Homily

This Sunday is particularly meaningful in this Jubilee Year of Mercy The Gospel brings us to the evening of Easter day, in the upper room. Jesus had spent the entire day with the two anonymous disciples who were sadly going back to their village, Emmaus. The Gospel of the second Sunday of Easter (Jn 20:19-31) brings us back to the evening of that day. The evangelist reports that "although the doors were locked" to the place where the disciples were, Jesus entered and stood in their midst. He had told them during the last supper, "I am coming to you. In a little while the world will no longer see me, but you will see me; because I live, you also will live" (Jn 14:18-19). But they did not understand and they did not believe him. Starting on that Easter evening, they began to understand Jesus in a new way. They saw a different Jesus, a risen one, even if he was the same as before: the marks of the nails and the gash from the spear were visible in his body. They represent the fact that we are still at the beginning of the resurrection (there are still many bodies marked by wounds and suffering that are waiting for a resurrection today). ????
The risen Jesus is there, among his friends, to entrust his own mission to them: "As the Father has sent me, so I send you" (Jn 20:21). There is one mission that comes from the Father and is transmitted through Jesus to the disciples: it is the mission to bring peace and forgiveness to the world. It was a joyful evening for those ten disciples: they had found their Lord again. The two from Emmaus, who returned to Jerusalem late in the evening, added to everyone’s happiness. But Thomas, a willing and generous man, was not there. Once he had declared himself ready to die for Jesus, even if he then fled with everyone else. When the ten report, "We have seen the Lord!," Thomas quiets them with his response: "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" (v. 25). He immediately says: if I do not see. And then, considering that even the eyes can deceive (Thomas does not want to join the numerous ranks of visionaries), he adds a somewhat brutal physical proof: putting his finger in the holes left by the nails and his hand in the gash made in his chest. Thomas does not accept the gospel of the ten, and remains, though with his reasons, sad and hopeless. ????
Seven days later, just like this Sunday, Jesus again returns among his disciples. This time Thomas is also there. Jesus enters once again, even though the doors are shut out of fear: everyone is afraid, including Thomas: unbelief and fear often go hand in hand. After greeting them with the greeting of peace, Jesus immediately looks for Thomas, calls him by name, comes up to him, and says, "Put your finger here and see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it into my side. Do not doubt but believe" (see v. 27). In front of a Jesus still bearing the marks of the cross, Thomas cannot keep from confessing his faith: "My Lord and my God!" And Jesus says, "Have you believed Because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe" (v. 29). This proclamation is the last beatitude in the Gospel, the one that says the foundation for the generations who from that moment on will join the group of Eleven. From that moment on, faith will not come from sight, but from listening to the Gospel of the apostles. An ancient legend says that Thomas’s right hand remained blood red until his death. Gathering together our little faith, the Lord urges each one of us, just as he did with Thomas, to dirty our hands in the wounds of humanity, to draw near to tortured and abandoned situations: our unbelief is taken by the Lord and transformed into friendship and peace. Listening to the Gospel and charity are the way to our beatitude. ????