2nd Sunday of Easter 2024
Acts 4:32-35; 1 John 5:1-6; John 20:19-31
You don’t need me to tell you that a honeymoon doesn’t last forever. After the initial ecstasy, it is necessary, inevitable, that people come down to earth, and start living the daily reality of the relationship to which they have committed themselves. There is a saying “The glances over cocktails which seemed so sweet, don’t look so amorous over shredded wheat”. Yet life contains far more shredded wheat, or corn flakes, or whatever, than it does cocktails.
The same is true of our relationship with God, where there is a similar saying: “After the ecstasy, go and do the laundry”. We may be emotionally and spiritually exalted by a new encounter with God, but soon we have to settle to developing that relationship amid the ups and downs of daily life.
People sometimes ask, in a tone of complaint, “Why isn’t the Church today like the early Church?” as described in today’s First Reading, when there was dignity, mutual respect, and everything, we are told, was held in common. A brutal, and perhaps not very helpful answer would be “Why aren’t you?”
It might be more helpful to point out that the Church, at this stage, was on honeymoon, living in the first ecstasy of the Resurrection and Pentecost, and that, very soon, it would have to settle to the reality of daily existence. It might also be fair to point out that, even at this stage, there were serious problems. Chapter 5 of the Acts of the Apostles chronicles the attempted fraud on the part of Ananias and Sapphira, followed by the attempt of Simon Magus to buy spiritual powers.
Soon, there would be major disagreements about policy. We need to pray for the Church, that she may be constantly purified and renewed, but we should not be so naïve as to suppose that if only THEY (those other people) would reform, the Church would become the perfect society. Two expressions may be useful here: “ecclesia semper reformanda”—the Church always in need of reform—and “Lord, reform your Church, beginning with me”.
Our Second Reading, from the First Letter of St. John, underlines that this reform depends on our faith, and on our love for God and for one another, before John’s Gospel recounts two appearances of the Risen Christ, a week apart.
There shouldn’t be any need to append a health warning to the description of the first appearance, but unfortunately there is. Because of Jesus’ gentle breathing of the Holy Spirit into the apostles, this episode is used as the Gospel for the Feast of Pentecost, and people who don’t have their wits about them fail to realise that this incident took place on Easter Sunday, and not at Pentecost. Thus you will find preachers and spiritual writers, who should know better, asserting that the disciples were cowering in fear until Pentecost, whereas they were liberated from that fear by the appearances of the Risen Christ and by His Ascension.
In a previous parish, I explained this very carefully during Eastertide. After Mass on Pentecost Sunday, a lady approached me and asked triumphantly “Well, who is right then, you or St. John?” Resisting the urge to strangle her, I began again, explaining how I was in full agreement with St. John: I am still not sure that she was convinced. She was a retired Deputy Head from a Catholic Primary School, and had clearly spent her career teaching that the disciples were frightened until Pentecost, a belief which she was not going to surrender easily.
Jesus’ appearance on the Second Sunday—today—deepens our understanding. Firstly, the physical nature of the Risen Christ is underlined. He may be able to pass through locked doors, but He is flesh and blood, and can be touched. Secondly, He still carries His wounds. The Risen Christ is still the wounded Christ. “By His wounds we are healed,” states the First Letter of St. Peter, and those wounds are the sign of His ongoing compassion with us. We too carry the wounds which Christ has dealt us, and which enable us to have that compassion, and therefore that love, which our Second Reading demands.
Thomas is characteristically down to earth. “None of your airy fairy theories” he demands. “Show me!” And Jesus does. What is the result? The first profession of faith in the divinity of Christ. In exclaiming “My Lord and my God”, Thomas gives us not only a prayer to offer at the elevation of the Host and the Chalice, but a fundamental statement of faith, a faith which is ours, and which undergirds our love.
