When reading the accounts of the Resurrection, it becomes clear that despite everything Jesus had told them during His earthly ministry, the apostles were completely unprepared to meet the Risen One. It is no accident that John mentions the burial garments, the “linen wrappings,” which first made the apostles wonder whether something unusual was happening (vv. 1–9). Indeed, according to Jewish custom, the body was wrapped in a shroud so tightly that it was practically impossible to unwrap it without damaging the cloth. Yet the apostles saw this shroud not only intact but apparently even undisturbed, so that the cloth usually tied around the dead person's head, the “face cloth” of v. 7, remained lying separately, apparently in the place where the Saviour's head had been before the Resurrection. What had happened could not be explained otherwise than as a miracle. But the apostles apparently still had no very clear idea of exactly what had occurred.

Mary Magdalene did, of course, see the risen Jesus while still in the garden and immediately reported it to the apostles (vv. 11–18), but her testimony was probably not enough for them. The real encounter took place that same evening (vv. 19–23), and then the apostles were finally able to convince themselves that their Teacher was truly alive. It is no accident that Jesus allows them to look at His hands, feet and ribs (v. 20). The marks of the wounds were to convince the apostles that what stood before them was not a ghost, not a shade that had emerged from the tomb, as they might have thought after hearing from Mary Magdalene that the Risen One had not allowed her to touch Him (v. 17). This was extremely important, for the matter concerned not only the Person of the Risen One, but also the nature of the Kingdom. If it differed in no way from the world of shades and spirits, its influence on the world would be no stronger than theirs. Shades and spirits may sometimes make their presence known, but they are unable to exert a serious influence on the existing order of things, much less to change it radically, as the world is changed when it becomes part of the Kingdom.

But despite all its objectivity and tangible reality, the Kingdom apparently differs substantially in some respects from our world, which has not yet been transformed. It is no accident that the Lord still places Thomas's desire to feel Jesus' wounds with his own hands below trust in testimony (vv. 24–29). For what matters most in the Kingdom is determined by trust: trust in God, trust in Jesus, trust in one another. Trust is the foundation of everything. Without it there is no Kingdom. And it cannot depend on whether one can touch with one's hands what one believes in or the person one trusts. Not because this is forbidden, but because what matters most in the Kingdom cannot be touched with the hands. It can be touched only with the heart. Everyone who wants to live the life of the Kingdom must be ready for this.

How did the apostles understand the resurrection? It is hard to say exactly. Of course, like all their fellow believers, they knew that resurrection meant the dead returning to life. But what would this life be like? After all, some kind of life went on in Sheol too. Though calling it life was still a stretch. Rather, it was a kind of likeness, a shadow of real life. And what would the life of the resurrected be like? Whom would they resemble: people, or shadows that had come out of the tombs, or straight out of Sheol?

The appearance of the risen Jesus in the room where the disciples had gathered gives the answer to this question. He stands before them as a human being. In a transformed body, but precisely a human one. Not as a ghost or a shadow. He is so fully human that even after the transformation His body still bears the marks of the sufferings He endured. Resurrection is not a likeness of former life and not some immortality of the soul existing apart from the body. Here is all life in all its fullness. The life of the Kingdom.

And the risen Jesus immediately shares this life with the disciples. He says to them: receive the Holy Spirit. God's breath. The breath of the Kingdom. The very breath that was to enter the world on the day of Pentecost. Jesus gives it to His disciples already now. He lets them feel what this breath is like. The breath with which they will now have to live. And which will make them themselves part of the Kingdom. Here, of course, there is not yet the fullness of entry that became reality on the day of Pentecost. Here there is only the first contact with the Kingdom. But whoever has touched it once will never be the same again.

Even the relationships of the one who has touched it with other people change: all relationships now become part of the Kingdom. A forgiven sin is now forgiven once and for all; it no longer darkens the relationships of those it touched. In the Kingdom everything that is done is done forever and completely. But refusal to forgive a sin also turns out to be something absolute and irreversible, because in the Kingdom refusal is just as unambiguous, full, and final as forgiveness. Forgiving a neighbor's sin opens the road into the Kingdom; refusal closes it, because unforgiven and unrepented sin is incompatible with the life of the Kingdom. Having let the disciples feel the fullness of the Kingdom, Jesus at the same time lets them feel their responsibility for this fullness. And this is understandable: one does not exist without the other.

What, after all, is this question of Thomas? Distrust? A desire to see everything with his own eyes? Or a kind of prudence, proceeding from the fact that spiritual life cannot be built on someone else's experience, even if that experience is connected with people whom you trust completely? And in such a context, what do Jesus's words mean about those who believed without seeing what Thomas saw?

Of course, it would be easiest to stop at the version of distrust, as many people do: Thomas's faith, they say, turned out to be the weakest; he needed proof, but Jesus is glad for any faith, and therefore allows Thomas to be convinced of His reality in the way that seems adequate to him.

But is everything so simple? After all, when it comes to spiritual life, we really can rely only on our own experience. Spiritual life, like life in general, belongs to each person in his own way, and however remarkable the experience of someone else's life may be, it cannot replace our own. This applies fully to spiritual life. And Thomas, refusing to take the other apostles at their word, is most of all proceeding from this very thing. He wants to see and experience for himself what the others saw, without relying only on their stories.

But what, then, does Jesus have in mind? Does He have in mind the other apostles? Hardly, since by that time all of them had already seen Him, while only Thomas was being asked to believe others at their word. About whom, then, is the Savior speaking? About those who will believe later? But people always become Christians in the true sense only after living through that personal encounter with the Risen One without which one can speak of Christianity only conditionally. How, then, can one believe "without seeing"? Evidently, only through the testimony of those whose witness reveals the life of the Kingdom brought into the world by Jesus. Such testimony can become the beginning of a spiritual path, although, of course, if the one who has begun it is consistent, a personal meeting with the risen Jesus will take place sooner or later in his life as well.

And Jesus, of course, understands that the Church remains the Church only as long as it is capable of such witness. And He calls blessed those who will have to enter this true Church.