This Sunday is special for the Parish but not because it is Mercy Sunday. In the first reading you hear the echo of what we have been trying to flesh out in the last two years. About two years ago, at the soft launch of the Jubilee Year, we chose Acts 2:42 for our theme: The whole community remained faithful to the teaching of the Apostles, to the brotherhood, to the breaking of bread and to the prayers. This Sunday could have been the culmination of our Jubilee celebration.Today is also dedicated to St. Thomas who is forever stigmatised as the Doubter. What is Thomas’ connexion to the first reading? In particular, how is he relevant to our Jubilee celebration?
Or, is he merely the once-a-year lecture we deserve to get for our lack of faith?
Calling him “Doubting Thomas” has been the tradition since the beginning of the Church. The Gospel seemed to be a convenient record of his lack of faith. But, ask where Thomas was when Christ appeared? A good question, no? Why was he not present? Someone speculated that he went out to buy bread because the others were too chickened out to do anything. But, could his absence be a commentary of the state of the brotherhood/community and the relationships found therein?
Note the contrast between the first reading and the Gospel.
The first reading describes the epitome or the quintessence of how Christians are supposed to be. It paints a picture of the perfect community. In our post-Easter celebration, this image is presented to us as an ideal to emulate or imitate.
Unfortunately, we breathe the less rarefied air of the Gospel. It is closer to our reality—our experience of community is often less than perfect. In a sense, Thomas’ doubt was not with Christ’s Resurrection. Thomas did not doubt the Resurrection as much as he doubted Christ’s ability to work through imperfection. How could he believe the testimony of this group of weaklings; men cowering behind closed doors and chief amongst them, a man who denied Christ three times? Could Christ be present through such a leadership and would Christ want to be present in such a community?
So, Thomas could have abandoned the brotherhood out of despair. His experience may mirror some of ours. In fact, towards our brothers and sisters we often express a lack of faith. We find it harder to believe people we know “too” well—precisely the phenomenon that Christ Himself faced: “A prophet is not accepted in his own country” or as Nathaniel under the fig tree said: “What good can come from Nazareth”?
In the post-Resurrection narrative, Thomas is pivotal to balancing the tension between an ideal to achieve and the reality we struggle with. Thus, his return one week later is decisive in our desire to live out an essential aspect of our Jubilee theme, namely, of brotherhood.
The Gospel tells us that there were two apparitions and a week separated the two events. Could Christ not have shown Himself to Thomas personally within the week? He could have but He did not. Instead, He waited for Thomas to find a way home to the brotherhood.
What can we learn from this “returning” within the context of our Jubilee celebration?
Firstly, the brotherhood, in other words, the BEC/community, the parish and the Church, is the locus where the Risen Christ is to be encountered. The brotherhood was central to Christ’s Resurrection apparition and it still is. In the context of the brotherhood, the disparity between what we accept to be the ideal with what we experience to be the reality results in a bewilderment exemplified in this question: “How can he behave like that?” This leads us to the second point.
We often labour under the mistaken notion that knowledge is virtue. How many relationships have been broken because we expect knowledge to be translated into action? I have witnessed this especially in marriages. Couples sink into despair from this failure of expectation. The truth remains that knowing is frequently not translated into appropriate behaviour. A good example took place right last week after the announcement about the uncharitable driver. A car still attempted to run David down as he was trying to direct traffic. Translate this knowledge-virtue divide into the political arena and you understand why this country is choking in cynicism. The point is: Conversion from knowledge to virtue is a lifelong process. For us Catholics, as long as there is conversion, there is always Confession.
Thirdly, ex opera operato is an important principle to remember when we deal with the painful reality of sinfulness in the brotherhood. Christ’s power works independently of the “sanctity” of the minister. That is the basis for saying that Christ is truly present in the Eucharist or how sins are truly forgiven at Confession and Anointing even when the minister celebrating these sacraments is unworthy. This power of the Risen Christ cannot be constrained or restrained by human frailty and He is infinitely more powerful than we dare trust Him to be.
But, like the recently concluded wedding of the decade, we want things to be “perfect”, which in itself, is not a bad thing because the desire for perfection is a subset of the quest for excellence. Couples want their marriage to be perfect. We desire that [perfection] of our family, our friends, our community, our parish, our priests and our Bishops too, do we not? In the context of Thomas’ doubt, this desire for perfection is not a reflexion of the drive for excellence but rather it is symptomatic of a lack of belief. Why? Our drive for perfection is fuelled by this assumption: If perfection is not accomplished here and now, it may never be. That is a subtle denial of the Resurrection.
Perhaps, you appreciate how Thomas’ return to the brotherhood is essential to the encounter with the Risen Christ because Christ the Head, is never far from His Body, the Church; Christ the Bridegroom, is never separated from His Bride, the Church. In fact, the words spoken by the Risen Christ on the first day and one week later point in the direction of the brotherhood because the brotherhood is a sacramental witness of Christ’s presence in the world. He greeted them twice with the Jewish greeting of peace and ultimately that peace is linked to the Beatitudes. We always think of the Beatitudes in terms of the Sermon on the Mount or the Plains depending on which Gospel you read but here Christ proclaims: Blessed are those who do not see but believe.
In our run-up to the Jubilee celebration on 3rd Dec, St Thomas’ return to the brotherhood is relevant because it was to him in the brotherhood that Christ proclaimed the Beatitudes. May our blessedness be the grace to see, to accept and to love the Risen Lord in the brokenness and the sinfulness and imperfection of our brotherhood, family, BEC and the Church.
