Gospel of the Second Sunday of Easter
19 On the evening of that first day of the week, when the doors were locked, where the disciples were, for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood in their midst and said to them, “Peace be with you.”
20 When He had said this, He showed them His hands and His side. The disciples rejoiced when they saw the Lord.
21 Jesus said to them again, “Peace be with you. As the Father has sent Me, so I send you.” 22 And when He had said this, He breathed on them and said to them, “Receive the Holy Spirit. 23 Whose sins you forgive are forgiven them, and whose sins you retain are retained.”
24 Thomas, called Didymus, one of the Twelve, was not with them when Jesus came. 25 So the other disciples said to him, “We have seen the Lord.” 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.”
26 Now a week later His disciples were again inside and Thomas was with them. Jesus came, although the doors were locked, and stood in their midst and said, “Peace be with you.”
27 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.” 28 Thomas answered and said to Him, “My Lord and my God!” 29 Jesus said to him, “Have you come to believe because you have seen Me? Blessed are those who have not seen and have believed.”
30 Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of His disciples that are not written in this book. 31 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 (Jn 20:19-31).
I – Belief in the Resurrection, Foundation of Faith
The resurrection was not an easy topic to deal with in Our Lord’s time, nor is it today. Truly, it concerns us very deeply, for if we were to reflect on our eternal destiny, our lives would be different and the world would not be in its present chaotic state.
At that time, there were followers of the Greek schools who denied the resurrection and promoted the theory that the human soul is neither spiritual nor immortal. The result was absolute materialism. In Israel, the Sadducees—the faction made up of the wealthiest class—were steeped in these philosophical doctrines, as surfaces in their famous discussion with Jesus regarding the hypothetical woman married successively to seven brothers. The Saviour refuted them so magnificently that He awakened admiration even among some of the Pharisaic scribes, who believed in the resurrection (cf. Lk 20:27-40).
The Apostles did not believe in Jesus’ Resurrection
The followers of the Divine Master were more in line with the pharisaic doctrine, as is deduced from St. Martha’s response to Jesus, concerning her brother Lazarus: “I know that he will rise again in the resurrection at the last day” (Jn 11:24). However, they did not foresee the possibility of the immediate Resurrection of Jesus after His Passion and Death.
It is against this backdrop that we should consider the conduct of the Apostles narrated in the Gospel of the Second Sunday of Easter. By this time, news had reached them of Our Lord’s apparition to the Holy Women (cf. Mt 28:9-10; Mk 16:9-11; Jn 20:14-18) as well as to St. Peter (cf. Lk 24:34) and the two disciples on the way to Emmaus (cf. Lk 24:13-33; Mk 16:12-13); but they refused to believe until the Divine Redeemer openly revealed Himself to them.
True God and true Man resurrected
19a On the evening of that first day of the week, when the doors were locked, where the disciples were, for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood in their midst…
This apparition occurred at the close of the Sunday of the Resurrection, the Israelite first day of the week. The Virgin Apostle—who furnishes a series of singular details—highlights the fact that the doors “were locked… for fear of the Jews.” Considering that these had crucified the Master, the disciples had no doubt that they would also persecute His followers. Even so, the idea of denying Him and fleeing, like the disciples of Emmaus, filled them with horror. Thus, trapped between two fears, their only option was to take refuge in the Cenacle, finding mutual support in their peril. Jesus’ entrance by passing through the walls with His glorious Body provoked astonishment. Everyone was at table (cf. Mk 16:14), which was U-shaped; Jesus placed Himself in the centre, in plain view of all.
The Word of the Lord is efficacious
19b …and said to them, “Peace be with you.” 20 When He had said this, He showed them His hands and His side. The disciples rejoiced when they saw the Lord.
This could be taken as a common greeting. When we greet someone with the customary “good afternoon,” we extend a mere wish, which may not actually play out. Jesus’ word, in contrast, is creative and omnipotent; it transforms, it has the power of law and the vitality to produce what it expresses. Accordingly, “Peace be with you” should not be taken as a platonic and detached expression. It truly quelled agitation and instilled peace in the souls of the Apostles. What peace? The “tranquillity of order.”1 The internal motions of the human spirit are balanced and set in order around Christ Jesus, for everything depends on Him, everything tends to Him, and everything flows from Him.
