Today, I hope to address the gift of faith, while touching on the doubts and fears that attack those who do not fully accept this gift from God. That’s right, brothers and sisters, faith is a gift – as the theologian would say, a gratuitous gift. You and I neither deserve it, nor can we work to achieve it. It’s not something we can conjure up on our own. Instead it’s something God offers us in the divine hope that we will accept it.
I’ll begin today by turning to the Gospel
according to John, where the evangelist recounts the first post-Resurrection
appearance of Jesus to the disciples. Listen to God’s Word and read these
verses from John, chapter 20, verses 19 to 31:
On the evening of that first day of the week, when the doors were
locked, where the disciples were, for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood in
their midst and said to them, “Peace be with you.” When he had said this, he showed them his
hands and his side. The disciples rejoiced when they saw the Lord. Jesus said to them again, “Peace be with you. As
the Father has sent me, so I send you.” And when he
had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, “Receive the holy Spirit. Whose sins you forgive are forgiven them, and whose
sins you retain are retained.”
Thomas, called Didymus, one of the Twelve, was not with them when
Jesus came. So, the other disciples said to him, “We have
seen the Lord.” But he said to them, “Unless I see the mark of the nails in his
hands and put my finger into the nail marks and put my hand into his side, I
will not believe.” Now a week later his disciples were
again inside, and Thomas was with them. Jesus came, although the doors were
locked, and stood in their midst and said, “Peace be with you.”
Then he said to Thomas, “Put your finger here and see my hands, and bring your
hand and put it into my side, and do not be unbelieving, but believe.” Thomas answered and said to
him, “My Lord and my God!” Jesus said to him, “Have
you come to believe because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have
not seen and have believed.”
Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of his disciples
that are not written in this book. But these are written that you may come to believe that Jesus is
the Messiah, the Son of God, and that through this belief you may have life in
his name. [John 20:19-31]
It’s really a remarkable passage, isn’t it? In
fact, there’s so much there, I suppose we could spend the rest of our lives
plumbing its depths. But today all we can do is scratch the surface, and hope
that by doing so, we can deepen our faith, cast aside the doubts, and relieve the
fears.
Our Gospel passage relates an event that takes
place in the evening of that first Easter Sunday, when the Risen Jesus appears to
the Apostles in the upper room.
They’d hidden there since Friday’s crucifixion. Told
of the empty tomb by Mary Magdalene, Peter and John had gone to see for
themselves. John claims he “saw and believed,” but followed this by admitting
he and Peter really didn’t understand the Resurrection …at least not yet.
Then Mary told them of her personal encounter
with the Risen Lord; but did they really believe her? We know they doubted, and
we know, too, they were afraid. Indeed, fear kept them hidden behind the locked
doors of the upper room. One suspects their faith was weak, plagued by those same
doubts and fears.
But then, despite locked doors, despite doubts
and fears, Jesus is there, standing in their midst. He is alive! And he speaks to
them:
“Peace be with you” [Jn
20:19].
He shows them the marks, the nail marks, the
gash in his side, the wounds He suffered for their salvation and the salvation
of the world. And, yes, they rejoice in His presence, even though they don’t yet
understand how this all came to be.
Again, he greets them,
“Peace be with you,” but then He adds, “As the Father has sent me, so I send you” [Jn
20:21].
His words, though, are a mystery. Sent? Sent
where? Sent when? Sent to do what? They don’t know. All that will come later.
But Jesus isn’t quite finished with them this
evening. He has more to do and to say.
He breathes on them, and they feel it, the
breath of His mouth, coming from His Risen Body. Yes, He is certainly alive,
for dead men don’t breathe. And as He breathed, He says,
“Receive
the holy Spirit. Whose sins you forgive are forgiven them, and whose sins
you retain are retained” [Jn 20:22-23].
