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| The Incredulity of Saint Thomas Caravaggio, 1602, Public Domain |
April 8, 2018
Saint Mark’s Catholic Church
Denton, Texas
Acts 4:32-35
Psalm 118
1 John 5:1-6
John 20:19-31
The disciples experience the glorified Jesus in the setting of their being gathered together in the upper room. In some ways, this initial gathering is prompted by the fear caused by the trauma of the crucifixion that has been perpetrated. In their fears they have locked the doors. Yet, Jesus appears to them as they are gathered together and imparts peace to them with the same words that I spoke to greet you gathered here today with our own fears and lack of certainty: “Peace be with you.” In the gathering of the disciples they encounter the glorified Jesus and they receive His gift of mercy, His gift of peace, and His gift of faith. In this gathering of us at Mass today as disciples of Jesus Christ, prompted in part by our own fears and sinfulness, we encounter the glorified Jesus and we receive His gift of mercy, His gift of peace, and His gift of faith.
Thomas is not present among the gathered disciples in that first encounter with Jesus in which they receive the gift of faith. Thomas hears what they say but he is rigid in his explicit doubts regarding the truth of what they tell him. There might be many motives for Thomas’ initial rejection of the testimony of the other disciples. Perhaps it’s too difficult for Thomas to believe; perhaps Thomas has sadness over Jesus’ death; perhaps Thomas is ashamed of his disloyalty to Jesus in abandoning Christ when He needed Thomas to be a friend. The important point is that the other disciples do not abandon Thomas in his doubts. They don’t judge Thomas or expel him. They remain with Thomas; they listen to Thomas; they share their experience of Jesus and their faith with Thomas. Their faith might not be so certain because the doors of the room remain locked at the time of Jesus’ second appearance to them. Yet, they remain gathered together because faith does not bring one to self-reliance. Their faith is not a private experience; it is the shared experience of their communal identity as the Church. Our faith is not a private experience; it’s shared as communal in our life as the Church.
Thomas sets conditions before he will accept faith in the Resurrection of Jesus; these conditions include the intention to inspect Jesus’ wounds in almost forensic detail. The disciples have been entrusted with the mission of mercy, the power to forgive sins. This entrusted mission has enabled them to be merciful and patient with Thomas even in their own fears and doubts. Jesus peacefully encounters them again through the doors that their fears have locked. He mercifully agrees to meet Thomas’ conditions for faith and in so doing manifests their inadequacy. This encounter of faith with the risen Christ occurs in the presence of the disciples gathered together as the Church. It is not an isolated experience of a crowd of individuals each of them pursuing their own happiness. Our encounter of faith with the mercy of the risen Christ occurs in our presence as the disciples gathered together at Mass and in that gathering transformed into the Church through the Eucharist.
Jesus shows Thomas His wounds and in so doing reveals to Thomas his own wounds. Jesus’ wounds are real wounds; they are not healed wounds; they are not scabby wounds; they are not bloody or infected wounds; they are glorified wounds in the mercy of the truth of the crucified and risen Jesus Christ.
Thomas has been confused about the order of things. He has thought that vision leads to faith; rather it is the shared gift of faith that provides authentic and true vision. It is the gift of faith that leads Thomas and all of the disciples ever deeper into the mystery of perfect mercy and love, the love of the Cross and sacrifice of Jesus. The experience of doubt is not a sufficient reason not to be present or not to be received by the community of the disciples, that is, the Church, to encounter the glorified Christ through faith. This is true for Thomas and the early disciples spoken of in today’s Gospel; it is also true for each of us gathered here today. We, too, can be like Thomas and confuse the order of things by thinking that vision leads to faith.
St. Bernard of Clairvaux writes, “Of all the movements, sensations and feelings of the soul, love is the only one in which the creature can respond to the Creator and make some sort of similar return however unequal though it be. For when God loves, all He desires is to be loved in return. The sole purpose of His love is to be loved, in the knowledge that those who love Him are made happy by their love of Him.”
This reliance upon faith in Jesus as the author of life includes but extends beyond the simple limits of the crucifixion of Jesus as an event recorded in history. There is always a struggle to define the death and Resurrection of Jesus exclusively on historical terms. The actual event is essential and indispensable for authentic Christian faith; it really happened. Yet, the Death and Resurrection of Jesus are not definable exclusively on the terms of the world as the world discloses itself to us. It is more meaningful than historical events like the writing of the Declaration of Independence or the arrival of Columbus in America. The Death and Resurrection of Jesus Christ together transcend history and make present the authentic mercy and love of God in our present lives.
The Liturgy of these days of the Easter season includes readings from the Gospels that depict the initial appearances of the Risen Jesus to the disciples. Two of these accounts offer us an important insight in our own lives of faith. Mary Magdalene, who tradition identifies as one of the “Marys” who was present at the Cross, recognized Jesus when He spoke her name, calling her into her identity as redeemed. She then attempts to cling to Him as she knew Him to be in the time before the crucifixion. It’s a type of nostalgia — things were so much better with Jesus before the Cross. On the other hand, Thomas attempts to set criteria by which he can know Jesus on Thomas’ own terms in the future — knowledge not born of faith but one born of Thomas’ own false need to control. Each time, Jesus calls both Mary and Thomas into the present moment away from the past of sinfulness to be denied and away from the future to be feared, each of which does not exist in reality.
We receive faith through the witness of the Church in the present moment. This is one reason why priests and deacons respond at their ordination to the call of their name to Holy Orders by answering with the word: “present.” It is the reason that a man and a woman in matrimony consent to be attentive and present to each other in each moment of their lives through permanence, fidelity, and openness to God’s gift of children.
We receive the gift of faith in our being present in our doubts and attentive to Christ in the Eucharist, in the Gospel proclaimed, in the priest-presider, and in each other in this assembly of disciples made to be united as the Church in the celebration of the Mass. This is why we need to be present weekly at Mass when we are weak in faith or when we are strong in faith. It’s essential that we show up at Sunday Mass and not simply live our faith in the self-absorption of the computer screen or of the iPhone. Our presence is an act of gratitude to Christ and an act of generosity to each other. Faith is not a matter of nostalgia for the past nor is it a form of idealism for the future.
Thomas had set conditions for his decision to believe. Jesus showed how futile these conditions were for faith when Jesus shows Thomas His glorified wounds. This experience of Thomas in the loving presence of the disciples gathered together prompts in him the gift of the faithful cry, “My Lord, and my God.”
The glorified wounds of Christ are manifested in the presence of the Church, gathered in that room and gathered here today — the wounded Apostles, the wounded disciples are glorified as well in the wounds of Christ. They are no longer the wounds of sin, the wounds of Good Friday. They are the wounds of mercy and of love. The Love of Christ through the Cross engenders the eternal life and peace afforded us in His Resurrection. Because of Christ’s introduction of perfect love into death through His sacrifice on the Cross, it is in and through the acceptance of death that eternal life mercifully enters into the world; not through denial or evasion of sin and death. Through this grace, in this faith we are then able to love as Christ loves, without condition.
Thomas hears; then he believes; then he sees. Thomas begins by thinking that seeing leads to believing. Yet, in encountering Christ in the gathered presence of the disciples whose testimony he has heard, Thomas comes to know that it is faith that leads to sight. In the words of St. Bernard of Clairvaux, “You wish to see, listen. Hearing is a step towards vision.”
