Oblates of St. Francis de Sales

New DeSales World Newsletter - Summer Edition

The Second Sunday of Easter (April 27, 2003)

Suggested Emphasis

"And Jesus came through locked doors."

Salesian Perspective

It’s unfair to defame a man’s entire character because of a sin we know he committed. (Intr. III, 29). It’s strange, then, that we keep calling St. Thomas, “Doubting Thomas” despite the heroism we know about him from the gospels and tradition. The one thing we keep remembering is a single momentary hesitation in a time of pain and hurt. Talk about holding a grudge against somebody, and for two thousand years no less?

Why wasn’t Thomas in the upper room on Easter Sunday night? Well, who wants to hang around a bunch of losers? Hurt and disappointment with those we love and trusted often isolates us. We tend to withdraw or retreat inside ourselves to nurse our wounds or avoid further disappointment. It’s a self-preservation response, whether in a family or in the Church, yet it only intensifies our loneliness. At some point one must break out of it.

So, Thomas decided to return, but he could not share the giddy enthusiasm he was greeted with. He had learned not to trust them or rely on their emotional postures. He returned, but now even more isolated, excluded from the joy they were talking about. If they were joyful, he would have not part of it.

It was then that Jesus came, through closed doors and through a closed mind and a closed heart.

Jesus didn’t scold Thomas for his behavior, nor for listening to Peter (the pope, after all). Jesus took Thomas where he was, as He had done for the others and as He does for us. “Touch my hands and side? Sure. If that’s where you are, Thomas, then that’s where I’ll find you.” And in doing that, Thomas recognized he was in the presence of the Jesus he had always known, and the merciful goodness Jesus had always spoken of as His father.

In this he found far more than what he felt he had lost: “My Lord and My God.”

Spring is upon us, dear friends. Earth itself tells the story, as in ee cummings’ poem, “spring.”

when more than was lost has been found/has been found
and having means giving/ and giving means living
and keeping means winter and darkness and cringing
then it is spring
o then it is spring

Thomas knew that keeping was winter/ and darkness/ and cringing. / He discovered the miracle of life giving, the self-giving Jesus, and he became its apostle. And it was spring. O, then it was spring.

Fr. James Cryan is Provincial superior of the Toledo-Detroit Province