The Feast of St. Thomas, Apostle, Monday, July 3, 2023

John 20, 24-29

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 Thomas 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.”

The key to understanding St. Thomas’ doubt comes by his total commitment to Jesus: “Thomas therefore, who is called Didymus, said to his fellow disciples: Let us also go, that we may die with him” (John 11, 16).  Here, Thomas shows the strength of his belief in Jesus, and that Jesus had the words of eternal life so that there was no one else to whom he could go (cf. John 6, 69).  Jesus had just arrived in Galilee after the Jews had tried to kill him in Judea, but his friend Lazarus had just died and he wanted to return there to console the dead man’s sisters.  

The doubting at the news of the Resurrection is the response of a full heart that has broken.  Thomas does not doubt that Jesus has risen because his faith was weak but because he had believed so utterly, and his faith was smashed by the Lord’s Death.  He must have felt it as almost a betrayal of his faith, for the Lord had not done anything to defend himself in the Garden of Gethsemane and had even stopped Peter from defending him during his arrest.  At the time of the Lord’s Death, Thomas did not go back to the house where the other Apostles had taken refuge.  Perhaps he wandered the streets of Jerusalem or even began to make his way back to Galilee.  His great hopes dashed, there seemed little reason for keeping company with those other men.  But he did return to the house, the house of Mary, the Mother of Mark, where the Last Supper had taken place a few nights before.  Perhaps he realized that he could not go back to his previous life.  He did not know what lay ahead, but he knew that he could not go back.  

The news of the Resurrection from the excited, ecstatic Apostles struck him as hysteria.  But he would not let his hopes blaze up again, not even a little, lest he be crushed again.  No, he would not believe unless he touched the Lord’s wounds.  (The fact that he knew the Lord had been pierced in the side points to a contact with an eyewitness after the Lord’s Death — perhaps St. John).  Still, Thomas remained with the Apostles the next long week, hope flickering in his heart despite his attempts to stifle it.

“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.”  The Greek tense of the verb is the present, so the sense is, “Be believing”, Believe now and always.  The text does not tell us whether Thomas followed through with the Lord’s bidding him touch him.  We can imagine that Thomas, his mouth open and shaking slightly from his emotion, drew near enough to the Lord so as to touch him, and perhaps he did, his index finger reaching out haltingly to the wound in the side, which the Lord offered him, drawing aside his tunic.

Whether he touched his wound or not, Thomas’ response to the Lord’s word, “Believe”, is recorded for us: “My Lord and my God!”  Previously, he had believed in Jesus as the Messiah promised by the Pharisees; now he believes in him as his God.  

The Lord shows Thomas special love in his showing himself to him in this way.  Jesus could merely have appeared to the Apostles, this second time, as before, without making this offer to Thomas, or he could have rebuked Thomas for his lack of faith without showing his wounds to him.  Jesus appearing to Thomas as he did shows how much Jesus treasured him and the faith he had previously possessed.  It provided incentive and fortitude for Thomas throughout the long missionary journeys he would undertake on the Lord’s behalf in the future.  But it also gives testimony to us of the reality of the Lord’s Resurrection, Body and Soul.  He is a God who can be touched, and a God who will go to great extremes in his humility to prove himself worthy of our belief.