Everyday stigmata

Today's readings: Acts 4, 32-35; 1 John 5, 1-6; John 20, 19-31.

John's Gospel today is not meant to give just a factual account of what happened on the evening of the first day of Jesus's resurrection and eight days later. The Thomas incident and the fact that he was 'absent' the first time Jesus came, but 'present' eight days later, stands for the tiring journey of those who want to believe but find it difficult. Doubt paralyses so many people. Nowadays, Thomas continues to live in the prevailing climate of agnosticism, relativism and subjectivism.

The proclamation of Jesus risen in the early Church was not meant to become doctrine but a real body. In a study of 16th and 17th century spirituality entitled The Mystic Fable, Michel de Certeau writes: "Christianity was founded upon the loss of a body." This is an image of the empty tomb. Christians remain, until the end of time, a people in search of the body of the risen Christ, in search of a society that would be the reconciliation of all of humankind in justice and peace. The kind we read about in the first reading from Acts.

The Church was meant to be a prophetic sign in the world, prophetic in the sense of being capable of transforming fear into courage, doubt into contemplation of the divine. Easter turns the page, not only in Jesus's life but also in ours. It enables us to approach life differently, even while we carry on our individual and corporate bodies our everyday stigmata.

We may ask ourselves what sense do the marks of the crucifixion have on the body of the risen Jesus. But there was a reason for Jesus "showing them his hands and his side". Antonio Rosmini's 1832 work The Five Wounds of the Holy Church, seeks a resemblance between the crucified Christ and the Church, itself wounded and still bleeding, but empowered with the Spirit to offer healing. After the resurrection, Jesus shows the marks of the crucifixion again so that the Apostles would not dream about a redemption that doesn't have to go through death.

In today's Gospel, Thomas represents the unbelieving generations and the difficulty of many to accept the witness of those who believe. It was the 'breathing' of the Holy Spirit that organised the Church after Easter, empowering the Apostles to face reality with faith and courage.

From then onwards the Spirit was to be the founding principle of a Church launched to bring peace and forgiveness to a broken world. This same Spirit makes us desire God's kingdom and marks the practice of our discipleship. This is not 'spiritualism'. It has its political implications. The question is not whether this discipleship is or is not a political affair. The question is about the kind of politics that is appropriate to such discipleship.

Since the dawn of that first Easter Sunday, much more than 'eight days' have passed. The Church's long experience since those early days has included many seasons of decline and renewal. The same Spirit given to the disciples, at times manifest, at other times overshadowed, has always taken concrete form in the great reformers and prophets of Christian life who served as catalysts of the Spirit in the life of the Church.

As Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger once wrote: "The reform that is needed at all times consists in ceaselessly clearing away our subsidiary constructions to let in the pure light that comes from above and that is also the dawning of pure freedom."

No matter how secure we may feel in the images of Church we construct, in the face of troubling times, the Church remains in the power of the Spirit. The more we create structures and dictate laws and boundaries, the less place there is for the Spirit, the less place there is for the Lord, and the less freedom there is.

Coming to terms with the Easter implications it should be clear that the Church of our day has no cause for complacency. It stands in urgent need of far-reaching intellectual, spiritual and moral regeneration.