Jn 20:19-31
The individual characters in the Gospel of John are strikingly well-drawn, rounded figures. We get to know them as people, and we can easily identify with them. Most of them are familiar to us through the synoptic gospels (Mark, Matthew, and Luke), suggesting that they were real people with whom Jesus associated during his public ministry. Because the Fourth Evangelist focuses on their identity and intensifies it, they become unforgettable characters.
One such figure is Thomas (also called Didymus or Twin). In the synoptic gospels, he is a mere name in the list of the Twelve (apostles). But in John, he is especially involved in the drama of Christ’s resurrection appearance which has gained him a moniker: “Doubting Thomas.”
Thomas appears in three scenes in John. He is first mentioned in the story of Lazarus. When Jesus insists on returning to Judea, Thomas says, “Let us also go to die with him” (Jn 11:16). At the last supper, Thomas asks Jesus, “Master, we do not know where you are going; how can we know the way?” (Jn 14:5). The last scene is the Gospel reading for today.
The story of Thomas is one of movement from skepticism to faith. At first, he does not believe that Jesus rose from the dead. Although he has accompanied Jesus to Bethany and has witnessed how Jesus raised to life the dead Lazarus, this has not created in him any readiness to believe in Jesus’ resurrection. Only after Jesus had spoken to him directly and addressed his doubts in a very personal way does Thomas “surrender” and exclaim, “My Lord and my God!” Jesus then addresses Tomas and, through him, the Christians of later generations: “You have come to believe because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and have believed.” The future disciples must accept a new type of relationship with Jesus: a post-glorification discipleship. It is a believing without seeing the historical signs of the earthly Jesus but relying on the testimony of the believing community, now incarnated in the very text of the Gospel of John. The Gospel was precisely written “that you may come to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and through this belief you may have life in his name” (v 31).
In the encounter between the risen Jesus and the doubting disciple, heart speaks to heart. Jesus invites Thomas to touch the marks of the nails in his body and of the soldier’s lance in his side (heart). Jesus, as it were, speaks from his wounded heart, a heart full of love, a heart from which life-giving graces now flow. Jesus invites Thomas to “heal” his heart by believing, and in the process, heal Jesus’ own heart, too. Both hearts have been wounded during Jesus’ Passion. Both can now become “wounded healers.” In the case of Doubting Thomas, his story is “healing” with its assurance that if we believe that Jesus is alive among us—even without seeing him—then we are living a life that is nourished by the spring of salvation: “Rivers of living water will flow from within him (from his heart)” (Jn 8:38).