Tag: doubting Thomas

The Worst Week of Thomas’ Life

As part of my Triduum this year, I took the time to read the Gospel accounts of what I was living in the liturgy. I spent Holy Thursday reading about the Last Supper, the Agony, the betrayal, and the arrest and Good Friday reading every account of the Passion. It really helped me to enter in to the commemorations, but I didn’t have any epiphanies.

Easter Sunday was a different matter. Reading about Jesus different appearances after the Resurrection opened my eyes in so many ways. I sympathized with the women who were “fearful yet overjoyed,”1 saw myself in the Apostles who “worshiped but they doubted,”2 and wondered at the passion of Peter who does everything wholeheartedly, even when it seems rather an idiotic thing to do.3 But it was Thomas who really got me.

doubting ThomasWe know the story, of course. We heard it at Mass today. Jesus appeared when Thomas wasn’t there, Thomas doubted, then Jesus came and Thomas believed. A little late, but still. He came around–even became a great Saint, though he’s stuck with the name Doubting Thomas until the end of time.

The trouble is, we skim over the first part of John 21:26.

A week later, Jesus came back. A week. Between his doubt and his faith, Thomas suffered for a week.

Who knows why he doubted? Certainly the Resurrection was too good to be true. And maybe he thought the other Apostles had snapped–that the misery of the Passion had been too much for them and they were delusional. At first I’m sure he assumed they were just confused, that the body had been moved and would turn up. When they explained that they’d seen him, he must have started to wonder if they were lying to him. As they tried in vain to convince him, maybe he dug in his heels, refusing to be proved wrong. Maybe he wanted to believe but couldn’t see his way clear to.

I wonder if he didn’t start to think they were telling the truth. Did he wonder why Jesus left him out? Did he go over that day in his head again and again, trying to see how he’d offended the Lord? Was he blaming himself? Or did he start to get mad at Jesus for not showing himself to Thomas?

And as the week went on and Jesus still didn’t return, maybe he worried that his friends were really crazy. When he heard reports of other encounters, did it make him angry? Here he was, one of Jesus’ closest friends and the only one sane enough to know that the dead stay dead.

Did he feel left out? Or relieved that he hadn’t fallen victim to the same madness the others had succumbed to? Bad enough to uproot your whole life for a man who can’t even be bothered to defend himself before being slaughtered like a criminal–now he’s expected to live in some delusion. Still and all, it must have been hard to listen to them talk with hope and excitement when he was stuck in misery.

Caravaggio
Caravaggio

Did it take him until that next Sunday to believe? Did he really have to see the light shining through the holes in his hands? Maybe he came to believe days earlier and had to wait, hoping against hope that Jesus would come back, that Thomas would be there this time.

Was Thomas “too smart” to have faith? Was he too proud? Too mistrustful? I don’t know what caused his doubt. I don’t know what brought him to faith. But I know this: a lot of us are Thomas.

We’re supposed to believe and we just don’t. We might not even remember a time when we did. We’re surrounded by people who claim great peace in prayer and joy from knowing Jesus and we’re just going through the motions.

Or maybe we’re not going through the motions. Maybe we’ve given up even that, knowing as we do that this can’t be true.

Maybe we believe plenty but we still can’t sense his presence. We know Jesus rose but we can’t for the life of us see any resurrection in our own futures.

Wherever your doubt is coming from, remember this: Jesus came for Thomas. He knew Thomas’ obstinate doubt and he loved him all the same. He didn’t yell at him or cut him loose. He rose with holes so he could show Thomas, and when he finally appeared to him, I have to think he spoke with the very same tenderness I hear in his “Mary,” at the empty tomb. And he corrects him, indeed, but I imagine Thomas was overjoyed to be corrected by a God he could finally believe in.

Jesus came for Thomas. He brought light into Thomas’ darkness and healed his unbelief and he promises the same to you.

Still. He waited.

He waited an agonizing week as Thomas doubted his friends, his God, his reason, everything. He let Thomas stew. I don’t know why. But he knew. And if he’s leaving you in the darkness right now, he knows why he’s doing that, too. Be sure of this: he knows what he’s about. And just as Thomas’ week won him the confidence of millions of doubters down through the ages, just as Mother Teresa’s darkness won us all peace in the face of incessantly dry prayer, your suffering is working. It may not make you the greatest Saint of your time, but if it makes you a saint at all, it is well worth it. Hang on, my friends. Cling to those pierced hands. Sunday is coming.

I love you Jesus my love

  1. Mt 28:8 [↩]
  2. Mt 28:17 [↩]
  3. Jn 21:7, 11, among many others [↩]

Touching His Pierced Hands

One of the coolest churches I went to in Europe was this itty bitty (by Roman standards), dark thing covered with scaffolding.  A few blocks from St. John Lateran, Santa Croce is a monument to the work of St. Helena, mother of Constantine and patron Saint of archaeologists.  She actually carted back a few shiploads of dirt from her time in the Holy Land so that this church could be built on holy ground.

