Second Sunday of Easter
Doubting Thomas
4-28-2019
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Each year the Church celebrates Doubting
Thomas Day. It is a rough day for the Apostle. Not only does the poor
fellow miss out on Jesus’ first appearance to His Disciples, but he
tells them that they must have dreamed it, and the only way he will
believe Jesus has risen is to put his fingers into the wounds of
Calvary. A week later, the Lord embarrasses him with just that
invitation, “Trace My wounds.”
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There is more to this Gospel than meets the
eye. This is not simply a fascination story of belief and disbelief.
First, this appearance of the risen Jesus, like all His appearances,
tells us something of supreme importance about Jesus Himself. There are
many remarkable features to what we call the incarnation: that the son
of God took our flesh as His own, from a teenage girl, and that He grew
up much as you and I did, save for sin. He ate and drank, got tired and
slept. And then His body was slapped and spat upon, whipped like a dog
and nailed to a tree.
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But then this same body was raised by God,
the Father, from the grave. And all this for me! This is Gospel indeed!
Good news beyond our wildest imagining.
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But the appearances add one more truth still
more exciting, of unparalleled significance for our human and Christian
living. The appearances of Jesus after His resurrection tells us that
the son of God has chosen to remain human forever. Jesus did not revert
to what He had been before Bethlehem, in the form of God. Until time is
no more, and through eternity, God’s own son will be clothed in a human
body. What a tribute. What a remarkable compliment to our humanity.
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The son of God wanted the human body that He
took from us to be His forever. A compliment, yes, but a burden as
well. It lays on us the task of shaping our humanity, our body and
spirit, into the likeness of Jesus. Of liberating ourselves of those
things that make us less than human, therefore make us less like Him. It
raises humanity to new heights.
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Christ kept His humanity: do we in turn see
Him in the humanity around us? C.S. Lewis, the author, once wrote that
next to the Blessed Sacrament itself, your neighbor is the holiest
object presented to your senses for in your neighbor, Christ’s glory,
Himself, is truly hidden. In the Eucharist you do not actually see the
risen Christ. Glorified wounds and all, but you do recognize Him for He
has opened the eyes not of your flesh, built of your faith. In the power
of that faith you can exclaim with the Apostle, my Lord, my God.
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In your own journeying you will meet
thousands of women and men, people of all kinds. The Christian question
is now, what will you see with the eyes of your flesh? The Christian
question is, what will you recognize with the eyes of your faith? Will
you be able to see divinity in humanity, or will seeing keep you from
recognizing? Will the grime and the grit blind you? With the cancer or
the Alzheimer’s, the ugly and the spiteful, all those very human things
that make for difference and indifference, for hostility and hatred,
will they prevent you from recognizing your risen Lord? Not only in the
broken bread, but in the breaking heart? The broken body? The broken
mind?
Some time ago, I spent 10 days living with our Friars from
Graymoor at our parish in the slums of Kingston, Jamaica. It was the
longest 10 days of my life. I thought I had seen the worst of hardship,
the worst of poverty, until I went to spend the day with Mother Teresa’s
Sisters of Charity. I was stunned as I walked into the courtyard of
their house, and saw dozens upon dozens of people dying, of the blind
and the lame. People suffering from every disease, from AIDS to leprosy,
all being cared for by three nuns and a few volunteers.
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The next morning after I had celebrated mass
for the sisters, I sat with the Superior drinking coffee. I asked her
what so many of you would have asked if you had spent time there:
Sister, how do you do it day in and day out? She said, we try to see
Christ in all the people who come to us. I said, but Sister, can you
keep seeing Christ in so many people? Well, she said, we are only human.
We get drained emotionally, physically. But at those times I only have
to look into their eyes and I see Him. I see Him when I look into their
eyes.
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My friends, like the Disciples on the road
to Emmaus, our hearts, too, will burn within us not only when the
scriptures are proclaimed, not only when common bread and wine become
the body and blood of Christ, but also when we recognize the risen
Christ in those around us. Many things on this earth are precious. Some
are holy. Humanity is holy of holies. Never let a day end when anyone
has to say to you, if only you had looked into their eyes.
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