On the Second Sunday of Easter of the Jubilee Year 2000, at the Mass for the canonization of St. Faustina Kowalska, Pope John Paul II proclaimed to the world that “from now on throughout the Church this Sunday will be called Divine Mercy Sunday.” What a wonderful message we have today of God’s love and mercy for us as we celebrate the risen Christ during the Easter season. By linking the revealed truth about God’s mercy to one of the most solemn Sundays after Easter, Pope John Paul II gave light to the way that our liturgies already proclaim Christ’s divine mercy. This echoes what we hear in the first verse in the psalm today: “His mercy endures forever.”
We can see God’s love and mercy at work in the lives of Christ’s disciples in the Gospel today. The disciples were huddled together behind a locked door that evening when Jesus miraculously appeared to them, wishing them peace. A few years ago, in the midst of the pandemic, we literally found ourselves behind locked doors ourselves, when social distancing and stay-at-home orders dictating our lives and we were not able to come to our Holy Week liturgies. There may also be times when we feel our faith has been locked behind a door, feeling constricted in the way we normally live out our faith. With all this in mind, perhaps we can very much relate to what Thomas and the other disciples are going through today.
In a lot of ways Thomas has gotten a bad rap in the way most Christians view him. We label him “Doubting Thomas” in a negative way, although that name is never officially given to him in Scripture. As I thought about Thomas this week while working on my homily, I thought about the different styles we can have in learning, of our different personalities, of the different ways we human beings can interact with the world and with our faith. I remember when I taught Spanish at Greenville Weston High School for 4 years in the Mississippi Delta from 2000 to 2004, our motto one year as teachers was this: If my students don’t learn the way I teach, then I change the way I teach. A good motto to have, especially when most of my students in the Delta probably did not learn in the same way that I did when I was in high school. In fact, I remember one of the first things I did with my students the first week of the school year was to take a learning styles inventory with them, and then the way I tried to teach throughout the school year related to those particular learning styles of my students. It was interesting and not too surprising to me that rather than learning best by listening to a lecture or reading a book, most of them were kinetic or tactile learners, where the students learned best by doing or touching or performing an activity. I see Thomas as a tactile and kinetic learner as well. He has to have a physical touch, an activity that shows him that he can indeed believe.
In the Gospel, Thomas is said to be also known as Didymus – the Twin. It doesn’t use the specific name “Doubter” at all. In fact, a lot of Christians feel shame when the reality of their lives in a given moment is characterized by a lot of questions in their faith, when they aren’t sure any more about some of those things they had previously accepted by faith, when they are have trouble understanding or accepting some of the things that the Church teaches. Rather than saying that Thomas is a doubter and labeling him in a negative way, we could say that Thomas is a realist. In fact, doubt is not the opposite of faith as it is sometimes labeled. To doubt sometimes, to ask questions, to search, to wonder, and to seek – those are all ingredients of a vibrant, alive faith, a faith that is in motion. It’s healthy to be a realist like Thomas. We are all called to bring the reality of our lives to our faith, to be honest with God with the ways we not only try to put our trust in him and have confidence in him, but also to bring our skepticism, our uncertainty, and our unbelief to him. Thomas the Apostle was honest with Jesus. Thomas wants to believe. In turn, Jesus invited Thomas to reach out and touch him.
Reflecting upon Thomas the apostle today and about the divine mercy of Jesus made me think of a prayer by Thomas Merton. I have gone back to this prayer again and again on my journey of faith. This prayer expresses some thoughts about how we might sometimes feel on our journey of faith in light of this Gospel about Jesus appearance to Thomas and the other disciples:
My Lord God, I have no idea where I am going.I do not see the road ahead of me. Nor do I really know myself. And the fact that I think I am following your will does not mean that I am actually doing so.
But I believe that the desire to please you does in fact please you.
And I hope that I will never do anything apart from that desire. And I know that if I do this, You will lead me by the right road Though I may know nothing about it.
Therefore I will trust you always though I may seem to be lost and in the shadow of death I will not fear for you are ever with me. AMEN.
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