Living Proof

Proof can be a tricky thing. We depend upon it for many things, but it can be hard to come by. Just take the current pandemic, for instance. Scientists and researchers are searching hard for both a cure for the disease and for a vaccine, but they have to prove such measures would be effective before they can prescribe them. Some people are trying to find proof of the disease’s origin. There are efforts underway to prove who might have been infected without becoming symptomatic. We all *want* to do something to end this pandemic, but we need hard proof before we can act.

The same can be true in our personal lives too. Every relationship is built on trust, and when that trust is violated – by rejection, betrayal, disappointment, etc. – a new proof must be given for how the relationship can continue. But proving things at the level of personal trust is even harder than proving something scientifically. Friendship requires living proof, you might say, to have the possibility of reconciliation.

Today’s Gospel is all about reconciliation. The end of the Gospel focuses on the figure of Thomas, who comes to believe in the Resurrection only after doubting and insisting on living proof. Perhaps Thomas doubted because he was unwilling to be hurt again ­– because he was caught off guard by the fact that Jesus suffered and died, despite the fact that the Lord had told his disciples that was exactly what was going to happen.

More likely, I think, is that Thomas was deeply aware of his own betrayal – of his abandonment of Jesus in his hour of need. So aggrieved was he by this failure of friendship, that he resisted believing that the Lord was risen again. He needed living proof, in other words, to believe that it was possible to be forgiven of his sin. Thomas, of course, is not alone in this. All of the disciples must have been deeply aware that they had betrayed and abandoned the one who had called them his friends, who had washed their feet in service, who had given them his own Body to eat and Blood to drink at the first Eucharist. But in his hour of need, they let him down, and so they resisted believing, instead hiding in fear behind locked doors.

Giovanni Serodine, Doubting Thomas (c. 1620)

Perhaps this time of pandemic has given us some insight into how they must have felt. In a certain sense, we too are living with fear, quarantined behind locked doors, filled with uncertainty with what has happened to the world. Things that we took for granted are now uncertain; the world holds dangers that we had not before conceived of. This time has also given us an awareness of our own flaws and limitedness. We can’t fix the world; we can’t even fix ourselves. And maybe that realization also affects our faith, and our relationship with God. Perhaps it makes us believe that God isn’t really there to take care of us. Or maybe it’s given us a deeper awareness of how we have put too much trust in the passing things of this world – in our possessions, our pleasures and past-times, in ourselves – and not in him, the One who sustains us in every moment.

And into all of this doubt and uncertainty – whether in the Upper Room two millennia ago, or today in our own circumstances – the Risen Jesus steps into our midst. If Thomas needed living proof of why he could believe, if the disciples needed hope for the possibility of reconciliation, if we need assurance that God still is present despite difficult circumstances, we need not look beyond this very Gospel. Jesus himself is the living proof of God’s power being stronger than all of those failures on our part, our sins and betrayals and doubts. “Peace be with you,” Jesus says. His peace replaces fear, his mercy replaces division, and his Risen Life replaces even the fear of death. But all of it begins with authentic faith in the Lord's Resurrection; faith is the precursor to receiving the fuller gifts that God wants to give to us, like peace and mercy and even a deeper faith than we yet have.

Today is Divine Mercy Sunday, a day to focus on how the Risen Christ has given us his mercy in the past and even more how he wants to give it to us anew. We can ask for this mercy in all sorts of ways: “Lord, be merciful and keep my family safe in this dangerous time.” “Lord, be merciful and help me to be healed of this sin that weighs me down.” “Lord, be merciful and allow me to not to give in to fear or doubt or hesitancy in trusting you.” Thomas had a lot of flaws, as we do, but at least he knew where his weakness was, and he was bold enough to ask for he wanted the Lord to give to him.

Divine Mercy (1934) by Eugeniusz Kazimirowski

Friends, in many ways, we have a chance to live out an Easter very close to the circumstances of that first Easter that the disciples knew. In the midst of great uncertainty and great disruption, they came to believe anew in that One who could not be defeated by death or betrayal or hardheartedness – and with whom their friendship endured, despite their own failings. While our world may feel turned on end right now, the Risen Jesus is living proof that God allows the disordering of our lives at times only to bring forth a greater peace and renewed opportunity for faith. May we all call upon the Divine Mercy of the Lord to not remain unbelieving but to believe, and so have life in his name.