27 April 2025, Easter 2: Acts 5:27-32, Revelation 1:4-8 and John 20:19-end
Yesterday morning, Cardinal Giovani Battista Re (the Dean of the College of Cardinals) preached a homily which reflected on the way in which Pope Francis showed warmth and sensitivity in the face of today’s challenges. He shared our anxieties and our hopes, reminding us that the joyful heart of the gospel is God’s mercy.
Such mercy which means God never tires of forgiving us, healing our wounds. For Pope Francis, the church was to be a ‘home for all, a home with its doors always open’.
How do we get to that place? How do we get to a place of healing and openness, of mercy and joy? For Pope Francis, Thomas is our guide.
St Thomas - stock image
Three years ago, in a short address, he said that Thomas ‘represents all of us’ because he was not present the first time the risen Lord Jesus appeared to the apostles.
He is one who shares our struggles. How do we believe without having seen him? How do we know Christ’s presence and love without having touched him?
Thomas shares our reasoning, doubts and questions; our longing for relationship with the risen Lord. Thankfully, Pope Francis reminds us that God is not looking for perfect Christians!
Today’s gospel allows us to be honest about wounds and questions. It begins with the reminder that Jesus’ risen body is still wounded. The wounds witness to pain and to loss, to the traumas inflicted on mind and body; to the traces of relational hurt and suffering.
Wounds do not heal instantly. They become scars over time - we see the outer transformation. The deep tissue healing - that takes longer. The knitting together of fibres and growth of new cells is sometimes felt, always unseen.
The medical term for such deep healing is ‘granulation’. A term my late supervisor picked up during his treatment for cancer - and creatively re-deployed to describe the time and patience needed for healing to occur.
Healing of past hurts or regrets; of challenging relationships. Healing in how we live differently in relation to grief or chronic illness. Healing in our communities - the life long work of bridge building.
In Jesus we see the wounded God whose wounds are healing ours.
He is present with us - in the tender heart of things; the places where we still wince at the touch. This is real presence in the wounds, the pain; presence in the granular healing, in the deep tissues of our fear and confusion, in our hurt, yes; but also in the experience of mercy, in the depths where joy might begin to emerge; in the depths of our lungs as peace is exhaled.
We are embodied people. So was our Jesus in his life, death and resurrection.
Our bodies tell something of our stories: scars of childhood and of surgery; of first loves and lasting griefs; of challenges faced and moments of happiness; successes, failures and everything in-between.
Jesus’ body tells a story too: the one who was and is and is to come dwelt with us; a story of solidarity and encounter; of love and mercy; of forgiveness and peace; of wounds that heal.
If God does not seek perfect Christians but wounded, healing ones then Pope Francis is right. Thomas stands for us.
He says: 'the adventure of faith, as for Thomas, consists of lights and shadows. Otherwise, what kind of faith would that be? It knows times of comfort, zeal and enthusiasm, but also of weariness, confusion, doubt and darkness.’
He highlights the way Thomas teaches us that we should not fear the moment of crisis: they are part of the story.
The crisis he experienced is not hard for us to imagine. We live with FOMO - the fear of missing out. Thomas may have felt that acutely - his closest friends had encountered the real presence and peace of their risen friend and Lord.
He wasn’t there. It wasn’t enough for him to have their account of what happened - however detailed, emotional and vivid. If you weren’t there as the applause erupts or as an infant takes a first breath; if you weren’t there for that shared joke or that parting word, we do feel as if we have missed out.
It’s not something to write off as weakness or stubbornness or a lack of trust.
It is an expression of our yearning for encounter; to hope in the face of uncertainty.
If Thomas stands for all of us, we can take courage from him - from his witness - as one who recognised his Lord in woundedness. As one whose own wounds were healed by a wounded Lord.
Thomas knew his need. He was not ashamed to express it - his crisis of missing out was part of his journey. Such moments, as Pope Francis put it, ‘rekindle the need for God and thus enable us to return to the Lord, to touch his wounds, to experience his love anew as if it were the first time.’
Our need exposes our humility. It strips us of our pride.
That week of waiting must have felt very long for Thomas. Waiting without knowing if or when he would encounter Jesus.
Did he think his fellow disciples were suffering from grief-induced delusion? Did he find hope in the murmurings of peace?
Jesus knows these moments of crisis and vulnerability. And as the gospel reminds us he does come back. Pope Francis says ‘he always comes back: When doors are closed, he comes back; when we are in doubt, he comes back; when, like Thomas, we need to encounter him and to touch him up close, he comes back.’
And this moment of return is the moment of Thomas’s recalling. He went - legend has it to Kerala - he witnessed to others of the one who was his wounded and risen Lord.
Perhaps, with a pastoral tenderness born of his experience, he was able to speak peace to others; to speak of mercy and joy. Perhaps breathing those words - softly, urgently - ‘blessed are those who have not seen, and yet believe.’
Perhaps he is the one who not only represents us, but bears witness to us, so that we can live out the good news of resurrection life.
Perhaps it is in this place of woundedness that healing happens: at a granular level life begins, faith blossoms; a new future in community is made possible.
As David Ford puts it: ‘Here the breathing in of life is inseparable from the words of peace, sending, receiving and forgiveness.’
When John writes of forgiveness and what is retained, he is reminding us of Jesus’ promise to hold us fast. In all our woundedness and capacity to wound others, we are held fast. Jesus holds on to us in that - loving as God desires us. Forgiveness is tied to such an embrace.
Peter went on to speak of what it is to bear witness to the resurrection and forgiveness, to repentance and obedience. As part of a fragile and fallible community of friends, we are invited to love and serve - breathing in and breathing out the Spirit of peace.
Revelation reminds us that we are loved and set free from sin. We are made a kingdom - a people of solidarity and encounter, serving God and our neighbours, drawing the margins into the centre of our life.
Thomas is the one who asks the awkward questions - who stands for us in seeking faith and love, worship and embrace. As we break bread together, we relearn mercy which means God never tires of forgiving us, healing our wounds. May we embody those gifts in the local, in the unseen and granular, so that this church might be: a ‘home for all, a home with its doors always open’.