It is important to stress that while St. Mary Magdalene only needed to hear the Master’s voice saying “Mary” (Jn 20:16), in order to confess His Resurrection, the Apostles will only believe after touching Jesus’ wounds, as can be gathered from St. Luke’s narrative: “See My hands and My feet, that it is I Myself; handle Me, and see” (Lk 24:39). After they all availed themselves of this proof, they exulted “for joy”…
A divine power is given to men
21 Jesus said to them again, “Peace be with you. As the Father has sent Me, so I send you.” 22 And when He had said this, He breathed on them and said to them, “Receive the Holy Spirit. 23 Whose sins you forgive are forgiven them, and whose sins you retain are retained.”
The Divine Master wants to entrust His followers with proclaiming the Gospel, just as He had been sent by the Father. Nevertheless, gripped by fear, and shaken by the dramatic situation that they had undergone, the Apostles needed a new infusion of serenity and confidence to enable them to fulfil their lofty mission. Thus, although the first offering of peace was, in itself, sufficient, Our Lord repeats it: “Peace be with you.”
Having instilled peace, He imparts to them an extraordinary authority with the same creating breath. In this breath, we find a beautiful parallel with that of the Father in communicating human life to Adam, along with participation in the divine nature, involving all the gifts of the Holy Spirit, the infused virtues, and the preternatural gifts—integrity, immortality, impassibility, dominion over animals and infused knowledge or signal wisdom—, elevating man to a sublime level.
Analogously, in saying “Receive the Holy Spirit,” Jesus breathed a new life into the disciples, the priestly life, transmitting a divine power to them: that of pardoning or retaining sins. When a paralytic was lowered through an opening in the roof of a house to be cured by the Saviour, in Capernaum, His words, before restoring him to health were: “My son, your sins are forgiven” (Mk 2:5). The Pharisees who were present protested, for this right belongs exclusively to God. Being the offended party, only He can pardon. “What Jesus gives to His Apostles is, therefore, something supernatural which must be attributed to the action of the Holy Spirit, represented in the Old Testament, above all, as life-giving […]. In effect, this power […] is that of pardoning sins, as well as that of retaining them. It is the power already given to Peter and the Apostles (cf. Mt 16:19; 18:18), which here is expressly renewed with the imparting of the Spirit, giving it a definitive character. The allusion to the Holy Spirit is very clear: to pardon sins is to give spiritual life.”2
Therefore, in administering the Sacrament of Penance, when the priest makes the Sign of the Cross over the penitent and pronounces the words “I absolve you of your sins, in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit,” it is a continuation of the breath of Jesus Christ that restores to the soul the divine life lost by mortal sin. Not even the totality of the sacrifices of the Old Law, summed up and multiplied exponentially would be capable of pardoning just one venial sin. Not even Our Lady, with all her merits, can do this! This is the honour of the priestly state!
II – The Contrasts of an Affirmative Spirit
Everything indicates that St. Thomas was a man of belligerent and opinionated spirit while at the same time, affirmative and categorical. When Our Lord decided to return to Judea to minister to the sick Lazarus, the Apostles protested because of the danger to which the Master was exposing Himself in approaching Jerusalem. It was St. Thomas who declared: “Let us also go, that we may die with Him” (Jn 11:16)!
In other circumstances, Thomas had shown himself to be guarded and objective, wanting to establish proofs. For example, when Jesus announced “when I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to Myself, that where I am you may be also. And you know the way where I am going” (Jn 14:3-4), Thomas immediately asked: “Lord, we do not know where You are going; how can we know the way?” (Jn 14:5). Now, these reactions are useful, for, without people like Thomas, who lack intuition and appeal mainly to discursive reasoning, many principles would go unexplained. If, on that occasion, Thomas had not raised the problem, perhaps the Divine Master would have not made such a sublime revelation: “I am the Way, and the Truth, and the Life; no one comes to the Father, but by Me” (Jn 14:6). By requesting a rational explanation of that which could only be accepted by faith, he played a vital role in the Apostolic College. He also contributed to establishing the foundations upon which theology would later be built.
Without proofs, St. Thomas does not believe
24 Thomas, called Didymus, one of the Twelve, was not with them when Jesus came. 25 So the other disciples said to him, “We have seen the Lord.” 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.”
Being absent from the Cenacle, Thomas missed Jesus’ first apparition to the disciples. Undoubtedly, the others tried to persuade him of the veracity of the occurrence, but were unsuccessful. After their having fled and left the Divine Redeemer alone, their testimony, in Thomas’ eyes, was empty of authority. He remained sceptical—as the other Apostles had in fact been, before touching Our Lord—demanding, as a condition for believing, the same proofs that they had been given. Thomas has gone down in history as the doubter, but, in reality, as we have seen, the others were as well.
Qualified witness of the Resurrection
26 Now a week later His disciples were again inside and Thomas was with them. Jesus came, although the doors were locked, and stood in their midst and said, “Peace be with you.” 27 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.”
