2nd Sunday of Easter 2020
Acts 2:42-47; 1 Peter 1:3-9; John 20:19-31
Something to note today, and to remember right through to Pentecost: on what day are the events of the first part of today’s Gospel taking place?
“Don’t be daft!” you will say. “That’s obvious. It’s Easter Sunday evening.”
Exactly! So when you hear this Gospel again at Pentecost, remember what you have just said; don’t go thinking tht it refers to Pentecost, or making it the basis for re-hashing that old nonsense about the disciples being scared until Pentecost. They weren’t. Between the Ascension and Pentecost, they were doing what the Risen Lord told them to do, which was to wait prayerfully for the gift of the Holy Spirit; and if anyone tries to tell you otherwise, knock them down and sit on their heads.
To be honest, it doesn’t say a great deal for the disciples that they were so scared on Easter Sunday. They already had the evidence of the empty tomb, and John, assuming that he is the Beloved Disciple, had told us earlier that he had seen and had believed. There was also the evidence of the women: Mary Magdalene had seen the Risen Lord, and so, according to Matthew, had the other women. Meanwhile, we have the testimony of St. Luke, who tells us that the Lord had appeared to Peter, so what business had they really to be afraid?
That is an easy question to ask, isn’t it? Fear is a strange emotion, which isn’t always susceptible to logic. Think for a moment of your own fears: how many of them are really justified? And what about your fears in relation to faith, to the presence of God, to salvation? Admittedly, neither you nor I have physically seen the Lord, but I suspect that all of us have experienced his presence in many ways; through being led into and through darkness, through our own experience of Gethsemane and Calvary—and of the Resurrection, through otherwise inexplicable events in life, through encounters with people, through the emptiness and the fullness of our times of prayer.
As the Eleven had the witness of the women, we have the witness of saints who have gone before us through two thousand years: of visionaries and of martyrs, and of ordinary common or garden folk who have radiated the presence of Christ, many of them again being women.
We have too those words from the First Letter of St. Peter, about our being plagued by trials which test, refine , and purify our faith, and about the joy which fills us and sustains us through dark times, and which is the product of loving the Lord even without seeing Him.
Those words from this letter echo those of the Risen Christ to Thomas: “Blessed are those who have not seen and yet believe”. Thomas is a belting reinforcer of our faith, because here and elsewhere he asks the questions which we ourselves would like to ask, raises the objections which we would like to raise, and demands the demonstrations which we would like to demand.
Thomas is the down to earth, no nonsense realist. “You have seen the Lord? Prove it!” And the Risen Christ does exactly that. But then Thomas is prepared to make a leap of faith, being the first to proclaim explicitly the divinity of Christ. Seeing and touching demonstrate the Resurrection: faith takes Him further, to recognise that this Risen Lord is actually God.
In our case too, faith enables us to take the ultimate step. The witness of others, our own experiences, lead us so far, enabling us to go further, accepting for ourselves the divinity of the Risen Christ, and His Eucharistic presence. Perhaps like me you were taught in childhood to pray silently Thomas’s words “My Lord and my God” at the elevation of the consecrated host and the chalice. If not, why not begin the practice now? If so, continue it. If you learnt it but lost it, resume it. And every now and then thank St. Thomas for it.