The interior is rather lackluster, but around a corner and through to the back is a display of relics unlike anything I’ve seen elsewhere–including the Holy Land itself.1  There’s marble from Bethlehem, Calvary, and the tomb; the cross beam of the good thief’s cross; a nail; a thorn from the crown of thorns; pretty awesome, all.

On the left. I remember it grosser than this.

But the clincher for me was this: St. Thomas’ finger.

EW!

Okay, yeah, but if you’ve been Catholic in Europe for any time at all, you’ve gotten used to the veneration (never worship) of shriveled body parts.  This isn’t just a finger, though.  This is “put your finger in the holes in my hands.”  This is the finger that probed the wounds of the risen Christ, the finger that proved the Resurrection.

Or maybe it’s just some old nasty finger.  The point here isn’t the authenticity of the relic but the truth of the Gospel.

Because prophecies and miracles and centuries of conversions aside, it really all comes down to this: the pierced hands.  The pierced hands tell us that this man was truly crucified.  And the living flesh that surrounds the holes declares that he rose again.

If Jesus claimed to be God2 and he rose from the dead, he’s God.  The resurrection is the ultimate proof of Christianity, as Jesus himself told us (Mt 12:38-42).  So when Thomas touches the holes in Jesus’ hands and side, he knows with certainty that Jesus rose from the dead.  And if he rose from the dead, he can’t just be some great moral teacher, as C.S. Lewis so brilliantly explains in Mere Christianity:

“I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept his claim to be God. That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic — on the level with the man who says he is a poached egg — or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God, or else a madman or something worse. You can shut him up for a fool, you can spit at him and kill him as a demon or you can fall at his feet and call him Lord and God, but let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about his being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.” ((Among my favorite things ever written, if you’re keeping track.))

So when Thomas sticks his hands in the side of Christ, he doesn’t just know that this man was crucified and verified dead.  He doesn’t just know that this crucified man is walking around happily 2 days later, teleporting between Jerusalem and Emmaus and walking through doors.  (And I’m not talking alohomora throught the door, I’m talking Casper the Friendly Ghost through the door.)  No, Thomas doesn’t just know that this Jesus guy is something special.  In that moment, with that intimate gesture of love and proof, Thomas knows that Jesus is God.  Creator of the universe, ground of all being, our origin and destination.  No big deal.

Whatever they may not have understood before the Passion, the Apostles knew at this point that Jesus’ claims were radical, so radical they were revolutionary, for good or for ill.  There was no going back to regular everyday Judaism if this Jesus was for real, and he was.  This was no ghost, no impressive con artist “Walking” on “water” and “healing” the “blind.”  This guy was d-e-a-d dead.  And now he’s fine.  There’s was no going back to life as they knew it.

Not that they didn’t try.  Thomas doubts so seriously that he needs physical proof.  I’ve met more than one Thomas in my day, claiming that he’ll believe in God if God shows himself.  “Blessed are those who have not seen but have believed.”

Peter believes, he just doesn’t know what to do about it.  So after the Resurrection, Peter goes fishing.  Jesus rose from the dead, but for Peter it’s just another day at the office.  How many of us have been there, moved by the Spirit one moment and then back to gossiping and lying the minute the retreat is over?

Both of these men are called out, Thomas by being reprimanded for his unbelief, Peter by being reminded that his mission is far greater than fishing.  But there’s something so sweet about their correction.  Jesus could easily have ignored Thomas, saying that if he wasn’t ready to believe, that was his problem.  He could have let Peter be a mess and chosen the much holier John instead.  But God doesn’t cut his losses when it comes to souls.  He does whatever it takes.

Caravaggio–dude knew his stuff.

I’ve often wondered if Thomas wasn’t the whole reason Jesus rose with holes.  His glorified body was healed of the signs of his scourging, but the holes in his hands and side remained.  What if the God of the universe chose to spend eternity in a “damaged” body simply because that’s what Thomas needed?  What if that line in the Gospel is really there only for you?  What if the Holy Spirit inspired that composer centuries ago just so that you’d hear that song today?  What if God created lilacs just so the smell of them would remind you of his love?  It’s not impossible.

See, we serve an infinite God who manages to dwell in the human heart.  Somehow, he’s able to be for everyone and for each one all at the same time.  For Peter, he built a charcoal fire.3  For Thomas, he rose with holes.  What are the pierced hands he holds out to you to prove his love?  I’d love to hear about them in the comments.

 

 

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  1. For those who aren’t familiar with the concept, a relic is an item associated with Christ or a Saint–a body part, more famously, or a prayer book or item of clothing. They’re not magic, but God often uses them as means to help us identify with a Saint and grow in holiness.  He sometimes even uses them as channels of miraculous grace. This is Biblical: see Acts 19:12. [↩]
  2. While he never said the words outright, it’s hard to read Jn 8:58, Jn 14:6, or Jn 17:5–among many others–any other way. [↩]
  3. A charcoal fire only shows up twice in the Gospel: Jn 19:15-18 and Jn 21.  Peter’s denial and his reconciliation.  Coincidence?  HA! [↩]