Today’s gospel is one of the most moving in the entire New Testament. It shows us Jesus in the midst of his disciples. You get the impression that he would rather be with them than with any other group. If there is one word that can describe this scene, it is presence, the presence of a particular person, Jesus. But there is also absence and doubt. The presence is when Jesus appears to the ten. Only ten? Yes, Judas has left the group, having betrayed Jesus into the hands of the authorities, and Thomas is absent. When Thomas returns, the ten are excited and joyful and can hardly wait to tell him, “We have seen the Lord!” But not Thomas. Perhaps he is envious that he was not there when Jesus appeared; he may have felt left out. At any rate, he says, “Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands, and put my finger in the mark of the nails and my hand in his side, I will not believe.” Even in Jesus’ hand-picked friends and disciples, not all is perfection.
A week after this appearance, in fact “the second Sunday in Eastertide,” Jesus appears to the eleven (now including Thomas), and he insists that Thomas touch his wounds. As he does so, Thomas addresses Jesus with the strongest and most positive title in the entire Gospel, the name used by the psalmists in addressing God, “my Lord and my God!” Jesus rebukes Thomas for not believing the apostles’ proclamation that he has been raised from the dead, and says something relevant to us: “Blest are those who don’t see yet believe.”
What are we to make of these three examples of light amid the darkness. Simply this–we believe in the rule of the risen Lord, though we often see counter-signs such as poverty, violence, and our own reluctance to trust the preaching. God’s presence is often hidden, but it is very real. And there is one further thing in the Gospel that will help us even more. Jesus breathes on his disciples and says “Peace be with you!” Using the same word for “breathe,” God breathed on Adam in the garden of Eden and brought our first ancestor to life.
Our life is a gift of God, though we often take it for granted. He gives the church the power to forgive sins. In the sixteenth century, the Council of Trent taught that Jesus’s words authorize the sacrament of penance. The sacrament of penance is a gift to the entire church. All of us can practice Jesus’s forgiveness when we forgive others, as the prayer, the Our Father, reminds us. And each of us can be an instrument of peace, as the prayer of St. Francis reminds us. We are represented in this scene by the apostles and through them we have this privilege of bringing God’s breath into our families and the world beyond.