Homily

"When it was evening on that day, the first day of the week." It is Sunday, the day of the resurrection, in which we pass from death to life, from self-love to love for others, from sin to forgiveness, from aridity of heart to the feelings of love. How we need to pause; to listen; to let ourselves be guided; to not be in the centre; to look at him, instead of always studying ourselves; to seek and find forgiveness; to be silent, to pray and learn to pray; to nourish ourselves from his bread of love, concrete and free, that cannot be bought; to enjoy the brothers and sisters who find themselves together. Let us take care of Sunday. Let us live it with joy, let us enrich it with our heart, let us defend it from our busyness. Sunday makes real what is written about the first Christian community: "They were of one heart and soul." Christians can’t be individualists; their life has meaning only if they are united to others. Does having "one heart" perhaps take something out of us? Does it limit us? Why does the fulfilment of our life have to be self-affirmation? Let us not blindly follow the sad law of individualism, which makes us mistrustful, little able to live with others, and leaves us in the desperate search for friendship! Love unites, makes our "I" full, but not without others, or worse, against others, but rather together. Sunday is the beginning of that day in which love shall know no sunset, the day in which we will have just one heart and soul because we shall know how to love each other so much, truly, forever; because we shall finally let ourselves be fully loved by God. That day begins today.
The disciples were afraid and closed the doors. They thought they would find peace and security putting up barriers, protecting themselves, closing themselves off. We all do it in the face of evil, of danger. But this is not peace. To close doors, rather, increases fear and more easily makes of the other an enemy. Jesus’ first words to his own are, "Peace be with you." Jesus is peace: he makes peace between heaven and earth; he gives the peace of the heart; he frees from fear and from the demon of enmity, he reconciles. Jesus gives peace to each one and to all together. "Peace be with you." "Peace I leave you, I give you my peace," he had said, as we recite before we mutually exchange it. We receive peace and we should live it with others, distribute it to the one who doesn’t have it, communicate it in order not to lose it. In these weeks of Lent we have prayed intensely for peace. Holy Friday of the cross, of pain, of loneliness, of life which is being lost, is still reality for so many countries which do not have the resurrection of peace. Let us ask for peace! Let us become people of peace, quenching the fires kindled by wrath; not returning evil for evil; freeing from rancour, mistrust, from judgments without love which dry up the heart and nourish fear and enmity. Let us open up the doors of the heart and learning the art of the encounter and of living together. "As the Father has sent me, so I send you." What we receive we should communicate to hearts, in a world so marked by fear.
Nevertheless, that evening of the first day after Saturday, Thomas has already decided that Jesus’ resurrection, announced to him with joy by the other apostles, is just talk, an empty word, even though beautiful. And he responds with his own talk, his creed: "Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands, and put my finger in the mark of the nails and my hand in his side, I will not believe." It is the creed of a man who is not evil, and is even generous. It is the creed of so many people, who more than rationalistic are egocentric, prisoners of themselves and of their own sensations. It is the creed of the one who thinks that only that which can be touched is true, even if it is false; or of the one who thinks that what he can’t touch is false, even though he knows it is true. It is in fact the "non-creed" of a world of egocentrics, which easily becomes a world that is lazy, unjust and violent. Egocentrism always leads one to unbelief, because one always and anyhow remains prisoner of one’s own sensations, of that which one sees or touches. One doesn’t believe in anything else. Jesus seems to accept Thomas’ challenge. The following Sunday ?these are our Sundays? he again returns to his disciples. This time Thomas is present also. And we are with him too. Jesus enters once again, with doors shut, turns immediately to Thomas, inviting him to touch with his hands his wounds. And he adds: "Do not doubt but believe." The evangelist seems to suggest that Thomas really had not touched Jesus’ wounds; the words addressed to him had been enough. They had gripped him in his unbeliever’s truth, as happened at Jacob’s well when Jesus with his words revealed to the Samaritan woman the truth of her life.
The Word of the Lord, the Gospel, is what destroys the presumption, pride and disproportionate confidence that Thomas has, and with him we too. Today the Gospel asks us to humble ourselves a bit, to look beyond ourselves. Yes, together with Thomas, we should kneel down before the risen one and cry out: "My Lord and my God!" Jesus does not propose a lesson or reasoning to unbelieving Thomas: he shows him the signs of evil on his body, that he may be moved by his wounds and those of the least of his brothers and sisters. We are believers when we are touched in the heart; when we recognize and trust in the energy of the resurrection, of the love that comes from the gospel, an energy which heals and frees from evil, from division, from loneliness, bitterness, enmity, estrangement, abandonment, hatred, illness. Blessed are not they for whom everything is clear, who never make a mistake, who have no doubts. Blessed are those who, despite fear, resignation and uncertainty, believe in the power of the Gospel and of the love which is born from it. How much need there is of men and women who believe, who go beyond analyses, who do not become slaves of reality, but love it and change it, are moved at the sight of the wounds from evil, and seek resurrection! Lord, I believe, help my little faith! My Lord and my God! Let us open the doors of the heart! Christ is risen and shall die no more. Alleluia.