“BLESSED ARE WE” WHO HAVE NOT SEEN WE HAVE BELIEVED IN CHRIST, TRUE GOD AND TRUE MAN

What Thomas is reproached for is not having seen Jesus. The reproach falls rather on the fact that at the beginning Thomas closed himself off and did not give credence to the testimony of those who told him they had seen the Lord alive. It would have been better for him to give some initial credit to his friends, waiting to redo in person the experience they had already had. Instead, Thomas almost claimed to dictate the conditions of faith.

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The song for this Second Sunday of Easter, or also called Divine Mercy, it is the last of the narrative compositions that end with the final "first" of the Gospel of John (vv. 30-31) and are divisible into four small squares: Mary Magdalene going to the tomb; after which it is Peter and the other disciple who go to the tomb; then Mary Magdalene meets the Lord and believes he is the gardener; at last, the last painting, sees the disciples and Thomas as protagonists.

The evangelical text is as follows:

«The evening of that day, the first of the week, while the doors of the place where the disciples were were closed for fear of the Jews, Jesus came, stood in the middle and told them: "Peace be with you!”. Said this, he showed them his hands and his side. And the disciples rejoiced at seeing the Lord. Jesus said to them again: "Peace be with you! As the Father sent me, I send you too ". Said this, he blew and said to them: “Receive the Holy Spirit. To those to whom you will forgive sins, will be forgiven; to those you won't forgive, they will not be forgiven". Tommaso, one of the Twelve, called Didymus, he was not with them when Jesus came. The other disciples told him: “We have seen the Lord!”. But he told them: “Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands, and put my finger into the mark of the nails, and put my hand into his side, I don't believe". Eight days later the disciples were back in the house and Thomas was also with them. Jesus came, behind closed doors, he stood in the middle and said: "Peace be with you!”. Then he said to Thomas: “Put your finger here and look at my hands; reach out your hand and place it in my side; and do not be incredulous, but a believer!”. Tommaso answered him: “My Lord and my God!”. Jesus told him: “Because you saw me, you believed; Blessed are those who have not seen and have believed!”. Jesus, in the presence of his disciples, he did many other signs which have not been written in this book. But these were written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and why, believing, have life in his name" (GV 20,19-31).

Even an inattentive reader realizes that so many themes are brought together in this text that it would be truly pretentious to collect them in a single short comment. Think about the time indication, that first day of the week which will forever mark the liturgical memory of the Resurrection of Jesus for Christians. Then there are the three gifts of peace, of the mission and forgiveness that flow from the Risen One who is "among" the disciples and who feel joy in it. Think of the theme of "seeing" which becomes synonymous with believing, in the sequence featuring Tommaso as protagonist.

There is also the gift of the Spirit from Jesus. The way the Fourth Gospel speaks of this is unique in the entire New Testament. Only Giovanni, indeed, and only here in the verse 22, it says that Jesus "breathed" on the disciples. A verb is used, emphysao, «inflate, alliteration», first used in the book of Genesis, during the story of the creation of man. All created reality, it is told there, it comes from the word of God, but to make a man this is not enough: God must breathe inside his nostrils. Looking carefully, But, Jesus' action is not just that of "blowing on", but it also indicates the "breathing" of Jesus: because He is alive again! It is proof that he is not a ghost and in fact it is not enough for him to show his hands and side: Jesus breathes. This verb emphysao it is found still other times in the Bible, for example in 1Re 17,21 and in This 37,9. In the text of Ezekiel the people can only be resurrected if the Spirit from the four winds comes to "breath" life into the dead.

It emerges from Old Testament usage of our verb a constant that can be linked to John's story. These «symbolically proclaim that, just as in the first creation God breathed a spirit of life into man, so now, at the moment of the new creation, Jesus breathes his own Holy Spirit into the disciples, giving them eternal life. In the baptismal symbolism of Giovanni 3,5, Gospel readers are told that from water and the Spirit they are born as children of God; the present scene serves as a baptism for Jesus' immediate disciples and as a pledge of divine birth for all believers of the future, represented by the disciples. It is little wonder that the custom of breathing on people to be baptized has entered the rite of baptism.. Now they are truly brothers of Jesus and can call his Father their Father (20,17). The gift of the Spirit is the final culmination of the personal relationships between Jesus and his disciples." (R. Brown).

