The Second Sunday of Easter, April 24, 2022

John 20, 19–31

On the evening of that first day of the week, when the doors were locked, where the disciples were, for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood in their midst and said to them, “Peace be with you.” When he had said this, he showed them his hands and his side. The disciples rejoiced when they saw the Lord. Jesus said to them again, “Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you.” And when he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, “Receive the Holy Spirit. Whose sins you forgive are forgiven them, and whose sins you retain are retained.”  Thomas, called Didymus, one of the Twelve, was not with them when Jesus came. So the other disciples said to him, “We have seen the Lord.” But he said to them, “Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands and put my finger into the nail marks and put my hand into his side, I will not believe.”  Now a week later his disciples were again inside and Thomas was with them. Jesus came, although the doors were locked, and stood in their midst and said, “Peace be with you.” Then he said to Thomas, “Put your finger here and see my hands, and bring your hand and put it into my side, and do not be unbelieving, but believe.”  Thomas answered and said to him, “My Lord and my God!” Jesus said to him, “Have you come to believe because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and have believed.”  Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of his disciples that are not written in this book. But these are written that you may come to believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that through this belief you may have life in his name.

The reputation of St. Thomas has come down to us as “the doubter”, as in “a doubting Thomas”.  Yet he behaved rightly in his caution, given the circumstances.  He returned from his absence possibly the next day or a few days after the appearance of Jesus to the other Apostles.  We do not know the reason for his absence.  It is possible that he had fled back to Galilee but then thought about what he should do and rejoined the others in the house in Jerusalem, to be met with this tale of the Lord having risen from the dead.  Certainly, the Apostles would have been overwhelmed by emotion by the sight of the Lord Jesus after knowing him to have been viciously killed.  Their elation must have seemed like hysteria to the careful Thomas.  But he would not be moved by hysteria.  The fact that he said, “Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands and put my finger into the nail marks and put my hand into his side, I will not believe”, tells us that he does want to belief, but that he wants to believe rightly.  He remains with the Apostles through the next week, hoping to see Jesus as they had.  By then, he had heard the testimony of the women who saw him near the tomb and also that of the two disciples on the way to Emmaus.  He must have become steadily more eager to see the Lord, hoping that he would return again to the Apostles.  When the Lord Jesus did come back, on the Sunday after Easter, Thomas was overjoyed and cried out, “My Lord and my God!”, going beyond the faith of the others.  Thomas would become one of the greatest of the early missionaries, too, rivaling even St. Paul.  Eventually he made his way into India where he preached the Gospel and established the Church.  The descendants of these Indian Christians astonished the Portuguese explorers when they found them in the course of their voyages to that far-off land.