Second Sunday of Easter, April 16, 2023

Faith in Jesus might be hard-won, but it strengthens us for the journey of life

John 20: 19–31

In the evening of that same day, the first day of the week, the doors were closed in the room where the disciples were, for fear of the Jews. Jesus came and stood among them. He said to them, ‘Peace be with you,’ and, after saying this, he showed them his hands and his side. The disciples were filled with joy at seeing the Lord, and he said to them again, ‘Peace be with you. ‘As the Father sent me, so am I sending you.’ After saying this he breathed on them and said: Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive anyone’s sins, they are forgiven; if you retain anyone’s sins, they are retained. Thomas, called the Twin, who was 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 answered, ‘Unless I can see the holes that the nails made in his hands and can put my finger into the holes they made, and unless I can put my hand into his side, I refuse to believe.’ Eight days later the disciples were in the house again and Thomas was with them. The doors were closed, but Jesus came in and stood among them. ‘Peace be with you,’ he said. Then he spoke to Thomas, ‘Put your finger here; look, here are my hands. Give me your hand; put it into my side. Do not be unbelieving any more but believe.’ Thomas replied, ‘My Lord and my God!’ Jesus said to him: You believe because you can see me. Blessed are those who have not seen and yet believe. There were many other signs that Jesus worked in the sight of the disciples, but they are not recorded in this book. These are recorded so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing this you may have life through his name.

Music Meditations

• Wonderful Merciful Savior—Selah
• All Things Bright and Beautiful—John Rutter
• Make me an instrument of your peace—John Michael Talbot and others
• You are my hiding place—Selah

Opening Prayer

Jesus, I let you whisper to me: “you will be blessed if you decide to believe”. And you alone know how hard it is sometimes to believe in your goodness, your mercy, and your power over sin and death. You alone know how afraid we are to trust in others, and even in your presence in our lives, sustaining us. Lord, I want to believe. Help my unbelief.

Companions for the Journey

Father Paul Crowley, S.J. taught theology in the Religious Studies Department, Graduate Program in Pastoral Ministries and at the Jesuit School of Theology. His teaching also brought him to Stanford University and the Weston School of Theology, now the Boston College School of Theology and Ministry, as a visiting professor. He was a prolific writer with numerous award-winning publications, with books on Karl Rahner, Robert McAfee Brown, pluralism in the Church, and faith and suffering. Paul was very active in his profession, having served as editor-in-chief of the prestigious journal of the Society of Jesus, Theological Studies, and as a member of its board. He also held appointments on the boards of the Catholic Theological Society of America, Boston College School of Theology and Ministry, and Jesuit School of Theology. He was good friend of the Catholic Community at Stanford, and devised two courses taught at Stanford through the Catholic Community at Stanford. This homily was posted on April 19, 2020, several months before his death from cancer on August 7, 2020:

When I was a boy, the first Sunday after Easter was known as “Low Sunday.” The previous Sunday had marked the greatest feast in the Christian year, in the Christian faith, and thus, anything following it had to be anticlimactic. Or so the thinking seemed to go. Yet, the Gospel was the same, John’s story about the doubting Thomas, and like today, Easter extended from Easter Sunday all the way to Pentecost. This year in particular, the moniker “Low” might seem appropriate enough. Easter itself felt “low” due to the shelter-in-place orders most everyone has all been faithfully observing. In fact, things are so low at this point in the Covid-19 catastrophe, that what we celebrate on Easter and in this season might get lost in the overall sense of panic that has beset many of us. For we were celebrating—remembering—the fact that in Jesus, God acted in and through suffering and death to conquer it and bring about a new creation. And that this new creation is the foundation of our hope: That even in the midst of the worst suffering, and in the face of death itself, God’s grace is constantly on offer. It is tempting to attribute this Easter faith to a Christianized version of a myth of eternal return, or a theological gloss on the obvious wonder of new life springing forth from winter’s hardened earth and appearance of death. But that is not what this is about, lovely as those images are, and even helpful in inspiring a sense of possibility, a future. For the death that was conquered in the Resurrection of Jesus was a real, bodily death. And that body was itself an outward expression of the fact that God had entered fully into the human condition in Jesus (that other feast we celebrate in December, the Incarnation). What the Incarnation tells us is that our human natures are made for this union with God, accomplished fully in Jesus, and analogously accomplished in us through a lifetime of grace ever abounding. Aquinas reminds us that the finality of a human life is in union with God, and that that human life includes the body. Of course, we are not speaking of a union of a physical body with God—an absurdity—but of the whole of our persons, symbolized by the body, in God. What makes Christian faith in the Resurrection a real thing—what anchors it—is not the sheer will to believe. It is, rather, that there is something to be discovered in this embodied existence, where Christ dwelt, with all its suffering, with the ineluctability of death: that God is found there; God resides there. And that the human, human nature, is entrée into the full reality of God. The conditions for union with God, completion in God, are set even before we are aware of that fact—or even if we are never made aware of it. But those with the gift of faith are aware of this fact, and that makes all the difference as we face death. When Jesus quite often counsels his disciples to “fear not,” he is pointing to a profoundly challenging dimension of this faith, of believing: that we can let go of our fears, even in the midst of the most terrifying suffering, because God is radically present in the realities we inhabit and is there to lead us through all of this harrowing directly into a more intense union with himself. But, accepting that is not an easy thing. In today’s Gospel, Thomas is reaching for that kind of faith. He wants to touch the wounds of Christ, not for empirical evidence of the Resurrection in a modern scientific sense, but in order to connect the Jesus he sees with the fact that Jesus is, as John reminds us at the start of his Gospel, the Word made flesh. It is this very Word-made-flesh that has now been raised from the dead. Thomas wants the complete experience of this fact—a somatic experience of the completeness of God’s work in Jesus as God’s promise for him. And his response is not one of a modern sceptic (I now have evidence, and so I’ll give it some credence); it is rather one of worship, of adoration, before the manifestation of the power of God’s love: “My Lord and my God!” For before this fact, this unity between Incarnation and Resurrection, there is a unity between our own embodied existence and God’s desire for us, his constant self-offer. We are made for this unity, this glory—for Resurrection understood as the finality of our embodied existence, the completion of our human natures in God. All that said, the suffering and death we are witnessing and will continue to witness in the Covid-19 pandemic are overpoweringly real. They admit of no sugar-coating. But no death admits of sugar-coating, especially when it is tinged with human sinfulness, as in warfare or violence. But even here we are challenged, as Thomas was, to find the reality of God—in the suffering and dying, in their bodies breaking down, in the overwhelming fatigue and frustration of generous health-care workers, in researchers looking for answers, and even in the dark recalcitrance of some “leaders” in the face of truth. If we are suffering ourselves in some real physical way, especially when it involves pain, this can make the challenge even greater. We are not disposed toward the search. We simply want to retreat, to escape. As well we might and sometimes should. But none of that empties the Resurrection of its meaning; in fact, what we are witnessing and many undergoing only reinforces it. We are now focused on our embodied lives, lives shared across artificial boundaries, and finding among ourselves a common set of hopes and ideals. Like Thomas, we want to touch others where they have been most grievously wounded. We are seeking to overcome fear, and to face the darkness in which we stand, especially through gestures of love. Some of us believe that in so doing we are walking the pathways of hope, of entry into a new creation—a new order for the human race. Or that we are at least rediscovering the patterns that are possible but too easily forgotten when we also lose sight of the full meaning of our shared embodied existence, of the transcendence of the human spirit reaching toward God, and of God’s reaching toward us in the very heart of the sufferings (and joys) that we undergo.

Weekly Memorization

Taken from the gospel for today’s session…

Peace be with you.

Living the Good News

What action can you take in the next week as a response to today’s reading and discussion?

Keep a private journal of your prayer/actions responses this week. Feel free to use the personal reflection questions or the meditations which follow:

Reflection Questions

• Those disciples were in a locked room because they were afraid. Are there doors to my heart that are locked?
  What role does fear and self-preservation play in my tendency to lock myself away spiritually or emotionally?
  What role does fear of change play in my unwillingness to let others in, even Jesus?
• Did you ever make a promise that you ultimately were unable to fulfill?
  How hard was it to face the one you disappointed?
  Was your relationship ever the same?
• If you were in Jesus’ place, what would you have said to those followers (like Peter, and like Thomas) who said they would follow him to his death? And didn’t?
  Did Jesus’ response surprise you?
• Scholars have said that the shalom means much more than the word “peace” What does the word shalom mean to you?
• How do you define mercy?
  Where, in this passage, is there evidence of God’s mercy?
• Have you ever been called upon to receive mercy from someone else?
  How hard was it to do so?
• Have you ever been called on to extend mercy to someone else?
  Was this mercy grudging, or condescending, or even insulting toward the recipient?
• What is the role of understanding and compassion in extending mercy?
  Where is the power dynamic in giving/receiving mercy?
  Did Jesus reflect that?
• Jesus greeted the disciples in the gospel twice with the words “peace be with you”. What is “peace” for me?
  Has there ever been a lack of peace in my life?
  Is there a lack of peace now?
  How do I deal with his?
  Thomas was called “the twin”. Could that refer to both his trusting and his skeptical self?
  Can we be both believing and disbelieving at the same time?
• When Thomas was separated from the community, he found faith more difficult. Has this been my experience?
• Is it sometimes difficult to trust the assertion/testimony of another?
  Can I sympathize with Thomas?
• Do you think Jesus was judging Thomas?
  What is the role of judgement in the practice of mercy?
• Like Thomas, do I ever place conditions on my faith/belief?
  Am I open to where God’s spirit may be recognized?
  Is it enough to say “I believe”? or “My Lord and My God”?
• What in my personal life tests my faith?
  What strengthens it?
  What weakens it?
• Is there a climate of unbelief in our society?
  What in our culture undermines trust/belief?
  What supports it?
• Who, in your experience, has not had proof to back up her belief, trust and optimism, but forged ahead anyway?
  Are we asked to do this in our own daily lives in any way?
  What does your relationship with Jesus do to sustain you in your fear and lack of trust/belief that, in the words of Julian Norwich: “All will be well”?
• The emphasis on the wounds of Jesus in this gospel reinforces our recognition of the humanity of Jesus. Is it hard for me to identify with Jesus’ true humanity?
  Do I really believe that Jesus is like us, with wounds of love, wounds of hate, and signs of suffering?
• What do I see as “wounds” the Church (the body of Christ) has received from the world, past and present?
  What do I see as the “wounds” the Church has inflicted on itself?
  What do I see as the “wounds” the Church has inflicted on others?
• “Blessed are those who have not seen, but believed”
  Does this imply somehow that we should have no doubts, or is this praise perhaps for John’s community who have never seen Jesus but believe in him, even despite their doubts and fears?
  By extension, could it apply to us who have not seen, who may have doubts, yet choose to believe in the ultimate goodness that is Jesus?
• Do you sympathize with Thomas or you find fault with his doubts?
• What do you think was the reason Jesus showed Thomas his wounds?
  Do you think this shared experience brought Thomas closer to trusting and believing Jesus?
• Have you ever been reluctant to show another your personal “wounds”?
  Why?
• Can sharing one’s woundedness ever be manipulative?
  How do we avoid this tendency when imparting or receiving information about wounds that have been sustained?
  Is it hard?
• This story is a major example of how Jesus broke into the lives of his friends. Can I let him break into mine?

Meditations

A Meditation in the Ignatian Style/Imagination:

Freely adapted from “Sacred Space”, a service of the Irish Jesuits:

I imagine that I am one of the disciples there in the room when Jesus first appears. How shocked am I? Am I fearful? Comforted? Does everyone in my community “see” that this is really the resurrected Jesus? Does it happen to each of us all at once, or is there a different pace of recognition for each of us? In my role as disciple in the upper room, am I at all hesitant to believe what I am seeing? How do I feel when Jesus says: ”Peace be with you”? What does it feel like when Jesus breathes on me and tells me to receive the Holy Spirit? Do I have any idea what he is talking about? When Thomas returns, do I rush to tell him what excitement he has missed? How do I feel when he rejects my testimony and demands some sort of proof? Do I feel this is this a rejection of Jesus or a rejection of my own personal experience of Jesus?

When Thomas actually does encounter Jesus himself, he seems to forget his former need for proof. Did Jesus look into his heart and see the need that was there? Why do I think Jesus shows Thomas, and the rest of us his hands and his side? Do I feel connected, through those wounds, to our shared history?

In my own life, do I ever feel that my experience of Jesus is special to me, and feel superior to those whose belief is harder won or even non-existent? In my own faith experience, do hope that God looks beyond my first reaction, my hasty words, and sees the need in me for love, for reassurance, for comfort? I sit quietly in Jesus’ presence and listen for his voice, being open to whatever he offers me. I resolve to give Jesus not just my intellectual belief, but to give him my heart, because he has already given me his.

A Meditation in the Franciscan Style/Action:

From “Justice Bulletin Board,” by Barbara Molinari Quimby, Director of Social Justice Ministries, Holy Name of Jesus Cathedral, Raleigh, N.C.:

When I came across these meditations that Pope Francis prepared for a spiritual retreat in 2016, I thought that each of us could find help for our own spiritual journey toward being recreated in the image of Jesus, an image of mercy.

1st Meditation:

Nothing unites us to God more than an act of mercy… for it is by mercy that the Lord forgives our sins and gives us the grace to practice acts of mercy in his name.

Mercy impels us to pass from personal to the communal. We see this in the miracle of the multiplication of the loaves, a miracle born of Jesus’ compassion for his people and for others. Something similar happens when we act mercifully: the bread of mercy multiplies as it is shared.

Mercy joins a human need to the heart of God, and this leads to immediate action. We cannot meditate on mercy without it turning into action… Mercy engages our whole being – our feelings and our spirit – and all other beings as well.

Mercy gets its hands dirty. It touches, it gets involved, it gets caught up with others, it gets personal.