Then there is the episode of Thomas which is very important and it is no coincidence that it marked not only a way of translating the Gospel, but above all the way of understanding Jesus' words to Thomas, in particular in the comparison between Catholics and Reformed people. We immediately notice that in the original Greek the verb is in the aorist (believers) and even in the Latin version it was put in the past tense (they believed): «You believed because you saw» – Jesus says to Thomas – «blessed are those who without having seen [that is, without having seen me, directly] they believed". And the allusion is not to the faithful who come later, that they should "believe without seeing", but to the apostles and disciples who first recognized that Jesus had risen, despite the paucity of visible signs that testified to it. In particular the reference is to John, the other disciple who with Peter had run to the tomb first (Gospel of Easter Day). Giovanni, entered after Peter, he had seen clues, the empty tomb and the bandages that remained empty of Jesus' body without being untied and, despite the paucity of such evidence, he had begun to believe. Jesus' phrase «blessed are those who have not seen [me] they believed" refers precisely to "he saw and believed» referring to John at the moment of his entry into the empty tomb. Proposing the example of John to Thomas again, Jesus means that it is reasonable to believe the testimony of those who saw signs, signs of his living presence. It is therefore not a request for blind faith, but the blessedness promised to those who humbly recognize his presence starting from even small signs and give credit to the word of credible witnesses. What Thomas is reproached for is not having seen Jesus. The reproach falls rather on the fact that at the beginning Thomas closed himself off and did not give credence to the testimony of those who told him they had seen the Lord alive. It would have been better for him to give some initial credit to his friends, waiting to redo in person the experience they had already had. Instead, Thomas almost claimed to dictate the conditions of faith. There is a translation error in the CEI version. When Jesus subjects his wounds to the empirical test requested by Thomas, accompanies this offer with an exhortation: «And don't become incredulous, but it becomes (become) believer". It means that Thomas is still neither one nor the other. He is not yet incredulous, but he's not even a believer yet. The CEI version, like many others, translates instead: «And don't be incredulous, but a believer". Now, in the original text, the verb "to become" suggests the idea of ​​dynamism and a change brought about by the encounter with the living Lord. Without the encounter with a living reality one cannot begin to believe. Only after seeing Jesus alive can Thomas begin to become a "believer". Instead the incorrect version, which is the most popular, replacing the verb to be with the verb to become, it eliminates the perception of this movement and almost seems to imply that faith consists of a decision to be made a priori, an original movement of the human spirit. It's a total reversal. Thomas sees Jesus and on the basis of this experience is invited to break free and become a believer. If becoming is replaced by being, it almost seems as if preliminary faith is required of Thomas, which alone would allow him to "see" the Lord and approach his wounds. As idealism would have it, therefore it is faith that creates the reality to be believed, but this is in contradiction with everything the Scriptures and the Tradition of the Church teach. The apparitions to Mary Magdalene, to the disciples and to Thomas are the normative image of an experience that every believer is called to have in the Church; like the apostle John, for us too, "seeing" can be a gateway to "believing". Precisely for this reason we continue to read the Gospel stories; to redo the experience of those who have moved from "seeing" to "believing": think of the contemplation of the evangelical scenes and the application of the senses to them, according to a long spiritual tradition. The Gospel of Mark ends by testifying that the preaching of the apostles was not just a simple story, but it was accompanied by miracles, that they might confirm their words with these signs: «Then they left and announced the Gospel everywhere, while the Lord acted together with them and confirmed the word with the signs that accompanied it" (MC 16,20). Many Fathers of the Church, from the western Augustine to the eastern Athanasius, they insisted on this permanence of the external visible signs that accompany preaching, which are not a concession to human weakness, but they are connected with the very reality of the incarnation. If God became man, resurrected with his true body, he remains a man forever and continues to act. Now we do not see the glorious body of the Risen One, but we can see the works and signs he does. «Codes in our hands, done in the eyes», says Augustine: «in our hands the codes of the Gospels, the facts in our eyes" (WHO). As we read the Gospels, let's see the facts that happen again. And Athanasius writes in the Incarnation of the Word:

«Come, being invisible, it is known based on the works of creation, like this, once he became a man, even if it is not seen in the body, from the works it can be recognized that the one who carries out these works is not a man but the Word of God. If once dead you are no longer capable of doing anything but gratitude for the deceased reaches to the grave and then ceases - only the living, indeed, they act and operate towards other men - let whoever wants to see and judge by confessing the truth based on what is seen". All Tradition firmly preserves the fact that faith is not based only on listening, but also on the experience of external trials, as the Catechism of the Catholic Church recalls, citing the dogmatic definitions of the First Vatican Ecumenical Council: «Nevertheless, so that the observance of our faith was in conformity with reason, God wanted the internal help of the Holy Spirit to be accompanied by external evidence of his revelation." (CCC, no 156).

 

From the Hermitage, 07 March 2024

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