My Reflection on Sunday’s Gospel John 20:19-31

John 20:19–31 ESV – Bible Gateway

This Gospel passage is used on the Second Sunday of Easter for each liturgical year. The use of these verses goes back to before the liturgical reform of the lectionary and is the same reading still used for the Tridentine Rite of the Church. The reason being is that it details also the second appearance of Jesus to the Apostles “eight days later” and so is perfectly fitting for the Second Sunday of Easter.

Confession is very much the Sacrament of Divine Mercy. So it’s fitting that on this day we will both recall the appearance to Thomas that took place eight days after the resurrection and the institution of Confession which is the Sacrament of Divine Mercy. [1]

The Apostles gathered together are basically hunkering down for the duration. Gathered together in a locked room. “Proper residences were equipped with bolts and locks. Bolted doors would prevent anyone from entering (a heavy bolt could be slid through rings attached to the door and its frame).”[2] They are in fear, in fact, fear for their lives. As John writes “For fear of the Jews, they were hiding out.” They would have been afraid of any knock on the door. Jesus mysteriously comes and stands among them. Such an awkward moment as they both fear and rejoice at seeing Jesus again.

John Bergsma comments on this:[3]

The last time he saw this band of eleven men, he was looking at their backs, in the dark, as they all ran away from him rather than accompany him through his suffering and death (Matt 26:56). But Jesus does not mention this. He does not say, “Hey guys! Guess you didn’t think you’d see me again! Thanks for sticking by me there, in my hour of need.” Instead, he overlooks their dismal infidelity, and the word of Jesus is simply, “Peace be with you.”

Jesus would say “Peace be with you.” twice in this first encounter and again during the second one. They really need to let their fear go and for the peace of Christ to settle on them. Jesus is completing the commission he started at the Last Supper when he breaths on them and gives them the ability to forgive and retain sins.

When Jesus does this it recalls the book of Genesis when it says that “God breathed into the clay,” “breathed into the nostrils of Adam and he became a living being.” So what Jesus is doing here is, in a sense, inaugurating once again the new creation. But in this case the power that is being revealed through that action is not the Sacrament of Baptism as with the man born blind, but here it is the power to forgive and retain sin that will be passed down in the Church through the Sacrament of Reconciliation, through the Sacrament of Confession.[4]

The Council of Trent says:

“The Church has always understood—and has in fact defined—that Jesus Christ here conferred on the Apostles authority to forgive sins, a power which is exercised in the sacrament of Penance. ‘The Lord then especially instituted the sacrament of Penance when, after being risen from the dead, he breathed upon his disciples and said: “Receive the Holy Spirit.…” The consensus of all the Fathers has always acknowledged that by this action so sublime and words so clear the power of forgiving and retaining sins was given to the Apostles and their lawful successors for reconciling the faithful who have fallen after Baptism’ (Council of Trent, De Paenitentia, chap. 1).

Now we come to the Apostle Thomas who is now with the other Apostles on this second encounter with the risen Christ. We don’t know why he was not there the first time. Yet it is to our edification that he wasn’t.

St. Gregory the Great[5]

It was not an accident that that particular disciple was not present. The divine mercy ordained that a doubting disciple should, by feeling in his Master the wounds of the flesh, heal in us the wounds of unbelief. The unbelief of Thomas is more profitable to our faith than the belief of the other disciples. For the touch by which he is brought to believe confirms our minds in belief, beyond all question

When he joins up with them he is told the story about how Jesus came upon them although the doors were locked. There is one distinct difference between how the other Apostles acted and how Thomas acted. When Mary Magdalene informed the Apostles, Peter and John ran to the tomb. Based on witness testimony they were willing to believe that this might be true and dashed off to verify it. Thomas on the other hand heard testimony from his friends and did not believe them. He not only discounted his friends but was not even willing to see how this was consistent with what Jesus told them ahead of time. He demands empirical proof, but when Jesus offers him that very proof—he no longer demands or needs it.

New Testament scholar John Barclay writes:

“There was no halfway house about Thomas. He was not airing his doubts just for the sake of mental acrobatics; he doubted in order to become sure; and when he did, his surrender to certainty was complete. And when a man fights his way through his doubts to the conviction that Jesus Christ is Lord, he has attained to a certainty that the man who unthinkingly accepts things can never reach.”

One consideration from Brant Pitre, regarding what Jesus asks Thomas:

Since ancient Greek manuscripts do not use punctuation marks, it is not clear whether Jesus’ words to Thomas in 20:29a are a question or a statement. The NABRE translates it as a question, Have you come to believe because you have seen me?, which hints at disapproval that Thomas needed tangible proof to believe. However, it is also possible to translate it as a statement, “You have believed because you have seen me,” in which case Jesus does not disapprove of Thomas’s faith but simply declares that Thomas has arrived at full Easter faith because of the tangible proof that has been given him.

The Catechism [6] in paragraph 156 says:

156 What moves us to believe is not the fact that revealed truths appear as true and intelligible in the light of our natural reason: we believe “because of the authority of God himself who reveals them, who can neither deceive nor be deceived.”[1] So “that the submission of our faith might nevertheless be in accordance with reason, God willed that external proofs of his Revelation should be joined to the internal helps of the Holy Spirit.”[2] Thus the miracles of Christ and the saints, prophecies, the Church’s growth and holiness, and her fruitfulness and stability “are the most certain signs of divine Revelation, adapted to the intelligence of all”; they are “motives of credibility” (motiva credibilitatis), which show that the assent of faith is “by no means a blind impulse of the mind.

• Photo by Ben White on Unsplash

My References