So many people we have known in life and with whom we have shared happiness and hazards, bruises and blessings – family members, friends, community members – so many of them have gone before us and seem to have disappeared from our lives. Our own love and capacities only go so far, and then some great smile, some ready, sensitive heart, some true companion enters our life and pushes our lost loved ones to the background. The main consolation of our faith tells us that one day we will follow our loved ones and be united with our Triune God.
When Thomas says to the Risen Lord, “My Lord and my God,” he becomes the first Jewish person to acknowledge Jesus as God made flesh. St. John began his Gospel by telling us that Jesus came among his own, but that his own received him not. At the end of the Gospel, Thomas becomes the first of Jesus’ own people to acknowledge him. Through his words, he makes it possible for us to do the same, for he is telling us that this man who, days before, had shared our suffering and death in their worst form, has risen, able now to fulfill his promise that all who believe in him will rise again. God’s love reaches beyond death. The resurrection of Jesus confirms that the love of God for us is stronger than death. God’s love evidences itself in two ways: God’s love not only is able to see to the good of those who slip from our lives through death, it also in the resurrection tells us that Christ has turned the tables on the last enemy of all human life – death. John tells us that he has written this Gospel that we may come to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that through this belief we may have life in his name.
This faith, this knowledge, is very much needed in our world today as we face the continuing ravages of an unseen enemy which continues to steal people from our lives. When the world finally conquers this virus, those of us who believe in the Lord Jesus as Thomas believed will find that those whom we have lost in this pandemic are still with us because God’s love has conquered death.
Fr. Lawrence Jagdfeld, O.F.M., Administrator