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."
The other disciples were elated, ecstatic with joy at having seen Jesus risen from the dead. He had promised, "I will see you again, and your hearts will rejoice, and no one will take your joy from you" (see John 16:22), and now they were suffused with that unconquerable joy. When Thomas returned they simply desired to share that experience with him. But he could not accept what he heard.
But he said to them,
"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."
The graphic insistence on the wounds of Jesus demonstrated how traumatic the crucifixion was for Thomas. He could not turn lightly from those horrible things which he himself had witnessed to words which seemed overly credulous and too good to be true. He himself had been deeply wounded by what he had seen, and the way in which he hadn't been present for Jesus in his hour of need. In desperation he exclaimed the need to see the wounds of Jesus. It was as though he believed that only the wounds of Jesus could heal the wounds in his own heart and bring him to believe.
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."
Jesus bid the disciples peace first in part to reassure the disciples that displaying to them his wounds was not done in condemnation but rather as irrefutable evidence of his love. When he came a second time to them he wished peace to all of them including Thomas because he did not hold against him the fact that he did not yet believe or begrudge the demand he made for empirical proof. Without Thomas even having to ask Jesus himself already knew the needs of the heart of Thomas and offered to satisfy that need.
The presence of the risen Lord still marked by his wounds moved Thomas to a faith in something greater even than the resurrection. He believed because he had seen, but his belief was not limited to what his eyes could behold. Rather, as Saint Gregory wrote, "Because he saw one thing, believed another; saw the man, confessed the God". The visible manifestation of love beyond all telling in the human flesh of Jesus led Thomas to the invisible reality of his divinity.
Thomas came to believe because he saw. But what of us, who can not see the Lord with our eyes as Thomas did, who walk entirely by faith and not by sight? "Blessed are those who have not seen and have believed". We are assured by the Lord that we are not second class citizens in the Kingdom, condemned to faith less real and less vibrant than those of the apostles. Rather theirs was a blessing of one kind, ours of a different kind, but no less real, no less great. In fact the Gospel itself helps us to share in the same experiences that the disciples had of the risen Lord. The signs they saw now have the power to transform us as well. And the core of this belief is precisely that which Thomas professed, saying "My Lord and my God!"
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.
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