Day 50 - Wednesday, April 12
Title: MY LORD AND GOD!
Scripture: John 20:24–29
But one of the twelve, Thomas (called the Twin), was not with them when Jesus came. The other disciples kept on telling him, “We have seen the Lord”, but he replied, “Unless I see in his own hands the mark of the nails, and put my finger where the nails were, and put my hand into his side, I will never believe!”

Just over a week later, the disciples were indoors again and Thomas was with them. The doors were shut, but Jesus came and stood in the middle of them and said, “Peace be with you!”

Then he said to Thomas, “Put your fingers here—look, here are my hands. Take my hand and put it in my side. You must not doubt, but believe.”

“My Lord and my God!” cried Thomas.

“Is it because you have seen me that you believe?” Jesus said to him. “Happy are those who have never seen me and yet have believed!”

Poetry & Poet: 
“At the Ruined Monastery in Amalfi”
by Jay Parini

On a hill, approaching Easter,
well above the sea’s bland repetitions
of the same old story
and the town’s impenitent composure,
I survey old grounds.

The fire-winged gulls ungulf the tower.
Lesser grackles, nuns and tourists,
scatter on the grass.

The brandy-colored light of the afternoon
seeps through the stonework;
creeping flowers buzz and flutter
in the limestone cracks.

Wisteria-chocked loggias drip with sun.

A honeycomb of cells absorbs the absence
it has learned to savor;
court and cloister close on silence,
the auroral prayers long since burned off
like morning fog.

The business of eternity goes on behind our
backs.

In the chapel dark,
I’m trying to make out a worn inscription
on a wind-smudged altar,
but the Latin hieroglyphs have lost their
edge. 

Remember me, Signore, 
who has not yet learned to read your hand,
its alphabet of buzz and drip and flutter.

PROOF OF LIFE

Silence. Loneliness. The doubts gnawed at my mind, paralyzing me, impeding even my ability to converse normally with others. And it was hard because I really did love Christ. My life was oriented around his, entwined in his, entangled even. Mine were not the doubts of the detached Enlightenment rationalist, but the doubts of a lover. What if I had to break up with him? The pain was unbearable.

Indeed, I think that’s what so many of us miss when interpreting Thomas. Thomas is not an empirical skeptic, but rather a broken-hearted lover. He is not simply saying, “Unless I have scientific evidence, I will not assent to this in my brain.” Rather, he is saying, “He broke my heart! I believed in him, even to the point of death. And now he is dead and hope is gone. And you expect me to believe after that? After he has drawn from me every ounce of love I can offer and shattered it in the shattering of his heart? No––unless I can encounter intimacy with Christ – a living encounter with those very wounds that were the death of me-in-him––I will not, cannot believe.”

Christ’s answer is beautiful. He allows Thomas to encounter the intimacy of his body in exactly those places that most caused his doubt. The passion of the moment is nicely captured in the red gashes in Pascal Lamb by Robert Besana. And the yellow symbolizing hope is not artificial or plastic, but spotted and gritty, indicating earthy closeness.         

But there is more. As celebrated in the song “Christ is Risen Indeed!” Christ implies that, while Thomas is blessed, we are even more blessed who have not seen and who yet believe. And his observation has been proven correct; we are indeed blessed with even more than Thomas. We are given personal encounters with Christ through his spirit. We can taste his body and blood in the bread and wine. And the wounds of those around us are the very wounds of Christ. “Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren…”         

Furthermore, Thomas’s narrative is also true of Christ’s mystical body, the Church. The ancient, derelict building in poet Jay Parini’s “At the Ruined Monastery in Amalfi” arguably represents the difficulty of Christianity’s historical instantiation: how can historical institutions with all their corruptibility and imperfections also somehow be vessels of life? Can such cracked detritus really be part of resurrection? Can these bones live? And we are tempted to say with Thomas, “Unless I put my fingers in the holes in his hands and side…” But when we do, we notice something: life amidst the ruins. Somehow, by fixing our gaze directly on those places where things seem to be crumbling, we see resurrection springing forth. “Creeping flowers buzz and flutter/in the limestone cracks.” And yes, it takes a particular kind of faith to see this, and it is indeed for such faith that we pray with the poet: “Remember me, signore.”

Prayer:
Remember us, Lord Jesus Christ. As you ministered to Thomas, heartbroken and in need of your intimate touch, may you minister to us who reach out amidst darkness to discover proof of your life through the wounds in your hands, feet, and sides. We ask this in your name, O Christ, who lives and reigns with the Father and the Holy Spirit, one God, forever and ever.
Amen.

Dr. Karl Persson 
Assistant Professor of Literature 
Chair of the Literature Department 
Our Lady Seat of Wisdom College 
Barry’s Bay, Ontario, Canada

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