The Second Sunday of Easter is one point at which the historic lectionary and the three-year series always coincide in the reading of the same Holy Gospel, St. John 20:19-31, featuring the Lord’s commissioning of the Apostles with the “Office of the Keys” and His particular care for St. Thomas in the face of that man’s doubts following the prior Resurrection appearance he had missed. It is, for that reason as well as others, one of my favorite Sundays of the Church Year.
Although he is popularly known as “Doubting Thomas,” I have long been reticent to come down heavily on the man, not least of all because he is one of the holy Apostles, in whom the mercies of the Lord have been manifested for the blessing of the Church and for the strengthening of our own faith even to this present day. What is more, it is clear from each of the Holy Gospels that all of the disciples were doubtful and incredulous to begin with; Thomas was not unique in that regard. To be sure, he ought to have believed the testimony of the other Apostles, but so should those same men have believed the testimony of the women who had discovered the empty tomb. And of course, it is certainly the case that I have and struggle with my own doubts and fears, for which the example of the Lord’s gracious dealings with St. Thomas are a great encouragement.
As a Christian disciple, St. Thomas should have believed on the basis of the Apostolic witness of the other disciples, just as we are brought to faith by the written record of that testimony, as St. John expressly indicates in the conclusion of the Holy Gospel for the Second Sunday of Easter: “These [things] are written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in His Name” (St. John 20:31).
By the same token, as an Apostle himself, St. Thomas also needed to see the risen Lord Jesus, in order to become a witness of the Resurrection for the benefit of the Church in his own day and to future generations. As St. John writes in his first Epistle, “That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we looked upon and have touched with our hands, concerning the Word of Life . . . that which we have seen and heard we proclaim also to you, so that you too may have fellowship with us; and indeed our fellowship is with the Father and with His Son Jesus Christ” (1 John 1:1, 3). Indeed, it was necessary that each of the Twelve Apostles (including St. Matthias, chosen by the Lord to replace Judas) must be a witness to the Lord’s Resurrection, one of those “who ate and drank with Him after He rose from the dead” (Acts 1:21-22; 10:40-41).
In receiving his bold request to behold and touch the wounds in Christ’s hands and side – as the risen Lord had previously displayed to the others on that first Easter Sunday (St. John 20:20; St. Luke 24:40) – St. Thomas also became an Apostolic witness of the Resurrection. Though he did not write one of the books of the New Testament, he was among those sent by Christ to speak in His Name, to heal the sick and cast out demons, to preach repentance and the forgiveness of sins, and to bestow the living and life-giving Spirit of God through the proclamation of the Gospel to all of creation, even to the ends of the earth (St. Luke 24:45-49; St. Mark 16:15-18). If he was indeed the Apostle who brought the Gospel to India, as Christian tradition has long maintained, then it was by all means significant that he came with eyewitness testimony to the Resurrection.
As week-after-week we confess our faith in the “one, holy, Christian, and Apostolic Church,” it is upon the solid foundation of the Apostolic witness of St. Thomas and his fellow Apostles that we take our stand with boldness and confidence (1 Corinthians 15:1-11). And along with that, we also take comfort in the gracious example of our Lord’s patient mercy toward St. Thomas, whom He did not cast aside or dismiss for his doubts, but to whom He opened His holy wounds in love. So, too, the same Lord Jesus Christ, who was crucified for our transgressions and raised for our justification, mercifully condescends to open His wounds to us in the Apostolic Ministry of the Gospel, that we should be blessed with faith, even without seeing, and saved by His grace alone.