Everything does come to a dead stop, as today’s Gospel tells us. After the death of Jesus, the identity of the disciples and the direction of their lives changes dramatically. Now they are a group of people whose shared fear keeps the company together, and whose only direction in life is to lock themselves into their own no-go area. After the death of Jesus their lives are rooted in fear. They are deeply afraid that they will have to face the same fate as their master.
It is into that desperation that the risen Christ comes. And he comes not to disown his disciples for abandoning him but to reclaim them with his peace. He shows himself to them. The resurrection doesn’t make the marks of cruelty and suffering disappear: the risen Christ is the wounded Christ. He is Jesus who was crucified - the same. In his gift of peace, the disciples experience great joy, and they are commissioned to share that joy when they release others from sin through the power of forgiveness. Again because of Christ, they have a new -found identity and a new direction to their lives. Now they have his Spirit.
But one of their number is missing. Being absent from the community means that Thomas missed meeting the Lord, and when he returns, he cannot bring himself to believe in the disciples’ story. His doubt is that of a man who is committed to the truth. Unlike Judas, he did not betray Jesus; unlike Peter, he did not deny him. There is a sparkling authenticity about Thomas: he refuses to say that he can understand or believe when he can manage neither understanding nor belief. Thomas is brave enough to have the conviction of his doubts, and rather than hoarding his doubts to himself he shares them with the community.
Later, the risen Christ appears again to his disciples and the purpose of the visit is clearly to pay attention to the doubt of Thomas - not to scorn it. Thomas is invited to inspect a wounded Jesus to discover the reality of the resurrection. But seeing Jesus is enough for Thomas, and he is the one who proclaims the basic Christian credo: ‘’My Lord and my God.’’ As Thomas is fearless in voicing his doubts, he is quick to proclaim his faith, and in John’s Gospel it is he who makes the most important affirmation about who Jesus is – that he is Lord and God.
In coming to believe in the risen Jesus the disciples experience a profound change: they become spirited followers of their Lord. They have seen the Lord, they have met him, they have eaten with him. They can testify to others from the authority of their own experience. As John say: ‘’What we have seen and heard we are telling you so that you too may be in union with us, as we are in union with the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ’’ (1 John1:3). The apostles have a unique place in the Church: they experienced Jesus at first hand and were authorized to be his witnesses. And as we heard in the first reading, they led many people to believe in the Lord through the power of their witness.
But what about all those people who never met Jesus or heard him or touched him? And we are numbered among them. Can we believe without seeing the Lord for ourselves? And that is why the story of Thomas is so important, because it tells us that it is possible to believe in Christ without having seen him. ‘’Happy are those who have not seen and yet believe’’ is the teaching of the Gospel. The beatitude is for all of us who live in the absence of the physical Jesus but who believe in him as our Lord. And it is in the Lord that we have our identity as his followers and follow his direction in our lives. Like the apostles, because we believe in him, we know now who we are and what we must do.