Once more, they’re lost in His words. Did He
just say we’ll be forgiving sins? How does that work? All this sending out and
forgiving of sins…for now it remains a mystery. And so, in joy they focus only on
what they can see, the living, Risen Jesus. And with that He leaves them, just
as He had arrived.
It seems, however, one
Apostle, Thomas, wasn’t there. Where
was he? We don’t know. John never tells us. But just imagine how Thomas felt
when the others told him,
“We have seen the Lord” [Jn 20:25].
Did he simply disbelieve what they told him? Or
was he angry with Jesus for coming when he wasn’t there? Perhaps he wondered why
Jesus came when he, and only he was absent. We don’t know because John
doesn’t tell us that either. All he tells us is what Thomas said:
“Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands and put my finger
into the nail marks and put my hand into his side, I will not believe” [Jn 20:25].
With these words, Thomas secures the title we
hear so often: doubting Thomas. His words, after all, were hard words
from a man who had spent three years with Jesus. For three years Thomas had
witnessed the miracles, had seen hundreds healed of every illness, had even seen
the dead brought back to life. Yes, for three years Thomas had been in the
presence of “the Christ, the Son of the living God” [Mt 16:16]. But Jesus
gives him another week to think about it. For Thomas, it must have been a long
week. What did he do as he waited? John, of course, tells us nothing, but we
can guess.
Once again, it’s Sunday, the Lord’s Day of the
New Covenant, the Second Sunday of Easter, the day we celebrate as Divine Mercy
Sunday. The Apostles are still locked in the upper room, still afraid, and likely
still troubled by doubts. But this time all eleven are there. Thomas is with
them.
Once again, Jesus stands in their midst, and
once again, He says,
“Peace be with you” [Jn 20:26].
But then He turns to Thomas and says,
“Put your finger here and see my hands and bring your hand and put
it into my side, and do not be unbelieving, but believe” [Jn 20:27].
Does Thomas reach out and touch those wounds? John
doesn’t tell us, but I don’t believe he did. For there was no need. He can see
the wounds with his eyes. And he can feel the shame, the guilt, overflowing in his
heart. Like the women who ran from the empty tomb the week before, Thomas, too,
was surely “fearful yet overjoyed” [Mt 28:8]. But in the face of Our Lord,
Thomas sees only love, forgiveness, and divine mercy.
He answers with five words, making a perfect act
of faith:
“My Lord and my God!” [Jn 20:28]
Yes, doubting Thomas is now believing Thomas, the
apostle who later died a martyr for the faith he expressed that Second Sunday
of Easter. He became a messenger, an Apostle of Mercy, a missionary to India
where he shed his blood for his Lord and his God. Like his brother Apostles, like
you and I, like all the baptized, Thomas was sent.
John uses this encounter between Apostle and
Lord to break open in the Gospel account the implications of the bodily
Resurrection of Jesus, a profoundly important aspect of our Christian faith.
Jesus, who stands before the Apostles, is no ghost, no ethereal apparition [Lk
24:37]. The Risen Jesus is the Living Jesus. His body bears His wounds. He
speaks. He breathes. He lets Himself be touched [Lk 24:39]. He eats with them
[Lk 24:43] He is alive, glorified, but alive.
These first two meetings between Jesus and the
Apostles are actually deeply Eucharistic. Jesus comes to them, Body and Blood,
Soul and Divinity, in communion, and they receive Him in a shared communion
with each other. It’s a renewal of the communion of the Last Supper, celebrated
here in that same upper room, the first Christian Church, on the Lord’s Day.
And today, millions of us all around the world,
utter those same faith-filled words of Thomas when faced with Jesus’ Eucharistic
Real Presence at the elevation during Mass: “My Lord and my God!” [Jn
20:28].
Pope St Gregory the Great (590-604), preached a
marvelous homily on this encounter between Thomas and the Risen Lord. He tells
us it’s good to remember that there are no coincidences with God. It was not by
chance that Thomas was absent on that first Sunday. He returned, he heard, he
doubted, Jesus returned, Thomas saw, even touched, and he believed. All
happened according to God’s plan. The wound of Thomas’ disbelief was healed by
the wounds of Our Lord’s Living, Risen Body. Thomas, then, becomes the witness
to the reality of the Resurrection.
