VaticanNews portal (April 11, 2026) — Fr. Edmund Power, OSB, offers a Gospel commentary for the Second Sunday of Easter, reflecting on the appearance of the Risen Christ to the disciples and Thomas’s profession of faith: “My Lord and my God.” The article treats the Resurrection narrative as a psychological drama of fear and self-protection, reducing the supernatural mystery of the glorified Body of Christ to a metaphor for overcoming personal anxiety. The commentary systematically strips the passage of its dogmatic weight, transforming the most profound Christological confession in Sacred Scripture into a springboard for naturalistic self-help. This is precisely the kind of exegesis condemned by Saint Pius X in *Lamentabili sane exitu*: the reduction of divine revelation to human emotional experience, where the critic “should not be condemned, provided he does not directly deny the dogmas themselves” (*Lamentabili*, prop. 24).
The Resurrection as Group Therapy: A Hermeneutic of Psychologism
The article opens by describing the disciples’ situation in terms that would be more appropriate to a secular counseling session than to a meditation on the mysteries of the Faith. We are told there is a “claustrophobic feeling of closure within a limited space, a kind of prison constructed of fear and self-protection.” The Risen Christ — He who conquered death, who descended into Hell, who holds all power in heaven and on earth (Mt 28:18) — is presented as entering “the tomb of the disciples’ deadening fear.” The tomb of Christ, which the Angels rolled back and from which He rose in glory, is here inverted into a psychological metaphor for human timidity. This is not exegesis; it is the evolution of dogma in action, condemned by *Lamentabili*: “Dogmas, sacraments, and hierarchy, both in concept and in reality, are merely modes of explanation and stages in the evolution of Christian consciousness” (prop. 54).
The article continues: “Jesus has entered to lead them out of fear into a new life.” But which “new life”? The Catholic Faith teaches that the new life brought by Christ is supernatural life — sanctifying grace, the life of God infused into the soul, received through the sacraments, and ordered toward eternal beatitude. The article is entirely silent on grace, on the supernatural order, on the sacramental economy. The “new life” is presented as a purely natural, emotional transformation — from fear to confidence, from anxiety to peace. This is the very essence of Modernism, which Saint Pius X defined in *Pascendi Dominici gregis* as the reduction of all religion to sentiment, where “revelation was merely man’s self-awareness of his relationship to God” (*Lamentabili*, prop. 20).
The Wounds of Christ: No Pretence, But No Propitiation Either
Fr. Power writes: “There is no pretence that the Passion did not really occur, or that the Passion is not central to what is happening now.” This is a curious formulation. The Catholic Faith does not merely affirm that the Passion “really occurred” as a historical event to be acknowledged — it teaches that the Passion was the propitiatory sacrifice for the sins of the whole world, that the wounds of Christ are the meritorious cause of our redemption, and that in the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, the same Body and Blood offered on Calvary is made truly present for the remission of sins. The Council of Trent anathematizes anyone who denies that the Mass is a true and propitiatory sacrifice (Session XXI, can. 2).
Yet the article, while granting the bare fact of the Passion, is entirely silent on its sacrificial character. The wounds are “manifested” — but for what purpose? Not for the remission of sins, not for the propitiation of God’s justice, not for the merit of eternal salvation. They are presented as a kind of divine vulnerability, a reassurance that Jesus “really suffered” — as if the faithful needed to be convinced of the historicity of the Passion rather than of its redemptive efficacy. This silence is deafening and damning. As the *Syllabus of Errors* condemns: “The teaching on the death of Christ for the redemption of men is not an evangelical teaching, but only Pauline” (*Lamentabili*, prop. 38) — a proposition formally condemned by the Holy Office. The article’s silence on the propitiatory character of the Passion aligns precisely with this condemned error.
“Peace Be With You” Stripped of Supernatural Content
The greeting of Christ — Pax vobis — is described as “quasi-liturgical in form.” The word “quasi” is revealing. It is not liturgical; it is the very words used in the sacred liturgy of the Church, the same words the priest speaks at the *Pax Domini* in the Traditional Latin Mass. But in the modernist lexicon, “quasi” serves to distance the reader from the supernatural reality and reduce the sacred to the aesthetic or symbolic.
The article then states: “Paul tells us that the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace (Gal 5:22). In the paschal context of today’s gospel, the very first fruits of the Spirit are given and received.” This is true in itself, but the article immediately evacuates it of supernatural content by presenting these fruits as emotional states rather than as theological virtues infused by sanctifying grace. The “peace” of Christ is not the tranquillity of order (as Saint Augustine defines it) that comes from the soul’s right ordering to God through grace; it is a feeling of reassurance in the face of difficulty. The “joy” is not the supernatural joy of possessing God in the state of grace; it is the natural gladness of seeing a friend again. This is the cult of man that Pius XI warned against in *Quas Primas*: Christ’s kingdom is not of this world, and His peace is not the peace of psychological equilibrium but the “peace which the King of Peace brought to earth, He — we say — who came to reconcile all.”
The Breath of the Holy Spirit: A “Pentecost Moment” Without the Sacraments
The article describes Christ breathing on the disciples and says: “this is a Pentecost moment in the fourth Gospel.” In Catholic theology, this passage (Jn 20:22) is understood as the institution of the Sacrament of Penance — the apostles receive the power to forgive and retain sins. The Council of Trent explicitly teaches that the words “Whose sins you shall forgive, they are forgiven them” refer to the sacrament of Penance (Session XIV, ch. 1). Yet the article is completely silent on the sacramental character of this event. There is no mention of confession, of absolution, of the power of the keys, of the necessity of sacramental confession for the remission of mortal sins. The “Pentecost moment” is presented as an outpouring of emotional consolation — love, joy, peace — rather than as the institution of the means of grace.
