Today is the feast for St Thomas. This is the collect for the day:
Everliving God, who strengthened your apostle Thomas with firm and certain faith in your Son's resurrection: Grant us so perfectly and without doubt to believe in Jesus Christ, our Lord and our God, that our faith may never be found wanting in your sight; through him who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.
This collect leaves the impression, at least on me, that Thomas was wrong to doubt. But was he?
In 591, Pope Gregory the Great, in his Easter sermon, celebrated Thomas’ incredulity:
Dearly beloved, what do you see in these events? Do you really believe that it was by chance that this chosen disciple was absent, then came and heard, heard and doubted, doubted and touched, touched and believed? It was not by chance but in God’s providence. In a marvelous way God’s mercy arranged that the disbelieving disciple, in touching the wounds of his master’s body, should heal our wounds of disbelief.
So Gregory concludes, astoundingly, “The disbelief of Thomas has done more for our faith than the faith of the other disciples.”
Today, this is what strikes me: even the others, those who had seen Jesus, still hid away behind locked doors (Jn 20.19, 26). But thanks to the cleverness of the Spirit, and thanks to Thomas’ busy schedule and skeptical bent, they learn that Christ can appear even in locked rooms. So, in the end, their fear does for us exactly what Thomas’ doubt did for them. Here’s a poem I wrote in their honor:
CHRIST APPEARS JUST IN LOCKED ROOMS
1.
Christ appears;
Christ appears even in locked rooms.
Abandoned or in bands
in spare rooms or in bright
we hide, woozy and abashed—
and Christ is present
wedding our future to his past.
2.
Christ appears;
Christ appears just in locked rooms.
Host as guest he arrives
for the missing, the not-yet-present
the downcast, the cast aside—
Christ appears just in locked rooms
to unlock them from inside.
3.
Christ disappears,
becomes for us the unlocked room.
But never absent in his absence
present not as body but as breath
keeping those within anxious for those without—
Christ becomes our unlocked room
making space for us to doubt.
4.
Christ remains;
Christ remains all the room we need.
So doors, swing open—wide and wide!
And friends, uncork only the best wines!
Everyone, everyone’s invited, near and far—
Come, Jesus will greet you
and bend to kiss your shining scars.
So much hope in this. Great poem. Thank you.