With JESUS’ invitation to Thomas comes the exhortation so often heard as a rebuke:
“Be not unbelieving, but believing!”Consider the wider current of John’s Gospel-
One of the major themes of John’s Gospel is blindness and sight.
If we apply that theme to this dramatic scene,
you will hear JESUS’s tender words with deeper understanding:
‘Do not remain in blindness, but be given sight!’
This resonates- For throughout this Gospel,
JESUS is the One who opens eyes to see for the first time;
He brings men out of the darkness into His Light.
When JESUS reveals to the former blind man that He is the Christ,
He worships Him.
When JESUS shows to the now-present Thomas that He is risen,
He worships Him.So then, in John’s Gospel, the blessing is this: to be blind- to want to be rid of the blindness, and then to be made seeing by JESUS. That is the Easter condition of the Church. When you were blind in Adam’s original guilt from conception, Christ made you to see when you were washed by His Word through the water to which you were sent.
When your mind is shut in from fear or shame or weakness, Christ walks right through the walls to bring you peace. When your heart feels trapped beneath death, Christ shows you that He will burst your tomb as He did His own. When your spirit is wandering off the Narrow Road, Christ breathes His SPIRIT upon you and returns your feet to the Way. For He will not lose a single one whom the FATHER has given Him.
This is an age that prides itself on sight while dealing in profound blindness- many folks stare all day into glowing screens- they do not see the condition of their souls. While through those screens are offered many counterfeit resurrections: Reinvent yourself. Upgrade yourself. Rebrand yourself. It will be revealed on the Day of Resurrection that none of these counted towards those treasures in Heaven we are to store up; none brought forgiveness of sins; none reopened Paradise.
Only enduring faith in the risen JESUS can do that.
And how does He do it now for us who were not in that Upper Room? Through His appointed means. Jesus still gives us His Body marked by the Final Atonement, when He turns our altar into that ‘Upper Room’ & we receive His Holy Supper. It is a different kind of seeing than Thomas had, yes, but it is no less real because it is received through the same faith that Thomas had. The apostles were blessed to see the risen Christ in the manner they did because they were to bear eyewitness testimony to the ends of the earth. They would seal their testimony of the Resurrection with their own blood- except John, who bore the same cross of visions as the great prophets of old. We are appointed to hear and believe their witness, and then to accept His invitation to His Table. St. Paul calls it ‘The Mega-Mystery’, which comes down into our English language as ‘The Sacrament of the Altar’- “And all who participate in the Sacrament proclaim His death until He comes.” When we proclaim His Passion & Resurrection within our house and to extended families, to each other when we gather together, and to our neighbors through the ministries we are part of or our work: This is our cross to bear, and none of these faithful labors are wasted in the sight of Heaven.