HOMILY FOR 2ND SUNDAY OF EASTER YEAR C (2)

THEME: LIVE THE EASTER EXPERIENCE

BY: Fr. Jude Chijioke

HOMILY FOR SUNDAY APRIL 24 2022

Readings: Acts 5:12-16; Rev. 1:9-11a, 12-13, 17-19; Jn 20:19-31

Our liturgy today invites us to live the Easter experience told in the chapter 20: 19-31 of John’s Gospel and leads us to retrace the route to authentic faith taken by the first disciples. “My Lord and my God,” is Thomas’ response to the invitation of Jesus: “Put your finger here and see my hands and bring your hand and put it into my side, and do not be unbelieving, but believe.” At the decision of Thomas who did not believe the testimony of the Twelve unless he sees and touches the mark of the nails, we see the corresponding initiative of Jesus who personally addresses his disciple. Thomas, while conditioning his faith to the vision of the marks of the nails, Jesus opens a dialogue in which those marks and reality to be read, are intertwined. Jesus says to Thomas: put your finger here, stretch out your hand… put your hand in my side. In reality, Jesus asks Thomas not to “expect” a sign to believe, but to be able to see and touch the signs which “had already been given”, his hands and his side, his humanity. Throughout the Gospel, John showed that there are no signs to believe, but whoever believes sees the signs. Thomas understood what the author of the prologue says of the Divine Logos who became “flesh”: “No one has ever seen God: The Only Begotten Son, who is God and is in the bosom of the Father, is He who has him revealed (John 1:18).” The Son who assumed flesh revealed to us that God is an infinite mystery of love and mercy: now Thomas has looked at those hands, empty of everything to be able, only to give, and has put his hands in his side, which has become the source of life and mercy, Thomas can no longer be afraid of a God, awful judge, because he met a God who is only Love and Mercy, who wants to make every man and woman a beneficial of Divine Mercy.
Thomas has now moved all the way to becoming a believer and a witness of faith. For some reasons he had once conditioned faith to a sensitive experience, but this is also significant in the itinerary of faith. Doubting is not against faith but prevents us from exchanging faith with religious exaltations or psychological hallucination. But above all, Thomas introduces us to the understanding of the specificity of the Christian faith; that which is not generic, but a living reality, alive, seen, and touched in his flesh offered up to death, a tangible sign of the Divine Mercy and Love that triumphed over hate, fear, sin, and death. “My Lord and my God”, hearing that from Thomas is peace, the kind no earthly reality can bring.
Thomas leads us to faith in Jesus, Lord, and God, and so completes the route through which faith becomes “experience” the affirmation of the Prologue: “And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth” (Jn1:14).

To understand and live more intensely the experience this liturgy offers us, two more observations are decisive. The first is Thomas, in all passages in the Gospel of John where that name is mentioned except for (14:5) there is always the emphasizes that Thomas is “called Didymus,” which means “twin.” Of course, this emphasis is intentional (the name Thomas of Aramaic origin already means “twin”): whose twin and why twin? Perhaps the evangelist wants to stress that every reader is a twin of Thomas: each of us lives within, the experience of Thomas, his enthusiasms, doubts, and failures, in order to dispose ourselves to be overcome by the unguarded love and mercy of Jesus.

Or perhaps the evangelist wants to tell us that Thomas is a “twin” within himself: in him, as in all of us, there is coexistence of faith and doubt. We must like him continue to listen to the Word of Jesus: “Do not be unbelieving but believe.” Faith is never a finished itinerary but a journey that always starts over and over again. His confession: “My Lord and my God” can never be confused with a gratifying attempt to possess a definitive of God.

With the experience of faith of the Twelve and of Thomas, the Gospel of John reached its goal, explicitly stated in verse 31: “so that you may believe and believing you may have life in his name.”

Fr. Jude Chijioke