Doubting Thomas
1. What is the resurrection? Can we believe it?
I think these remain nagging questions for most of us, which is why we can identify so easily with “Doubting Thomas.” We have heard of the Resurrection, but we cannot see it. What justifies us in believing in it?
The author of the Fourth Gospel, writing perhaps sixty or seventy years after the event, was well aware of this situation, and he surely expected his readers to identify with Thomas, as in previous chapters they will have identified with other interlocutors of Jesus: Nathanael, Nicodemus, the Samaritan woman, the paralyzed man at the pool, the man born blind, Martha and Mary, for example.Several of these figures began in a dark place and ended up joyfully expressing faith in Jesus as the Messiah. That is also the trajectory followed by Thomas in today’s Gospel. Indeed it is he who utters the most impressive and most complete words of faith in the whole Gospel: “My Lord and my God!” As we meditate on this Gospel we put ourselves in Thomas’s shoes, sharing his confusion and doubt, and we are led by him to a new encounter with Christ, now glorified by the Father.
2. To doubt is a sign of honesty, of a willingness to inquire and to listen in the search for truth. Faith is a virtue but credulity or gullibility is not. A mature believer will often reassess his or her faith, weeding out what is based on fancy or superstition, and adhering all the more to what is based on reliable perception of reality.
So Thomas is right to check the other apostles’ story. But he does bluster a bit, and perhaps in addition to being an honest inquiring man he is also affected by a negative spirit of skepticism, or of unbelief. When Jesus says to him, “do not be unbelieving” the meaning probably is “ask your questions and doubt what seems unworthy of belief, but don’t indulge in a negativity that rules out any perception of divine and spiritual realities from the start. Questioning is good, and leads to truth, but sometimes questioning becomes negative and obsessive and does not expect to find any answer — it becomes a form of resistance to encountering truth.”
3. This scene is not the first time Thomas has spoken in the Gospel. We met Thomas on two previous occasions. In the other Gospels all we learn about Thomas is his name as one of the Twelve.
In the conversation that Jesus has with his disciples before going to visit Lazarus, in Bethany near Jerusalem, Jesus says: “Lazarus is dead, and for your sake I am glad that I was not there, so that you may believe. But let us go to him." Then Thomas (called Didymus) said to the rest of the disciples, "Let us also go, that we may die with him” (John 11:14-16).
Here Thomas is seen as a person of total and devoted faith. He knows how dangerous it is to go to Jerusalem, where Jesus is already a marked man, and where the authorities are plotting to kill him. But he want to follow Jesus wherever Jesus goes, in a total identification with Jesus that may have something to do with his nickname “the twin.” He wants to be near Jesus in life and death, and perhaps that is part of what is expressed in his desire to touch Jesus’ risen body. At the very beginning of Jesus’s journey to his death, Thomas leaps forward and promises to die with him.
4. Thomas shows his questioning mind on his second appearance, in John 14:-4-7. “‘And you know the way to the place where I am going.’ Thomas said to him, “Lord, we do not know where you are going. How can we know the way?” Jesus said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. If you know me, you will know my Father also. From now on you do know him and have seen him.” Thomas knows more than he thinks he knows. He asks blunt and literal-minded questions, but he really already knows Jesus as the way, having lived with him and followed him so faithfully. Knowing Jesus he knows the Father to whom Jesus leads. In a sense he has “seen” the Father, inasmuch as such a thing is possible in this life. “No one has ever seen God; the only-begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, he has made him known” (John 1:18).
5. When Jesus says to Thomas in today’s Gospel: “You believe because you have seen me; blessed are those who have not seen, and yet believe,” he may be saying: “Thomas, you know me, and you have “seen” the Father by following me in faith, Now again you meet me and in me you meet the Father whom you cannot see. I understand your doubt about the message of the resurrection, but remember the path you have folllowed with me, how you have known me and through me how you have known the Father. I am the same Jesus in whose sufferings you shared; these wounds in my hands and side show that. But now I have entered into the glory to which the path you followed with me leads. Believe in me now, risen and glorious, as you believed in me on our hard journey to Jerusalem and on the evening before my passion and death.”
6. “My Lord and my God” is the climax of the series of confessions of Christ in ths Gospel. It may mean: “My Lord who leads me to the Father, and my God, the Father. I recognize you as my risen Lord and in you I meet also the Father, for to see you is to see the Father.” Tor the Greek here uses the expression “ho Theos” which otherwise occurred only at the start of the Gospel, where it referred to the Father: “the Word was with God (= ho Theos) and the Word was God (= theos, without the definite article). Jesus in his divine nature is God from God, and God toward God. He is true God, but he has his divinity from the Father, and his entire path is one of return to the Father. In this sense “the Father is greater than I” (John 14:28). He catches us up in this movement and leads us too to the joy of communion with the Father and the Son.