This omission is not accidental. It is the hallmark of the post-conciliar sect, which has systematically emptied the sacraments of their supernatural content and replaced them with community experience, shared feeling, and horizontal relationships. As the *Syllabus of Errors* condemns: “The sacraments merely serve to remind man of the presence of the ever-benevolent Creator” (*Lamentabili*, prop. 41). The sacraments do not remind; they effect what they signify. They confer grace ex opere operato. This is the defined teaching of the Council of Trent, and its denial is heresy.
Thomas’s Confession: The Highest Christological Declaration Reduced to a Way Station
The climax of the Gospel — Thomas’s confession, “My Lord and my God!” (Jn 20:28) — is the most explicit declaration of the Divinity of Christ in all of Sacred Scripture. It is the confession that Saint Paul says every tongue must make: “That Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father” (Phil 2:11). It is the confession that the Council of Nicaea defended against Arius, and that the *Quas Primas* encyclical celebrates as the foundation of Christ’s universal kingship.
Yet the article treats this supreme act of faith as “not in fact the real summit.” We are told: “There is an even higher faith: blessed are those who have not seen and yet believe.” While our Lord’s words in Jn 20:29 are indeed a blessing on those who believe without seeing, the article uses this to diminish the confession of Thomas, as if the explicit, dogmatic affirmation of Christ’s Divinity were somehow inferior to an implicit, non-dogmatic faith. This is a subtle but devastating inversion. The Catholic Faith is not a vague, contentless trust; it is explicit assent to revealed truths. Thomas’s confession is not a way station to a “higher” faith; it is the model of Catholic faith — a faith that sees, touches, and confesses the Divinity of Christ without ambiguity.
The article continues: “Among this multitude all of us stand; our faith in the Lord is driven by hope and love: His love for us and our trusting response to it.” This is the language of Protestant pietism, not Catholic theology. Catholic faith is not “driven by hope and love”; it is assent to truth on the authority of God revealing. The act of faith is defined by the Council of Vatican I as “a supernatural virtue by which, inspired and assisted by the grace of God, we believe that what He has revealed is true, not because of the intrinsic truth of the things perceived by the natural light of reason, but because of the authority of God Himself who reveals them” (*Dei Filius*, ch. 3). The article replaces this with a sentimental, subjectivist notion of faith — precisely the error condemned by Saint Pius X: “Faith, as assent of the mind, is ultimately based on a sum of probabilities” (*Lamentabili*, prop. 25).
The Omission That Condemns: Silence on the Supernatural Order
What is most striking about this article is not what it says, but what it does not say. There is no mention of:
– Sanctifying grace — the supernatural life that makes us partakers of the divine nature (2 Pet 1:4).
– The sacraments — the instituted means of grace, particularly Penance and the Holy Eucharist.
– The propitiatory sacrifice of the Cross — the reason for which Christ suffered and died.
– The Real Presence — Christ truly present in the Most Blessed Sacrament, where He continues to offer Himself for the sins of the living and the dead.
– The state of grace — the necessity of being in friendship with God in order to be saved.
– Mortal sin — the reality that one mortal sin destroys sanctifying grace and merits eternal damnation.
– The Four Last Things — Death, Judgment, Heaven, and Hell.
– The social reign of Christ the King — the duty of all nations and societies to publicly acknowledge the sovereignty of Our Lord Jesus Christ, as Pius XI taught in *Quas Primas*.
This silence is not neutral. It is apostasy — a flight from the supernatural, a systematic exclusion of the most fundamental truths of the Catholic Faith. As Saint Pius X wrote in *Pascendi*: “The Modernist is one who, under the guise of scholarship, reduces all religion to subjective experience, denies the supernatural origin of dogma, and makes faith a matter of sentiment rather than assent to divine truth.” This article is a textbook example of the Modernist method: it uses the language of Scripture and liturgy while hollowing out every supernatural reality, leaving only a shell of naturalistic humanism.
The Conciliar Sect’s Mission: Bringing the “Pope’s Words” to Every Home
The article concludes with a call to action: “support us in bringing the Pope’s words into every home.” This is the mission of VaticanNews — the official media organ of the conciar sect, dedicated to disseminating the words of the usurpers who occupy the Vatican. The current antipope, Leo XIV (Robert Prevost), continues the work of his predecessors — John XXIII, Paul VI, John Paul I, John Paul II, Benedict XVI, and Francis — in dismantling the Catholic Faith and replacing it with a naturalistic, ecumenical, syncretistic counterfeit.
The faithful are asked to financially support this apostasy. The “Pope’s words” are not the words of the Vicar of Christ; they are the words of a succession of heretics and apostates who have emptied the Faith of its content, denied the dogmas, profaned the sacramets, and led millions of souls to perdition. To support this mission is to cooperate in the destruction of the Church.
Conclusion: Faith Is Not Feeling — It Is Assent to Divine Truth
The Gospel of the Second Sunday of Easter is one of the most profound in all of Sacred Scripture. It testifies to the Resurrection of Christ, the institution of the Sacrament of Penance, the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, and the explicit confession of Christ’s Divinity. It is a Gospel of dogma, of supernatural reality, of divine certainty.
The article from VaticanNews reduces all of this to a meditation on fear, self-protection, and emotional consolation. It is a perfect specimen of the Modernist heresy that Saint Pius X condemned over a century ago — and which the conciliar sect has made the official teaching of the structures occupying the Catholic Church since 1958. Let us reject this counterfeit and cling to the immutable Faith of the ages: “My Lord and my God!” — not as a way station to a “higher” faith, but as the sum and substance of all that we believe, hope for, and love. Non Domine, non Domine — sed Christus Rex!
Source:
Lord’s Day Reflection: My Lord and my God (vaticannews.va)
Date: 11.04.2026