After eight days, Jesus “stood in their midst” for the second time and bid Thomas to place his hand in His wounds, telling him not to be “unbelieving, but believe.” It is interesting to note that Our Lord did not accuse him of being unbelieving, but rather counselled that he not become so, from the moment in which He offered the concrete argument and ample demonstration of His Resurrection. In order to believe, it was indispensable to have faith, and Christ invited him to grow in this virtue. Blessed is Thomas, for in order to obtain this faith he was granted the great honour of touching the side of the Saviour! As St. Gregory the Great comments, “It was not by chance that this particular disciple was absent. The Divine mercy admirably ordained that an incredulous disciple, by feeling in his Master the wounds of the flesh, should heal in us the wounds of incredulity. The doubt of Thomas was more profitable to our faith, than the belief of the other disciples; for, the touch by which he is brought to believe, confirms our minds in belief, beyond all doubt.”3 How profitable was his gesture for our own mean souls, for it served as an authentic sign of the Lord’s Resurrection!
Complete surrender is the reaction of an upright soul
28 Thomas answered and said to Him, “My Lord and My God!”
Thomas substantiates his fidelity to this grace by acknowledging the divinity of Jesus as no other Apostle had done. They had all received the same proof, but his reaction was more vigorous, bold, and radical. In announcing the Resurrection to Thomas, the Apostles did not attest: “Jesus is truly God.” But St. Thomas declared this.
While it is true that he did not trust the testimony of the disciples, it becomes clear that, when Our Lord urged him to put his finger in the nail marks, he believed, and attributed to the Man Jesus Christ, who appeared resurrected before him, the title given only to the Creator in the Old Testament: Lord and God! Thus, he believed in the divinity of Christ, despite only touching His humanity.4 Also, in proclaiming “My Lord,” he gave himself as a slave, abandoning himself completely into Jesus’ hands. This act of love sprang from his robust faith at that moment. He was an upright soul, innocent and ready to give himself entirely. “Oh wonderful perspicacity of this man! He touches a Man and calls Him God: he touched one thing and believed another. Had he written thousand codices, they would not have been of such profit for the Church. With what clarity, precision and candour he calls Christ by the name of God!”5—St. Thomas Villanueva exclaims.
We may take a lesson for our spiritual life from this scene. Frequently we are the opposite of St. Thomas: we believe in humans and even in ourselves rather than in God. We must grow in faith in God and then turn to works, for faith without works is dead (cf. Jas 2:17).
The blessedness that awaits us
29 Jesus said to him, “Have you come to believe because you have seen Me? Blessed are those who have not seen and have believed.”
These final words of the Divine Teacher to St. Thomas announce the blessedness of all those who would come after, and who would not have the opportunity to touch those holy wounds. In other words, it applies perfectly to us.
The Apostles, St. Mary Magdalene, St. Martha, St. Lazarus and many others lived with the resurrected Jesus, and were able to contemplate Him in flesh and bone, walking about and conversing. As a result, minimal effort was required to believe in Him. Did they have merit? Yes, because the divinity remained hidden. However, we acquire more merit when, at the words of the Consecration, we contemplate the Eucharistic Species, which retain the appearance of bread and wine, and, through faith, hope and charity, we are convinced that the bread and wine have given way to the Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity of Jesus. Then, kneeling to adore Him, our blessedness is greater than theirs!
Marvels we will know only in eternity
30 Jesus did many other signs in the presence of His disciples that are not written in this book.
How many wonders of Our Lord’s earthly life remain cloaked in silence! We are left to speculate about His familiarity with Our Lady and St. Joseph during His private life spanning thirty years, for nothing of it is known other than His loss and finding in the Temple, at 12 years of age. Who could describe it? Evidently, His was not a cloistered existence; He lived in society and had contact with public opinion—he was even called the “carpenter’s son” (Mt 13:55)—and naturally he would have interacted with other youths. We can also muse over the days He spent in Bethany with Martha, Mary Magdalene and Lazarus, and the moments of intimacy with the Apostles… And let us not forget the numerous miracles that occurred after His Resurrection, as the Evangelist states in this verse. We will have knowledge of these episodes in Heaven, if, by the merits of the most Precious Blood of Christ and the tears of Our Lady, we arrive there! Then we will hear, from Mary’s lips, magnificent details “that are not written” in any book!
Jesus Christ is the Son of God made Man
31 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.
