some of us may have experienced once or twice along this journey of faith. There’s nothing like the spiritual world invading our personal space unexpectedly, causing us to lose years off of our lives from the fright factor. However, once things settled down after a few moments, realizing it truly was the Lord Jesus alive and well, there fear began to dissipate quickly. Their reasons for joy replaced fear, and the great turnaround began to happen. In a matter of seconds, they moved from intense fear to “Peace be with you,” and “Receive the Holy Spirit that you may go out to the world and forgive peoples’ sins.” Wow, talk about being found by the One who was seeking.

To study the Apostles in the Upper Room on the first evening of the new creation brought about by Jesus walking out of Joseph’s borrowed tomb, we see very distinctly a group of followers who, on their own, don’t amount to much. They were unknown to the world in which they lived, aside of the families they played games with, such as hide and seek. They had no power, no glory, no fame, no connections, not much money (except maybe Matthew the tax collector), and they definitely had no status. Are we surprised, then, that Peter, when confronted by bystanders who knew a Galilean accent spoken in faraway Jerusalem, would three times deny the Lord he just followed for three years? The same Lord he confidently told at the Last Supper he would follow to his death, and never desert him under any circumstances? Gotta love how Jesus chose pushovers to be the first leaders of his Church. And there they were in all their glory (none at all), playing hide and seek with the world, hoping somehow Jesus would find them still. And when the Lord indeed finds them, he raises their stakes to be the ones who will build his Church “so that the gates of hell will not prevail against it.” Which it has not. And will not.

On this Divine Mercy Sunday instituted by the late great Pope St. John Paul II during the latter part of his amazing pontificate, what we see in this game of hide and seek, where the hide is due to human fear, and the seek is due to God’s sustained love, what we see is the Lord’s mercy overriding all the foibles of the Apostles he personally chose, leading them to a place of confidence in both He and themselves. To be found in Christ is to have confidence and trust in the total message he gave. Not some of it, but all of it. Not to be half-found, but to be fully formed and shaped in Christ. For the Upper Room attendants, such formation and confidence begins with the loss of fear. Seeing Jesus alive will allow for this turnaround. The Lord does not point fingers at them in the Upper Room, accusing them of the terrible choice they made in the Garden of Gethsemane to run and hide for real. It was not a child’s game in the Garden late that night. He could have accused them of failing him, but he did not. And he does not do the same to us who choose not to hide from him in our lives. Jesus is not our accuser. That job belongs to the Devil.

The Lord does not only not give them some smack, as they call it, but he ups their personal ante of being found by breathing the Holy Spirit into them, instructing them to go out and forgive sins. Honestly, in a present world where the concept of sin is attacked by worldly, cultural forces, as well as some forces in the Church herself, who do not want to hear of certain actions, notably in the realm of sexual practices and choices as being acts of sin before God, I suspect that not as much sin is being forgiven as their needs to be to secure our home in heaven one day. What a beautiful, solemn power Christ gave to his Apostles, raising them from their personal fear of worldly forces to direct participation in gaining souls for heaven. Jesus blew past their guilt, and led them in an instant to become real men for God.

In the context of our faith, hide and seek is a game best suited for children. They know how to enjoy it best, enjoying the innocence found at the heart of the game. With our faith, however, we adults play the better “game” when we don’t hide out from the Lord behind locked doors, locked hearts, or locked anything. His mercy belongs to those who seek to be touched by his Divine power. May we strive for our faith to be as innocent and in search of the Lord as much as the child’s heart who innocently enjoys the first version of hide and seek we all learned at a young age. May we all be open to and touched by God’s abundant mercy, granting us the power to go out to all the world and tell the Good News that Christ is risen. This message should never be hidden.