Doubting Thomas is for us a source of strength and comfort and of faith confirmed. We too voice our weakness and our fears, even amid Easter joy. "Lord, that I may see!" is our daily petition. We cry out in anguished darkness: "I believe, Lord! Help my unbelief!" As night falls our final anthem is Cardinal Newman's heartfelt prayer:
Lead, kindly light, amid the encircling gloom, lead thou me on!
The night is dark and I am far from home.
Lead thou me on.. !
Thomas appears in the Gospel as a person of impulsive courage with a generosity never counting cost. The disciples did not wish the Master to risk his life by facing once again to Bethany to comfort Mary and Martha in their desolation at the death of Lazarus. "Let us all go that we may die with him," expressed a readiness to sacrifice all. For Thomas, prudence was not, at this crisis, the ultimate virtue. His Bethany generosity would be the quality of all his days.
The profound doctrine of the upper room discourse was not at once absorbed by an eager and impulsive Thomas. "Lord, we do not know where you are going. How can we know the way?" The only answer to this vital question would come to him, as to each of us, in prayerful reflection on the life, death and resurrection of the Redeeming Christ. "I am the Way, and the Truth and the Life!"
As we walk our Easter journey we seek for light and for the grace to recognise the Master in each breaking of the bread. Thomas would listen to the other apostles, share their glad experience and learn from them, as from Mary Magdalen, how gifts of grace and the call to witness are granted to all who call upon the Risen Lord.
Like Thomas we too journey, even in our joy-filled Easter, in the light of our weak faith. He could not swiftly accept the rapturous conviction of his fellow disciples telling the glad good news they would later preach to all the world.
His Easter faith did not flower at once: "Unless I see, unless I touch, I will not believe." His words mirror our own hesitant belief and lingering doubts. We draw comfort from his problems. He helps our own slow awakening to the beauty of all Scripture truth.
His problems arose not from illwill, nor arrogance, nor from a heart grown cold. Jesus saw his inner goodness and reached to him in love as he does to us in our confusion and twilight gloom: "Come close and see! Come place your hands upon my wounds." Healing grace was granted. His cry of faith echoes across the centuries and is one of our most treasured prayers: "My Lord and My God!"
This call of love gives voice to the living faith of millions in all the regions of the earth. St Thomas Aquinas preserves for us the apostle's cry of eager faith in a majestic song of praise:
In love you showed to Thomas your pierced hands and side
Now kneeling I adore you, Faith my one sure guide.
Help me grow in Faith, Lord, with deeper hope and love
Living by the Spirit, with gifts of endless love"
In these Easter days of grace the faithful, questing Thomas will guide us in our pilgrim searching, through all days of darkness, towards fullness of the Gospel light. We too say with living faith: "My Lord and My God!" F. MacN.