Before He leaves the Apostles on this Second
Sunday, Jesus leaves Thomas with a kind reminder of his doubts, but then
addresses you and me:
“Blessed
are those who have not seen and have believed.”
That’s us, brothers and sisters. We’re the
non-seers who believe. As such we are called to bring the risen Christ to
others. Like the Apostles, we are invited to become living witnesses in our own
day to the reality of the Resurrection of Jesus Christ.
On that first Divine Mercy Sunday, Thomas confronted
the wounds of his beloved Savior so they could heal the wounds of our own
disbelief. Let us then approach the throne of Mercy and cry out with Thomas:
"My Lord and My God" [Jn 20:28].
Those who do will be forever changed, just as the Apostles were changed. But the Resurrection was so utterly miraculous that even after being with the risen Jesus, many disciples still harbored doubts. As Matthew described their last meeting with Jesus right before His Ascension:
"The eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain to which Jesus had ordered them. When they saw Him, they worshipped, but they doubted" [Mt 28:16-17].
“…they doubted.” It would take the Holy Spirit
to cure them of their doubts, which He did 10 days later on that first
Pentecost Sunday. And what a difference He made.
Just consider Peter, who became a messenger of
mercy. He was so filled with the Spirit of the Risen Lord that Jesus could
continue His redemptive mission through him, accomplishing miraculous deeds. In
the Acts of the Apostles we read that even the shadow of Peter brought merciful
healing [Acts 5:15].
John, the “beloved disciple” and evangelist, was
imprisoned on the Island of Patmos. There he would continue to receive the
consoling and liberating mercy of the Savior. There the Spirit inspired him to
write these words of the vision he had received:
“Do not be afraid. I am the first and the last, the one who lives.
Once I was dead, but now I am alive forever and ever. I hold the keys to death
and the netherworld” [Rev 1:17-18].
And then there was Thomas. Jesus turned Thomas’ doubt into an event of Mercy for generations to come. Out of the repentance
born from seeing Mercy Incarnate and the wounds of His Divine love, came that
response, those wonderful words that have formed the most profound of personal
prayers for centuries: “My Lord and My God”
Pope St Gregory was so right, “Thomas’ doubt
healed the wounds of all of our doubts”
At the Liturgy of Canonization for Sister Mary
Faustina Kowalski, on Sunday, April 30, 2000, the Pope St. John Paul II proclaimed:
“…Jesus shows his hands and his side. He points, that is, to the
wounds of the Passion, especially the wound in his heart, the source from which
flows the great wave of mercy poured out on humanity. From that heart Sister
Faustina Kowalska, the blessed whom from now on we will call a saint, will see
two rays of light shining from that heart and illuminating the world: ‘The two
rays,’ Jesus himself explained to her one day, ‘represent blood and water’ …Divine
Mercy reaches human beings through the heart of Christ crucified.”
Contemplating Jesus’ sufferings, you and I,
then, are faced with a question. How do we take Christ’s Divine Mercy to
others? How do we respond to the sufferings of our neighbors? Do their
sufferings fill our hearts as well. For that’s what compassion truly means: to
“suffer with.” As St. Faustina wrote, “I would like all their sorrows to fall
upon me, in order to relieve my neighbor."
God places each of us, each uniquely created
individual, in a certain time, in a certain place, and with certain gifts, and
does so for a certain reason. We cannot choose our time and place, only what we
do with the time given to us. But of one thing we can be certain: each of us is
called to be a messenger of His Divine Mercy, an instrument of the peace of
Christ in our own little corner of the world.
Jesus also told St. Faustina that, “Humanity
will not find peace until it turns trustfully to Divine Mercy."
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