Canon Pat Browne: Thomas - a voice from our own age too

Canon Pat Browne

When the kids in school cannot remember much about the characters in the Bible, the one they most often DO remember is Thomas. They just love the goriness of Thomas sticking his fingers in Jesus' wounded hands!

But let's look at Thomas. His voice is very much a voice from our own age too. People around us are sceptical as never before. They want to put God under the microscope and to be convinced, as if God could be shrunk into our powers of understanding. Of course, it can never be so. If it could he wouldn't be God.

But look at what Christ does. He shows his wounds to Thomas. Christ does not overwhelm Thomas with a display of power or a miracle. No, he shows the marks of suffering. Christ does not win him over by power, but by patient love.

To have faith does not mean that we do not have questions. In fact, I would say that faith and questions go together. We look on the pain of the world, and we ask sometimes, where is God? Perhaps we are asking the wrong question here.eSometimes as we look at how human beings treat one another we should be asking, not where is God, but where is humanity? How have we who are so capable of heroic loving; how have we forgotten, kindness, compassion, love? It is not God that has lost it. It is us. And the more we lose God, the more we lose the capacity for patient loving.

So Jesus does not rebuke the doubt of Thomas. He speaks to Thomas's questions. Come on Thomas, put your hands here… Doubt no longer but believe. Questions have their place, but there comes a time when we must make a decision. To get off the fence.

Some people today wanting instant answers to everything will walk away because they do not immediately understand. That is too lazy, too easy, and we sell ourselves short when we do this. Stay with the mystery.

And sitting on the fence, which is what we call today agnosticism, is not an option either. That's like the man who won't marry her because he is not sure - but yet he won't give her up either. This unwillingness to commit drags everyone down and leaves for a half-baked relationship, whether that is with the partner I could have or with God himself. It is only half-loving and that is not loving at all!

Thomas, could have continued doubting and could have asked for more proof, for proof, in fact, that this was not a hallucination. Instead he chooses: he goes on his knees before the mystery. "My Lord and my God" . These are his words.

This is Easter - the feast of the Resurrection. Either Jesus rose from the dead and so is God. Or he didn't. If he didn't, St Paul himself tells us if he didn't then we are the most foolish of all people.

But if he did. Then he is someone who merits not only our respect and attention but an answer to his invitation. "Come follow me and have life to the full.

On those Easter days, the apostles and the holy women did not see a ghost of Jesus. They saw him in the flesh, but in a different flesh, as the daffodil is different from the bulb which was originally planted in the ground - the same flower, a different body. In thinking about these things we touch on the mystery of the human body, not just Jesus' body but our own as well,

As we grow older, nothing in our faith makes more sense than the Passion and the Resurrection, the certainty that our bodies, like Jesus', must suffer and die, and the certainty that we, in our glorified bodies, have a life beyond death.

We are an Easter people as Christians. Did you know that the only feast the first Christians celebrated was not Christmas, not a feast of our Lady, not the feast of the Trinity - every Sunday was the Feast of the Resurrection. The Lord is risen and is with us.

Jesus is telling us and showing us, we are going to live forever. Life is not just about the few years you've got here. You are made for God and this time here is the journey you are making towards him. Real life begins when this one ends.

That is what these appearances of Jesus to Thomas and the others, are all about. So Jesus says to us today as he says to Thomas:

"Doubt no longer, but believe."

Canon Pat Browne in Parish Priest at Holy Apostles, Pimlico, and Roman Catholic Duty Priest to the Houses of Parliament.
Visit Holy Apostles website with links to webcam recordings of services: www.holyapostlespimlico.org/