We have seen the Lord

Jesus is risen from the dead! He has appeared to Mary of Magdala. The tomb was empty, and this could be witnessed by the two Apostles, Peter and John. And yet it must have proved exceedingly difficult for the rest of the Apostles to believe that Jesus was no longer dead, but alive.

Although Jesus had repeatedly told them that he had to undergo all kinds of suffering and humiliations, and even death itself, and that he would be alive among them once more, his disciples were feeling now quite frustrated and had begun to look at the past three years as time wasted. Nothing has now come out of it, and what was left for them to do was to commiserate themselves and gradually return back to their boats.

But things went actually otherwise, as we read in today's Gospel. On that same sad evening, while they were still hiding behind locked doors, as we read in today's Gospel, "Jesus came and stood there in their midst and said to them: 'Peace be upon you! I have come upon a mission from my Father, and now I am sending you out in my turn'." With that he breathed on them and said: "Receive the Holy Spirit! When you forgive men's sins, they are forgiven."

We can just imagine the disciples' astonishment. Here we have more the healing and the expelling of devils. Now they themselves are receiving none other than the Holy Spirit and the power to forgive sins. Jesus is now once more alive among them. As he would again after a while disappear from their sight he commissioned them to take over, as it were, and continue his saving mission on earth.

In the second part of today's Gospel we have what we might call a further confirmation of this happening. When the disciples told Thomas, who had not been there, about the appearance of the Risen Lord among them a week previously, he refused to believe. He wanted a more tangible proof. He wanted to see with his eyes and touch with his hands. The rest we all know.

After eight days Jesus is among them once more, but with Thomas also present. Then Jesus called Thomas to himself and, after showing him the wounds on his hands and breast, said to him: "Blessed are those who do not see and yet believe!"

That was a most important statement. Unlike Thomas, we all believe without seeing. Our belief as Christians rests on the witness of the Apostles, who had seen with their eyes and touched with their hands. Thomas would have lost his position as witness and announcer of Christ's Resurrection unless he too had had the same opportunity as his companions. As Christians we live on supernatural faith, a faith which rests on the direct witness of the Apostles, who are hence acknowledged as the foundation of the Church's beliefs and teachings.

The words of the Lord addressed to Thomas are also addressed to us individually, and were in fact meant for us who live on faith. We believe what we do not see. Faith is an act of trust, a commitment not only to all that Jesus has taught, but to all that he is.

Our faith in the Risen Lord is therefore a truly saving faith, which must not however remain something vague, but must influence our entire life and the life of others and transform them into a truly Christian way of being.

Andre Gide, the well known French Catholic writer and Nobel Prize winner, who lived in the last century, has put it this striking way: "Without sacrifice there is no resurrection. Nothing grows and blooms save by dying."