>>So, Thomas gets a bad rap. Doubting Thomas. That’s what we call him. But it’s not fair. First of all, all the apostles doubted. We read this in all the Gospels. They doubt Mary Magdalene when she comes and reports to them what happened. The disciples on the road to Emmaus, they see Jesus and they doubt. They also doubted Mary Magdalene, the other women as well.  

Even at the ascension in Matthew’s Gospel, we read, they see Jesus and they doubt and Jesus kind of scolds them for this. So it’s not just Thomas, but also I would say Thomas isn’t necessarily doubting, even though he has that moniker. But he’s desiring – he’s desiring to be with Jesus.  

Remember a couple weeks ago we read that the scene of the raising of Lazarus from the dead, and Thomas has that incredible line. So Jesus goes to Bethany to raise Lazarus.  

And he’s going into the lion’s den and the apostles are like, “What are you doing? I mean, the Jews are trying to kill you. Why? Why you want to go there? We should be – we should be in hiding.”  

And Jesus says, “No, I got to go do this.”  

And Thomas says, “Let us go. Let us go to die with him.”  

It’s a beautiful line. Let’s go to die with him. So Thomas wants to be with Jesus. And we see this in the initial call of Thomas. He wants to be with the Lord by his side. And then after the resurrection, when Thomas misses out on the first Easter appearance. 

Okay, so Jesus appears that Easter Sunday night. Thomas isn’t there. Misses out on it. When he when he hears about it, he says, I want to see the nailmarks, that is I want to see the signs of Christ’s death. He could have asked for anything else to see. Jesus had a lot of other things he could have shown to prove himself. He wants to be in Jesus death.  

And so, Thomas has this desire to die with the Lord, to die spiritually, with the Lord. It’s actually a great virtue, something we all, we all can pray for to undergo a sort of death to our old self so we can experience the resurrection – a birth of our of our new self. That’s what the whole season of Lent was about, kind of this process of dying. And we can think now, even in Easter, there’s more to die, there’s more to do. 

What are the things that we’re attached to? What are the judgments we have in our mind, the false ideals of God that we have? The lies that that the enemy whispers to us? How can we die to all that? And then, like we can really, really be emphasized with Saint Thomas here that we want to be with our Lord.  

Now, the last thing that’s beautiful about Saint Thomas, again, he wants to get into the side, particularly the side of Christ, where our Lord was speared and into the nailmarks. It’s a movement of getting out of our head and into our heart. Out of our head and into our heart. You know, we can get in our head a lot. We think all these things through. We have all of these reasons for doing this or not doing that. Again, judgments and whatnot.  

Our Lord is saying: Don’t, don’t be in your head too much. Be in your heart. Believe, trust, surrender, love. If you struggle to get into the heart from your head, maybe Saint Thomas can pray for you today. Amen.