We could say that the risen Jesus is the full visible manifestation of the invisible God. Of course, unlike Thomas, we do not have a vision of the risen Christ. But we do know Jesus and can follow him on his way to the Father — we know Jesus by faith, by listening to his words, meeting him in the sacraments, and recognizing him in our neighbour. He is the way, and his resurrection shows the glorious destination to which that way leads.
7. “Blessed are those who have not seen but yet believe.” Why are they blessed? Not just because of their conviction about a hidden future, but because they know Christ in secure daily faith, following him as the Way. And as they follow him, practicing the works of love in a community of love, such as the first and second readings depict, they are more and more conscious of the presence of God in Christ and in their own life, and they grow in confidence that this way on which they are being led with their fellow-Christians is a way to life and glory.
Safe in the Hands of the Divine Shepherd
1. “The Lord is my shepherd, there is nothing I shall want.”
Can we hear this message and can we make these words our own?
Very many people suffer from anxiety, a crippling condition of deep unease, that can veer into depression and suicidal moods. Traumatic scenes from their past are played over and over again in their minds, and cannot be shaken off.
We might tell such people, “Just trust in the Lord and let yourself be carried by the Good Shepherd.”
But tragically the source of their anxiety is often connected with religion, so that such a message is the last thing they want to hear. I think of the many LGBT people who have been deeply wounded by religious teaching on three fronts: injured in their relation to themselves, hating their sexual orientation or gender identification, and lacking all self-confidence; injured in their relation to their families, with whom they are unable to communicate openly, or who, if they do communicate with them, will react with a failure of understanding and sympathy; and injured in their relationship to their faith-ommunity, where they rightly or wrongly feel unwelcome or out of place, and which does not think to provide them with a space for open disussion where they can feel safe and accepted.
For such reasons many who are a prey to anxiety also feel abandoned or forgotten by God.
2. But even the average person who is not exposed to such traumatic matters may have difficulty hearing the message that the Lord is their shepherd. Isn’t it the kind of thing you read on kitschy holy pictures, not having much bearing on real life?
Our lives seem to be so shaped that we have the greatest difficulty orienting them to God in trustful abandonment. We have plans and ambitions, or distracting duties that keep us busy. Habitual stress or moroseness curbs any elan of the spirit. And a sense of irremediable sinfulness keeps us from “lifting up our eyes to the hills, from whence comes our help” (Ps. 121:1).
But as the Irish proverb says, “the help of God is nearer than the door.” All that is needed is to stop and to listen. Listen to some word of Scripture, some familiar prayer or hymn, or just attend to the silent presence of God in the Blessed Sacrament. “Let me hear what God the Lord will speak, for he will speak peace to his people, to his saints, to those who turn to him in their heart” (Ps. 85:8)..
No matter where we are, we can open our inward ear to this voice that speaks of peace.
3. “Your sins are forgiven” (Mk 2:5 and Lk 7:48) is the first message that this gracious voice speaks to the anxious mind. To embrace this message that sets us right with God is the first blessing of religion. Our sinfulness does not disqualify us from hearing it, for it is intended as a balm to the inner wounds our sins have inflicted on us. God speaks this word most powerfully in Christ, who took our sins on himself, and who “was raised to life for our justification” (Rom. 4:25). Hearing the Risen Christ speak the words, “Peace be unto you” (Jn 20:19), we are able to rest confidently in the calm assurance he breathes upon us.
Holding onto this, as steadily as we are able, we find the anchor of our being, at a level deeper than all invasion of anxiety, worry, depression, or fear.
4. The divine Shepherd makes us feel safe, held in his palm. This will elicit from us a response of joy and gratitude, as the chains that bind our minds are unloosed and we place ourselves utterly in God’s hands. This loving surrender to God is not servitude but perfect freedom.
Then his sanctifying grace can move us to generous thoughts and good works. The Shepherd grants security, but also leads us to new pastures, spurring us to creative ventures we did not dream of when imprisoned in the cage of our anxiety.
Even if we fail to follow him and stray from the upward path, we are still in his hands, since we can always turn again to him and confide ourselves to his safe keeping.
Four times in today’s Gospel (Jn 10:11-18) we hear the voice of Christ telliing us that he lays down his life for his sheep. This is the most powerful, the most incarnate, expression of that divine reassurance that anxious minds need to hear. It reminds us of the strength of the bond that ties us to Christ, a bond as close as the one that binds a mother to her child.
“You are precious in my eyes, and honored, and I love you” (Isaiah 43:4). That is what the divine voice says to us if we open our ear to it. Those are words everyone longs to hear, and words the bring deep joy and security to the heart.
If we are privileged to hear these words, let us also share them with others, and become ambassadors of Christ’s peace to them.
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