Saint Thomas

“Put your finger here and see my hands, 
and bring your hand and put it into my side, 
and do not be unbelieving, but believe.”  
Thomas answered and said to him, 
“My Lord and my God!”

Today's Gospel brings us back to Eastertide. We return to the upper room, the Apostles are huddled together, and this time Thomas is with them. And very quietly Jesus comes in to be with his disciples though the doors are locked. Gloriously risen from the dead he is not boastful or grand but almost shy; the very unpretentiousness of his presence is overwhelming. Jesus is at once wonderfully familiar, tenderly physically present, real flesh and bones and yet totally Other; utterly transcendent and yet forever full of holes. “Come touch me,” he says. “Put your finger, your hand. Believe it.” The wounds confirm Jesus’ living presence; they confirm his identity as God for us. God in Christ, in his divinely resurrected humanity, is revealed as living and real through his vulnerability literally his woundableness. 

Photograph by Brother Brian.