Written in the Wounds

For all the condemnation Thomas the Doubter has received in 2000 years of homilies, I think there’s something to admire in him.

Thomas is not unique. We all waver at some point, overcome by hesitation, distracted by the clamor of the world which seeks at every turn to shout above the whisper of the divine.

Thomas knows what he saw on Good Friday: his friend nailed to a cross, a sword driven through his body. He saw the blood and the water. He saw these things with his own eyes, eyes given to him by God, eyes which have never failed him before. And God doesn’t ask us to suspend reality to believe in Him. He only asks us to be discerning about how that reality is interpreted in our hearts.

Thomas knows the man before him is either a fraud, preying on the hopes and anxieties of the traumatized disciples, or he is the Christ, the Savior of the world, accomplisher of impossible things. But where to look, to tell the difference?

Satan once appeared to the great mystic saint, Teresa of Avila, disguised as Jesus. She knew instantly that he was a fraud. Enraged, he demanded to know where his deception had failed. “You have no wounds,” she told him simply.

Could we have accepted a savior who did not bleed? I don’t think we could, because sooner or later, we would all stand before him and say, “Here is where the world hurt me. Here, and here, and here. What about you?” Christ can point to his hands, his feet, his side. “Here, and here, and here,” he can say. “And I overcame them all.”

It’s the wounds, you see. The truth is in the wounds.

Thomas answered and said to him, “My Lord and my God!” — John 20:28

©LPi