John 20:19-31
When I was a little kid, I used to
feel sorry for myself sometimes. Most of my classmates lived on the
other side of town, so I didn't get to hang out with them after
school. Sometimes when there was something interesting to do after
school, I would have to walk my sister home, because we were latchkey
kids; we'd be by ourselves for a couple of hours before mom or dad
showed up. I wanted a dog, but my parents seemed to know that they
would end up taking care of the creature, so I didn't get one. And I
could go on; when I was a kid, there were many times when I had a
pity party for myself. And my mother would sometimes pick up on my
gloomy mood and ask what was the matter. When I would bare my soul
about how unjust the world was, she would smile and say, “I guess
you might as well go out in the garden and eat worms.” That
usually broke my bad mood.
Where was Thomas when Jesus first
appeared to his disciples? We know that ten were huddled in a room
full of grief because Jesus had been executed; full of shame because
they not only couldn't stop it, but because they had left him alone
to die on the cross; full of fear because they expected that any time
now there would be a knock on the door and a few roman soldiers to
take them away. And our gospel tells us that Jesus stood in their
midst and offered them peace, and gave them the Holy Spirit and the
power to forgive sins.
Thomas certainly had similar feelings.
Why he was not with the other disciples, we'll never know. Maybe he
thought he'd be safer by himself; or maybe he figured that the sooner
he got back to a normal life the better; we know Thomas was a
practical man, because when Jesus made up his mind to go to
Jerusalem, Thomas said to the others, “Let us go down with him and
die with him.” And when Jesus tells them he is going away to
prepare a place for them, tells them “Where I go, you know”
Thomas takes him literally and replies, “Lord, we do not know where
You are going, and how can we know the way?”
And perhaps when Thomas, who truly
loved Jesus, hears from his brothers that Jesus has come to them, he
can't believe it because if he does, he will be admitting that Jesus
had left him out; that for some reason, he had been denied what the
others had been given. He was about to have a pity party. So the
only answer was to just say, “I don't believe it!”
Sometimes I feel like Thomas. I pray
that God will help someone I love straighten out his life, and
nothing changes. I hear from others about a life-changing encounter
on a pilgrimage or in a cursillo, and I've never had anything like
they are describing. I meet someone who experienced a miracle of
healing and my tendency is to look for alternative explanations –
because in the course of my career taking care of cancer patients, I
didn't see anything like that and I know many of them prayed very
hard for a miracle – as did their loved ones. And I wonder, like
Thomas, why doesn't God make his presence known to me? Does he love
these others more than he loves me? Where are my miracles, my
answered prayers, my life-changing moments?
But Jesus appears to Thomas, he
singles him out, and says, “do not be unbelieving, but believe!”
He invites me to look back and see that there were miracles – how
else to explain my friend and I surviving a car accident that
destroyed the car – in an era when we didn't have seat belts or air
bags – and we weren't even bruised. There were life changing
experiences – when after a night of prayer I had the certainty that
I was being called to marry my wife; there were answered prayers –
when I was one of fifty people accepted to enter a medical school
that received applications from about 3000 highly qualified
individuals. And these are only a few examples. Yes, I know there
are other explanations. But that's the point. Jesus says, “do not
be unbelieving, but believe!”
Mother Angelica, who died on Easter
Sunday, never stopped believing. She could feel the presence of
Jesus during the almost miraculous creation of EWTN, when she would
pray, and answers would come, and donations of money and equipment
would follow, and legal issues would be resolved. Then it was easy
to believe. But after the stroke that incapacitated her for the
remaining fourteen years of her life, she still felt the presence of
Jesus; her suffering was a sign of his love, an invitation to share
his cross.
Mother Angelica believed that Jesus
was always by her side, that everything happened as part of God's
plan, that Jesus unconditionally loved her. And because she believed
this, she saw that He was her Lord and he was her God.
Jesus loves you and I just as much as
he loved Mother Angelica, just as much as he loved Thomas. Jesus
reminds Thomas of all that has happened in the past – the healings,
the feeding of the 5000, the raising of Lazarus, and so many other
signs that Thomas was in the presence of the divine. He wants us to
believe, not because he's going to give us a test, but because it's
true – he is standing in our midst, offering us peace, offering us
the Holy Spirit, sending us forth to spread the good news, teaching
us to forgive – and he is really there with us, loving us, helping
us, sharing his kingdom with us. And when we see our lives and our
world through believing eyes, then we too will say with all our
hearts, “My Lord and My God!”
For the world, seeing is believing;
for Christians, believing is seeing. And Saint John ends his gospel
with the statement that the whole goal of his gospel is so that you
and I believe.
On Mercy Sunday let us look back on
our lives and recognize the Mercy God has shown us.