2nd Meditation:

Saint Bernard has two fine sermons on the Lord’s wounds. There, in those wounds, we find mercy. Bernard pointedly asks: “Do you feel lost? “Are you troubled? Enter into the wounds of the Lord and there you will find mercy.”

3rd Meditation:

Being merciful is not only “a way of life”, but “the way of life.”

Poetic Reflection:

Malcolm Guite wrote a wonderful poem about how Thomas’s experience is also ours:

“St. Thomas the Apostle”

“We do not know… how can we know the way?”
Courageous master of the awkward question,
You spoke the words the others dared not say
And cut through their evasion and abstraction.
Oh doubting Thomas, father of my faith,
You put your finger on the nub of things
We cannot love some disembodied wraith,
But flesh and blood must be our king of kings.
Your teaching is to touch, embrace, anoint,
Feel after Him and find Him in the flesh.
Because He loved your awkward counter-point
The Word has heard and granted you your wish.
Oh place my hands with yours, help me divine
The wounded God whose wounds are healing mine.

Poetic Reflection:

This is a lovely meditation on a poem by Denise Levertov, late a professor of English at Stanford University, who converted to Catholicism while she was here in her sixties and who wrote a Mass for the Day of St. Thomas (also called Mass for the Sunday of St. Thomas). The poem is taken from a book called The Stream & the Sapphire, which chronicles Levertov's journey from unbelief to faith.
From the blog “Eleison”:

Especially on this Sunday I am reminded of the poem “St. Thomas Didymus” by Denise Levertov. In her poem she exquisitely expresses both Thomas’ doubt as well as the beautiful revelation of the risen Lord. She draws a parallel between Thomas’ doubt and the epileptic’s father who exclaimed, “I believe Lord, help my unbelief.” Often, like Thomas, I struggle with doubts of my own. I often doubt that God will tend to me and provide for me as I walk the narrow way, stewarding my sexuality. I fear loneliness, rejection, isolation, and unhappiness as the result of my celibacy. However, I find much comfort in knowing that like Thomas I can express and speak aloud my doubts and like Thomas not be rejected for my doubt but met by the Risen Lord so I may cry, “You are my Lord and my God.”

“St. Thomas Didymus”

by Denise Levertov

In the hot street at noon I saw him
a small man
gray but vivid, standing forth
beyond the crowd’s buzzing
holding in desperate grip his shaking
teethgnashing son,
and thought him my brother.
I heard him cry out, weeping, and speak
those words,
Lord, I believe, help thou
mine unbelief,
and knew him
my twin:
a man whose entire being
had knotted itself
into the one tight drawn question,
Why,
why has this child lost his childhood in suffering,
why is this child who will soon be a man
tormented, torn twisted?
Why is he cruelly punished
who has done nothing except be born?
The twin of my birth
was not so close
as that man I heard
say what my heart
sighed with each beat, my breath silently
cried in and out,
in and out.
After the healing,
he, with his wondering
newly peaceful boy, receded;
no one
dwells on the gratitude, the astonished joy,
the swift
acceptance and forgetting.
I did not follow
to see their changed lives.
What I retained
was the flash of kinship.
Despite
all that I witnessed,
his question remained
my question, throbbed like a stealthy cancer,
known
only to doctor and patient. To others
I seemed well enough.
So it was
that after Golgotha
my spirit in secret
lurched in the same convulsed writhings
that tore that child
before he was healed.
And after the empty tomb
when they told me He lived, had spoken to Magdalen,
told me
that though He had passed through the door like a ghost
He had breathed on them
the breath of a living man-
even then
when hope tried with a flutter of wings
to lift me-
still, alone with myself,
my heavy cry was the same: Lord,
I believe,
help thou mine unbelief.
I needed
blood to tell me the truth,
the touch
of blood. Even
my sight of the dark crust of it
round the nailholes
didn’t thrust its meaning all the way through
to that manifold knot in me
that willed to possess all knowledge,
refusing to loosen
unless that insistence won
the battle I fought with life.
But when my hand
led by His hand’s firm clasp
entered the unhealed wound,
my fingers encountering
rib-bone and pulsing heat,
what I felt was not
scalding pain, shame for my obstinate need,
but light, light streaming
into me, over me, filling the room
as if I had lived till then
in a cold cave, and now
coming forth for the first time,
the knot that bound me unravelling,
I witnessed
all things quicken to color, to form,
my question
not answered but given
its part
in a vast unfolding design lit
by a risen sun.

Closing Prayer

Lord of mercy, be with me in my daily life. Help me to extend mercy, forgiveness, acceptance and “shalom” to others as you have done so to me. Keep me open to the new truths about yourself that you are revealing to me each day, if I can but listen. Help me to share my wounds and help me to acknowledge the wounds of others, just as you did for Thomas.