Our Gospel today is a shorter version of the Gospel for the Second Sunday of Easter. It’s the passage that gives Thomas the title “Doubting.” Part of the point of this passage from the end of Saint John’s Gospel is that not seeing is believing.
While Jesus invites Thomas, who doubted the testimony of his fellow disciples, to “put” his finger in the wound of his hand and to “put” his hand into his side, the account does not tell us whether he did so. Our natural assumption, based on what he said to the others beforehand, is that he did. But it would be in keeping with the overall theme of not seeing is believing if he did not.
One thing is clear, as Thomas, even if unintentionally, indicates: the Risen Lord is recognizable by his wounds. Yet, this is not perhaps our expectation. Before we dismiss him too quickly as a doubter, let’s not forget that elsewhere in John’s Gospel, when Jesus sets out for Judah, where he was in danger of being put to death, to visit the grieving sisters of his friend Lazarus who had died, it was Thomas who said to his fellow disciples, "Let us also go to die with him" (John 11:16).
When paired with his “doubt” about Jesus being risen, perhaps it’s better to say that while Thomas knew what it was to die with Christ, like what was written about Peter and John after they experienced the empty in our Gospel from John’s Gospel on Easter Sunday, he “did not yet understand the Scripture that he had to rise from the dead” (John 20:9).
There is a connection between this grasping that not seeing is believing. During the Last Supper Discourse, also in the Gospel According to Saint John, Jesus tells those at table with him, “For if I do not go, the Advocate will not come to you. But if I go, I will send him to you” (John 16:7). If we keep in mind that the Holy Spirit is the way Christ remains present not just to us in some inchoate way, but remains present among, in, and through us until Christ returns, things become clearer.
Thomas the Apostle on his Apostolic throne
Truly, the mystery of life in Christ, as the Eucharist amply shows, is that Christ can live in you. If Christ did not go and send the Spirit, there could be no Eucharist. In this way, Christ can come to be in you in a profound way, in a way like no other. This is even better than if Jesus were standing right next to you. After all, you cannot see inside yourself, at least not with physical eyes.
Understanding “the Scripture that Jesus had to rise from the dead,” is an experience, a life-changing encounter.
In our Gospel yesterday, Jesus taught the importance of recognizing that it is only by taking up the cross that someone can really be his disciple. But it takes a life-changing encounter, a profound experience, to take up this not so tempting invitation. His encounter with the risen Lord clearly was a life-changing experience for Thomas.
It is a very strong and ancient tradition that Thomas subsequently took the Gospel to India. Our Syro-Malabar sisters and brothers are the Church he founded there. With its primatial see in Kerala, the Syro-Malabar Church is a sui iuris (meaning one of a kind and autonomous) particular church in full communion with the Bishop of Rome.
While tradition is unanimous that Thomas spread the Gospel to India, today is not necessarily an observance of the day of his martyrdom. It depends on which tradition concerning his death you believe. For us Latins, we take 3 July AD 72 to be the date he was killed by a spear on Mount Chennai in India. On this account, his body was interred in Mylapore, India with his relics later making their way to Italy. But the deacon, theologian, and poet, Ephrem the Syrian, states that the Apostle was killed in India and that his relics were taken to Edessa, then a very Christian city which is now in the eastern part of modern Turkey.
Either way, like Peter, like Paul, like James, like most of the original twelve, Thomas became a martyr, that is, a witness to Christ’s resurrection. Paradoxically, it was likely through his martyrdom that he experienced not only dying with Christ but knowing what it means to rise with him. He experienced the truth of the central paradox of our Christian faith: that you lose your life by trying to gain it and you gain your life by losing it for the Lord’s sake.
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