By ending with these words, the Evangelist indicates his objective in narrating this extraordinary episode: “that you may come to believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God.” St. John wrote his Gospel in the throes of a polemic with the Gnostics who disputed the divinity of Our Lord, and his concern was to eradicate this heresy which was prejudicial to the Church’s expansion. Those who profess such errors make a distinction between Jesus and Christ: Jesus was purely a man, whom this Christ—for them a sort of mediator between God and the world—assumed on the day of his baptism, but without, however, his becoming God. That Our Lord was Man, everyone admitted, for they had seen Him. But how, they contended, could one believe that He was also God? If He were only God, it would even be easier to tolerate… The great problem lay in accepting the hypostatic union, that is, that He possessed a complete human nature—without human personality—, hypostatically united to a complete divine nature, in the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity.
In this Sunday’s second reading (1 Jn 5:1-6), St. John expresses this mystery more emphatically, in the passage taken from his First Letter: “Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ is begotten by God” (5:1). Therefore, the life of grace depends on faith in the divinity of Our Lord Jesus Christ, and not on mere knowledge.
III – Let Us Cultivate Our Faith!
In fact, the Gnostics of the time claimed that, to obtain salvation, it sufficed to have full knowledge—gnosis—of certain secrets regarding the origin of the universe and the liberation of the human soul. Whoever attained this level of knowledge would be perfect and dispensed from good works. In other words, the Gnostic doctrine implied the denial of morality. It could be summed up by rephrasing the famous saying of St. Augustine—“Dilige, et quod vis fac”6—with the words: “Know, and do whatever you will.”
Despite all his efforts, man, of himself, lacks the capacity to understand the divine, to rise to supernatural heights, to penetrate into the realm of faith. For this, he needs God’s help, which joins the intelligence, perfected by faith, and the will, fortified by grace. For example, the divinity of Christ and His Resurrection cannot be explained intellectually; they are accepted by faith, a freely given gift of God instilled in the soul with Baptism.
Faith grows through the practice of love
Faith, a virtue capable of growth and diminution, is the door by which the other virtues enter. How does this occur? The knowledge of the things of God, albeit obscure, awakens, in the soul, love and adherence to the magnificent vista revealed by faith.7 Nevertheless, it is charity which makes us love God with an openness of soul that befits His greatness. Charity is, then, in itself, superior to faith. Why? Because charity opens our soul and makes it fly to God so that we can love Him as He loves Himself, in the proportion of creature to Creator. Faith, however, brings God to us.8 If we limit ourselves to understanding, without love, faith loses its lifeblood and vitality, and dies. Therefore, we must understand, and, in the very same act, love.
Also in the second reading—which combats the deviations of the Gnostics, who held that it was absurd to fulfil the precepts of the Law—, St. John provides another important lesson: to love God is to “obey His Commandments. For the love of God is this, that we keep His Commandments. And His Commandments are not burdensome, for whoever is begotten by God conquers the world. And the victory that conquers the world is our faith” (1 Jn 5:3-4). Let us not forget that while it is impossible to keep the Commandments of the Law of God by the strength of our nature alone, if we lean on grace, we will overcome the world, the devil and the flesh! Obtaining the necessary graces requires an intense interior life: much prayer and frequent reception of the Sacraments, especially the Eucharist.
We have seen that this Liturgy of the Second Sunday of Easter establishes an excellent basis for practising the three main virtues, those that set us in direct relationship with God: faith, hope and charity. Let us thank Christ, Our Lord, for the inestimable blessedness of believing without seeing, and ask Him for continual growth in this faith.. ◊
Notes
1 ST. AUGUSTINE. De Civitate Dei, L.XIX, c.13, n.1. In: Obras, vol. XVI-XVII. Madrid: BAC, 1958, p.1398.
2 LAGRANGE, OP, Marie-Joseph. Évangile selon Saint Jean.(Ed.5). Paris: Lecoffre; J. Gabalda, 1936, p.515.
3 ST. GREGORY THE GREAT. Homiliæ in Evangelia, L.II, hom.6 [XXVI], n.7. In: Obras. Madrid: BAC, 1958, p.665.
4 Cf. ST. THOMAS AQUINAS. Summa Theologiae, II-II, q.1, a.4, ad 1.
5 ST. THOMAS OF VILLANOVA. Concio 169, Dominica in Octava Paschæ, n.1. In: Obras Completas, vol. IV. Madrid: BAC, 2012, p.175.
6 ST. AUGUSTINE. In Epistolam Ioannis ad Parthos, tract. VII, n.8. In: Obras, vol. XVIII. Madrid: BAC, 1959, p.304.
7 Cf. ST. THOMAS AQUINAS, op. cit., q.4, a.7.
8 Cf. Idem, q.23, a.6, ad 1.