SECOND SUNDAY OF EASTER
12 APRIL 2015
The
disciples had many reasons for locking themselves in the upper room. Their leader had been executed like a common
criminal an extremely cruel and humiliating way. The Roman way of crossing those who crossed
them causes fear. They fear that this
will happen to them. They fear the scorn
heaped on them by the skeptical residents of Jerusalem: "you are in a long line of people duped
by fake messiahs." But there is an
even greater fear. They know that the
tomb is empty and have heard of the claims of Mary Magdalene that Jesus had
been raised from the dead. If her report
is true, Jesus would certainly be angry with them. Despite their repeated claims of being faithful,
they had proven to be cowards and unfaithful.
But the
risen Christ breaks through those locked doors.
Instead of castigating them and giving them a sermon on being more
faithful, he gives them peace. The
Hebrew word, shalom, implies forgiveness
and the presence of the messianic age promised by the prophets. Now that Jesus has been transformed by the
resurrection, he shows them what they would recognize, what caused them to run
away: his wounded hands and side. In case they are do not understand, he says
again, "peace be with you."
Then he gives them the gift of the Holy Spirit and tells them to give
this gift of mercy, or peace, to anyone coming to believe in the presence of
the risen Lord.
During Holy
Week, Father Terry and I spent hours in the Confessional extending this mercy,
this incredible peace, to those who were very conscious of their failings and
sins. Over and over again, we, who need
God's mercy ourselves, became instruments of that same mercy to others. Through the Sacrament of Reconciliation, the
Lord does not condemn or yell at us. He
forgives us, and gives us the grace to begin again.
And then
there is Thomas. We have no idea why he
is absent. I suspect that he is locked in
his guilt. He had bragged that he would
go to the tomb of Lazarus in Bethany with Jesus to die with him. He had told Jesus at the Last Supper that he
did not know the way to the Father.
Locked in his guilt and self hatred, he is absent. Locked In his absence, he cannot believe that
the Lord had been raised from the dead.
He demands proof. He wants to see
the wounds that have caused his guilt.
And sure enough, the Lord presents those wounds to him on the following
Sunday. As a result, Thomas moves from the
depths of doubt to the highest expression of faith in Jesus: "my Lord and my God."
We often
look negatively at Thomas and call him doubting Thomas. However, he can help us understand our faith. Like Thomas, we are often absent. Through our own sins and human weakness, we
distance ourselves from the Lord and sometimes stay away from the believing
community. At other times, God appears
to us as absent from our lives. Like
Thomas, we respond to this absence by wanting tangible proofs of the Lord's
risen presence. We look for a personal
and real relationship with Jesus Christ, which we eventually find when we touch
his real presence in the Sacramental life of the Church and hear him speak in
his Word. Then, we too can cry out: "my Lord and my God." We begin to understand that doubt is not the opposite of faith, but
rather the path through which we pass to a deeper faith.
Jesus says
to Thomas that we are blessed who have not seen and have believed. We have not experienced the risen presence of
the Lord in the same way as Thomas or any of the other disciples did. But in our growth in faith from the absence
of God to God's intense presence in our lives, we have come to believe. May this Easter Season sustain us in our
doubts, carry us through the ways that God may appear absent, and bring us to a
deeper faith in the risen presence of our Lord Jesus Christ. Through that faith, we truly have life in his
name.
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