The texts from the Roman Catholic Lectionary today invite contemplation of the nature of the experiences that increase our relationship with God.
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| Capstone of the temple |
The reading from the Letter to the Ephesians describes the community as a holy temple in the Lord.
* [2:11–22] The Gentiles lacked Israel’s messianic expectation, lacked the various covenants God made with Israel, lacked hope of salvation and knowledge of the true God (Eph 2:11–12); but through Christ all these religious barriers between Jew and Gentile have been transcended (Eph 2:13–14) by the abolition of the Mosaic covenant-law (Eph 2:15) for the sake of uniting Jew and Gentile into a single religious community (Eph 2:15–16), imbued with the same holy Spirit and worshiping the same Father (Eph 2:18). The Gentiles are now included in God’s household (Eph 2:19) as it arises upon the foundation of apostles assisted by those endowed with the prophetic gift (Eph 3:5), the preachers of Christ (Eph 2:20; cf. 1 Cor 12:28). With Christ as the capstone (Eph 2:20; cf. Is 28:16; Mt 21:42), they are being built into the holy temple of God’s people where the divine presence dwells (Eph 2:21–22).1
Psalm 117 is a universal call to Worship.
* [Psalm 117] This shortest of hymns calls on the nations to acknowledge God’s supremacy. The supremacy of Israel’s God has been demonstrated to them by the people’s secure existence, which is owed entirely to God’s gracious fidelity.2
In the Gospel of John, Jesus and Thomas reveal the blessedness of those who have not seen.
* [20:28] My Lord and my God: this forms a literary inclusion with the first verse of the gospel: “and the Word was God.”3
Gerard J. Hughes, SJ, comments that Thomas is invited to feel his wounds; that he is still a human being – he eats honeycomb and fish (of all things!); that human relationships do survive death, however changed they somehow are – the appearance to Mary Magdalen; the reinstatement of Peter, that the Apostles will have a mission to preach, to forgive sins and to hand on the Spirit. It is the significance rather than the fact of the resurrection on which the Gospels focus. The story in Luke of the two disciples walking to Emmaus is an illustrative example.
So the story is a kind of dramatised parable rather than a literal description. Second generation Christians have not ‘seen’ the Lord; instead, their way of experiencing his presence is in praying the scriptures, and in celebrating the Eucharist. As the Gospel of John puts it, even to doubting Thomas, ‘Blessed are those who have not seen, and have believed.’ In this respect the second or third generation Christians, or we twenty-first century Christians, have much the same problems. Luke’s advice is just appropriate for us as for the audience for whom he was writing.4
George Butterfield comments that when the church began, it was made up exclusively of Jewish Christians. And some thought it should remain that way. Not the Apostle Paul. The Gospel is for everyone. A gentile could attend the synagogue and the temple in Jerusalem but they were always outsiders, as St. Paul says, strangers and sojourners. Not anymore.
Now they are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God. All of us belong. All of us are important parts of God’s sacred temple but we are not lone ranger Christians. We are being built together to make this temple. How important this is in a world that divides people according to race, gender, or ethnicity. God’s sacred temple has no aliens, strangers, or sojourners.
The Gospel reading is the one that gets Thomas labeled as the doubter. He wasn’t present when Jesus first appeared to them so he didn’t believe the other apostles. Now he sees Jesus with his nail-scarred hands and gaping hole in his side and he believes. His faith is the faith of the Church: “my Lord and my God.” This is not the end of all of Thomas’ doubts. Faith and doubts are not incompatible.5
Don Schwager quotes “Touching the wounds of Christ and healing the wounds of our unbelief,” by Gregory the Great (540-604 AD).
"It was not an accident that that particular disciple was not present. The divine mercy ordained that a doubting disciple should, by feeling in his Master the wounds of the flesh, heal in us the wounds of unbelief. The unbelief of Thomas is 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 question." (excerpt from FORTY GOSPEL HOMILIES 26)6
The Word Among Us Meditation on John 20:24-29 urges us to focus on Jesus’ response. Just as he had done in the Incarnation, just as he had done during his “hidden years” as a carpenter, and just as he had done when he washed his disciples’ feet and allowed himself to be crucified, here again Jesus humbled himself and gave himself over to the hands of men. He cared more about meeting Thomas’ need than he cared about how reasonable or appropriate Thomas’ demand was.
And the result of such humility? Thomas was so moved that he made the greatest and most personal proclamation about Jesus in all the Gospels: “My Lord and my God!” (John 20:28).
Jesus will always help us to know him better. He probably won’t appear physically, as he did for Thomas, but he will “show up” in countless other ways. In our prayer, in his word, in the love of a friend, in the whispers of our conscience—in these and many other ways, Jesus humbly comes to us. And of course, the humblest way of all is when he places himself in our hands in the gift of the Eucharist.7
Friar Jude Winkler comments on the words in Ephesians that bring us into the household of God. Thomas concludes his encounter with a powerful expression of faith. Friar Jude reminds us that faith requires trust beyond trust.
Fr. Richard Rohr, OFM, tells that during World War II, Jesuit priest Walter Ciszek (1904–1984) was accused of being a “Vatican spy.” After spending five years in a Moscow prison, he was sentenced to fifteen years of hard labor in Siberian prison camps. He is an example of someone whose life has been pared down to the “one thing necessary.”
For what can ultimately trouble the soul that accepts every moment of every day as a gift from the hands of God and strives always to do God’s will? “If God is for us, who can stand against us?” [Romans 8:31]. Nothing, not even death, can separate us from God. . . . Is this too simple, or are we just afraid really to believe it, to accept it fully and in every detail of our lives, to yield ourselves up to it in total commitment? This is the ultimate question of faith, and each one of us must answer it for ourselves in the quiet of our heart and the depths of our soul. But to answer it in the affirmative is to know a peace, to discover a meaning to life, that surpasses all understanding.8
As we claim the blessing of those who have not seen, we meditate on those life events that make Jesus present to us.
References
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