Where was Thomas, anyway? Scripture doesn’t give us any clues, but his absence is not remarkable merely that he missed out on the first visit to the Upper Room by Jesus. Think about the first words of today’s Gospel: “On the evening of that first day of the week, when the doors were locked, where the disciples were, for fear of the Jews…” Ten of the disciples made sure they were behind closed and locked doors because they were afraid. Deathly afraid.
Their teacher, their rabbi, their Messiah had been brutally killed. The empty tomb that Mary Magdalene and the other women had seen, the empty tomb that Peter and John had raced to see, was at best perplexing. It was not at this point a source of comfort or assurance. They were afraid. They killed Jesus – are we next?
So what was it that took Thomas out of that room, out from the security of the locked doors and the company of the close companions who shared his shaky belief, his perplexity and fear?
That very morning, Thomas had heard the accounts of Mary Magdalene and Peter and John. The stone is rolled away. The tomb is empty. Where is Jesus? Did Thomas leave the Upper Room to search for Jesus on the streets of Jerusalem? Was his desire to find Jesus out there enough to overcome his fear?
If it was his mission to search for Jesus with the eyes of his body, he would have been out of luck. Picture him wrapped in his cloak in the settling evening darkness, a hood drawn over his head to hide his identity as he goes to Gethsemane and the Temple Square and all the local places he’d walked with Jesus. But Jesus wasn’t there to be found. Thomas’ heart, already broken by the horror of Good Friday, was broken even further – If he is risen, why can’t I find him?
It could be that profound heartbreak settling in that made him so bereft that he said so definitively to the others that evening upon his return “Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands and put my finger into the nailmarks and put my hand into his side, I will not believe.”
I searched with my eyes and did not find Jesus. Your testimony that you have seen him isn’t enough for me. I watched him die. Nobody comes back from that. If you expect me to believe he’s risen, I need to see it for myself. I already looked for him in the city and didn’t find him. I need proof that I can see and touch. In that light, Thomas’ doubt becomes understandable.
This wasn’t a rejection of the Resurrection as much as it was an expression of our all-too-human reliance on our own senses, my insistence on seeing things for myself. In the final analysis, though, it can be seen as a lapse of faith.
Jesus makes that clear when he says “Have you come to believe because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and have believed.” We modern-day disciples often look to those words of the Lord as kind of a pat on the back – I’ve never seen Jesus in person, but I believe. Yay me! Like we’re one up on Thomas…
But do we truly see Jesus with the eyes of faith? The people who on Earth were the closest to Jesus had trouble recognizing and understanding the Resurrection. Do we think we’re more tuned in than them?
The Gospels we’ve heard at Mass from the Easter Vigil until today are filled with examples of this. We heard at the Vigil that the women’s account of the empty tomb “seemed like nonsense and they did not believe them.” Easter Sunday we heard “For they did not yet understand the Scripture that he had to rise from the dead.”
Wednesday we heard of disciples on the road to Emmaus who didn’t recognize Jesus and Thursday had the disciples “startled and terrified” at the appearance of the risen Christ. Friday we heard “Jesus was standing on the shore; but the disciples did not realize that it was Jesus.” Saturday, both Mary Magdalene and the Emmaus road disciples tell of the risen Jesus, but in both cases we hear “but they did not believe.” And then there’s Thomas from today.
The difference maker in all these accounts is when Jesus speaks – when they hear his voice, they get it. They recognize him. We hear his voice at every Mass in the scriptures. Do we recognize him? The Emmaus disciples recognized him in the breaking of the bread. That bread is broken at every Mass. Do we recognize him?
In John chapter 12, Jesus says “Amen, amen, I say to you, whoever believes in me will do the works that I do, and will do greater ones than these, because I am going to the Father.” We hear witness to that in today’s first reading, where even the shadow of St. Peter has the power to heal. Peter and Thomas and all the others listened, recognized, and believed, and were able to bring the grace and love and divine mercy of the Risen Christ to the world.
Through our baptism, each of us has received the grace to listen to, recognize, and believe in the Risen Jesus. May we always embrace that grace and be one with Thomas as we exclaim “My Lord and my God.”
Image: By Caravaggio – Downloaded from Google Arts & Culture using dezoomify-rshttps://artsandculture.google.com/asset/der-ungl%C3%A4ubige-thomas-michelangelo-merisi-named-caravaggio/OAEjjQkNdRL9sg, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=120649550
Deacon Steve O’Neill was ordained for service to the Archdiocese of Washington in June 2013 and serves at St. Andrew Apostle in suburban Maryland. After four years in the Marine Corps and three years at the University of Maryland (where met Traci, now his wife of 30+ years, and earned a degree in English), he has worked as an analyst with the Federal government. Deacon Steve and Traci have two sons and two daughters and three grandchildren.
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