The Easter of Thomas
Year A – Easter – 2nd Sunday
John 20:19–31: “My Lord and my God!”
Today, the second Sunday of Easter, we celebrate… the “Easter of Saint Thomas”, the apostle who was absent from the apostolic community last Sunday!
The Sunday following Easter was called “in albis”, because the newly baptised laid aside the white garment (in albis) worn after baptism during the Easter Vigil. Today it is known as Divine Mercy Sunday, a title introduced by John Paul II on 30 April 2000, the day of the canonisation of Saint Faustina Kowalska. In the 1930s, this Polish nun received revelations in which Jesus asked that trust in God’s mercy be spread and that a special feast be dedicated precisely to the Sunday after Easter.
The Gospel offers us several points for reflection, but let us focus on the figure of Thomas.
Thomas, our twin
His name means “double” or “twin”. Thomas holds a prominent place among the apostles. Perhaps for this reason the Acts of Thomas and the Gospel of Thomas were attributed to him, apocryphal texts from the 2nd–3rd centuries, not part of the biblical canon, but “important for the study of Christian origins” (Benedict XVI, 27.9.2006).
We would like to know whose twin Thomas is. Some scholars suggest it could be Nathanael (Bartholomew). Indeed, this final profession of faith in the Gospel of Saint John, made by Thomas, corresponds to the first, made by Nathanael at the beginning of his Gospel (1:45–51). Moreover, their character and behaviour show certain similarities. Finally, the two names appear relatively close in the list of the Twelve (see Matthew 10:3; Acts 1:13; and also John 21:2).
This uncertainty allows us to say that Thomas is “the twin of each one of us” (Don Tonino Bello). Thomas comforts us in our doubts as believers. In him we see ourselves reflected and, through his eyes and his hands, we too “see” and “touch” the body of the Risen One. An interpretation that has its charm.
Thomas, a “double”?
In the Bible, the most famous pair of twins is Esau and Jacob (Genesis 25:24–28), eternal antagonists, expressing the dichotomy and polarity of the human condition. Could it be that Thomas (the “double”) carries within himself the antagonism of this duality?
Thomas is capable of acts of great generosity and courage, as when he says: “Let us also go, that we may die with him!”, after Jesus decides to go to Judea to raise Lazarus (John 11:16). Yet at other times he appears incredulous and stubborn, as we see in today’s Gospel passage, refusing to believe the testimony of his companions who had seen the Lord. Thomas, the generous disciple, carries within him his “twin”, incredulous and obstinate. However, when confronted with the risen Christ, he makes the highest profession of faith.
Thomas is an image of all of us. We too carry within us this “twin”, inflexible and a staunch defender of his own ideas, rebellious and capricious in his attitudes. These two realities or “creatures” (the old and the new Adam) coexist uneasily, in tension, sometimes in open conflict, within our hearts. All of us have experienced the suffering of this inner division.
Yet Thomas has the courage to face this reality. He allows his darker, opposing and unbelieving side to emerge and brings it into confrontation with Jesus. He accepts the challenge posed by his rebellious inner self, which demands to see and to touch. He brings it to Jesus and, faced with the evidence, the “miracle” happens: the two Thomases become one and proclaim the same faith: “My Lord and my God!”
Unfortunately, this is not what often happens with us. Our Christian communities are frequently attended by the “good twins”, compliant but also… passive and lifeless. The fact is that we are not there, during the Eucharistic celebration, in our full entirety. The energetic, instinctive part, the so-called other twin — the one who most needs to be evangelised — does not appear at the encounter with the Lord.
Jesus said that he came for sinners, yet our churches sometimes seem to be frequented rather by the “righteous”, who… do not feel the need to be converted! We are present at the Eucharist, but perhaps out of habit, without real and deep involvement. The one who ought to be converted — our dimension of unbelief or unfaithfulness, that is, our sinful twin — we quietly leave at home. It is Sunday and he takes the opportunity to “rest”, entrusting the day to the “good twin”. On Monday, then, the twin of instincts and passions will be in full form to take command again.
Jesus in search of Thomas
If only Jesus had many Thomases! In the Sunday celebration, it is above all them whom the Lord comes seeking. They will be his twins! God seeks real men and women, who relate to him as they are: sinners who experience in their own flesh the tyranny of instincts. Believers who are not ashamed to appear with this unbelieving and grace-resistant part, but who come to meet the Physician of Divine Mercy and to be healed. It is of these that Jesus makes himself a brother!
The world needs the witness of honest believers, capable of recognising their own errors, doubts and difficulties, and who do not hide their “duplicity” behind a façade of pharisaical respectability. Evangelisation today requires Christians who are authentic persons, not “stiff-necked”, who look squarely at the reality of suffering and who touch with their own hands the wounds of today’s crucified.
In summary, Thomas invites us to reconcile our duplicity in order to live Easter authentically. This involves becoming aware of the division that often dwells within us and, with the help of grace, striving to unify our believing heart. This requires that, at the Sunday Eucharist, our whole person truly be present.
This is what Jesus expresses, in symbolic form, in the apocryphal Gospel of Thomas (nos. 22 and 27): “When you make the two one, when the inside is like the outside and the outside like the inside, and the above like the below, and when you make the male and the female into a single reality (…) then you will enter the Kingdom.”
P. Manuel João Pereira Correia, mccj
Fr. Manuel João, comboni missionary
Sunday Reflection
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