2nd Sunday of Easter 2023
Acts 2:42-47; 1 Peter 1:3-9; John 20: 19-31.
Today’s reading from the Acts of the Apostles describes a honeymoon period for the Church in the immediate aftermath of Pentecost, when everything was sweetness and light. Sadly, as everyone knows, honeymoons must end, and the nitty gritty of everyday life must be faced. It would be unrealistic to think that the Church could return to that honeymoon time, nor would it be desirable—the challenges of ongoing life are a constant reality—but the ideals of mutual charity, regular prayer, and selfless generosity are things which we must strive to maintain, or to recover if and when they are lost.
Yet even the honeymoon took a while to develop, as our Gospel passage shows. Scholars suggest that this was the original end of St. John’s Gospel, with chapter 21 added later, and it reveals early fears and doubts on the part of the apostles.
“Fear”, “peace”, and “joy” are the emotions which leap out at us. After all that Jesus had promised, and particularly after what Mary Magdalene and the other women had told them, we might have expected the disciples to be confident, but human nature tends to pessimism. “It’s too good to be true” we say: have you ever heard anyone say “It’s too bad to be true”? We are experts at believing bad news: mere novices when it comes to believing the good. Humanity hasn’t changed in two thousand years, or indeed more.
Another saying is “Seeing is believing”. Despite the risen Christ wishing them peace, His assembled followers achieve the third word, “joy”, only when He shows them His hands and His side. Is it, or is it not, remarkable that Jesus still carries His wounds? Might we not have expected them to vanish without trace when the Lord was raised to new life? Why does this not happen? There is that first point that they serve as evidence of what they are seeing: this is not a ghost, or even some heavenly apparition, but the flesh and blood Jesus whom they have known and followed.
I think, though, that there is a deeper reality. The risen Christ is still the wounded Christ. The First Letter of St Peter declares “By His wounds, we are healed”, and what is true for Christ is true for us. In so far as we are able to bring healing to others, it is largely because of our own woundedness. We have “compassion”, “suffering with” others, largely because we have had “passion”, in its original sense of “suffering”. We need to hold onto that knowledge that the risen Christ is the wounded Christ, and that wounds are the source of healing.
Thomas knows this. Here, as so often, Thomas is Everyman, speaking for all of rational, sceptical, pessimistic, down to earth humankind. “Show me His wounds” he demands. “No, don’t show me. Let me feel.” On this second Sunday, his demand is granted, and he is led to an even more powerful faith than the others, as he makes the first proclamation of the divinity of Christ, as he exclaims “My Lord and my God”.
“What about us?” That title of a 2018 song by the singer Pink can serve as a universal refrain. We are those whom the risen Christ calls “those who have not seen, and yet” are called on to believe. To believe what? To believe that Christ is risen, wounds and all, and that He is Our Lord and our God.
Were you brought up, as I was, to utter Thomas’s words “My Lord and my God” silently as the consecrated host and chalice are shown to us at the Elevation during Mass? We are seeing something: we are to touch something. Perhaps we might ask St. Thomas’s help in achieving his faith, which will bring us both peace and joy, banishing our pessimism and our fear.
