NOTES for Joh 20:29

This verse is often mentioned, when discussions begin about how was the one who saw the Passions of Jesus Christ. He's usually perceived as comforting for us, who have never seen Christ alive: we haven't seen, but all the same we believe, although our faith has fewer bases, than that of the apostles who saw the personification of the living God. Having read the descriptions of the Passions in all evidence, it is unnecessary to watch the movie itself, in order to acknowledge that the death of Jesus was painful and awful. And so "Blessed are they that have not seen, and yet have believed" means completely a different thing. "Blessed" not because the faith of those who haven't seen makes them directly holy; we are blessed, which means happy, because we didn't see the Crucifixion. It is easier for us to believe that Jesus is risen, since we didn't see His death, we didn't see in which degree it was genuine, we could never imagine in fact that our God was a corpse, that there is hope no more. All the same, the Passion Week is already dedicated in our lives by the light of the forthcoming resurrection - and that is our happiness, our blissfulness. This doesn't mean that we shouldn't try to feel the most profoundly possible the pain of the crucifixion; some succeed to feel it with almost the same power, with which the Mother of God felt it, to some are given stigmas, but they are also given faith , such that no pain can obstruct to believe the resurrection.

How are we to understand these words of the risen Lord? Are those who saw the Risen One from the dead with their own eyes not more blessed, those in whose lives this turning point clearly and irrevocably took place, the undeniable awareness that death has been conquered by the life of Jesus? And finally, why did the "other disciple," in whom we can easily recognize Jesus' beloved disciple, not enter the tomb at first, having seen only a "hint" of the unexpected victory: the face cloth? What would our faith be without the Gospel accounts of the Resurrection, and what would Thomas's faith have been without his meeting with the risen Jesus? Faced with these difficult questions, we can try to reflect on the basic question of our relationship with the Risen One: the relationship between knowledge from experience, the witness of the Gospel, and faith as an incomprehensible contact with the One who conquered death.

The first thing that comes to mind about Thomas is that he is a person like many of us, combining faith with little faith. But Thomas differs from us in this: although he was nicknamed unbelieving, he nevertheless possessed far greater faith than many of us who would like to compare our excessive rational skepticism, which eats away at the soul, with Thomas's desire to find firm foundations for faith. Let us not forget that Thomas was ready to follow the Teacher to the end, and he proved this by his whole life. But what is true is true: it was hard for him to trust immediately any news he heard; he wanted confirmation and proof.

There is truth in such caution: how many rumors there are about "spiritual manifestations" produced by a game of telephone or by hallucinations, or even coming from a poisoned source. Christ, by the way, did not reject Thomas's desire to be convinced through personal verification, and He gave him that opportunity.

There are iconographic depictions in which Thomas literally puts his finger into Christ's wound, but the Gospel text does not say that he used the opportunity given to him. It tells something else: immediately after Christ invited him to put his hand into His side, Thomas confessed Him as his Lord and God. Christ did not count Thomas's doubts as sin.

No doubts, not one difficult question, will in the end remain without God's answer. Only let doubts not become a pretext for the self-assertion of a proud sophist, who, like Pilate, rejects the possibility of knowing the truth, but instead arise from a conscientious desire to overcome the difficulties on the way to it.

"Do not be unbelieving, but believing" (John 20:27). The meaning of these words pulses in this, or a similar, expression in the hearts of a vast number of people. Someone prays for relatives and loved ones who have not yet turned to God, someone prays for passersby, someone asks for faith for himself. But before anything else, these words were born in the heart of God. He brought us into life for fruitful cooperation with Him in love and, naturally, in faith in what He reveals to us. The Lord longs for our salvation more than anyone in the world, more than our relatives and even more than we ourselves do. And the one who believes in the Lord receives eternal life (see John 11:25-26).

That is precisely why He longs for faith for us. Every day He knocks at the doors of our hearts (see Rev 3:20). Every day, seeing the fire dying down, He sends miracles, great and small, repeating the words: "Do not be unbelieving, but believing."

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.

When reading the accounts of the Resurrection, the fact becomes obvious that the apostles, despite everything Jesus had told them during His earthly ministry, were completely unprepared for the meeting with the Risen One. John does not mention the burial garments ("linen wrappings") by chance; they were what first made the apostles think that 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 fabric. Meanwhile the apostles saw the shroud in which Jesus' body had been wrapped not only whole, but evidently not even disturbed, so that the head covering with which the head of the deceased was usually bound ("the face cloth," v. 7) remained lying separately, apparently in the place where the Savior's head had been before the resurrection. There was no way to explain what had happened except as a miracle. But the apostles, apparently, still did not understand very well what exactly had happened.

Of course, Mary Magdalene saw the risen Jesus at that same time in the garden and immediately reported this to the apostles (vv. 11-18), but her testimony was probably not enough for them. The real meeting took place that same evening (vv. 19-23), and then the apostles were finally able to be convinced that their Teacher was truly alive. Jesus does not accidentally give them the opportunity to look at His hands, feet, and side (v. 20): the marks of the wounds were meant to convince the apostles that before them was not a ghost, not a shadow that had come out of the tomb, as they might have thought after hearing from Mary Magdalene that the Risen One did not allow her to touch Him (v. 17).

This was extremely important, for the issue was not only the Person of the Risen One, but also the nature of the Kingdom. If it were no different from the world of shadows and spirits, then its influence on the world would be no stronger than the influence exerted on it by shadows and spirits, which can sometimes reveal their presence but are unable to affect the existing order of things seriously, and still less can they change it radically, in the way the world changes when it becomes part of the Kingdom.

But, evidently, for all its objectivity and tangibility, the Kingdom still differs in some essential ways from our world, which is not yet transformed. It is not by chance that the Lord nevertheless places Thomas's desire to feel Jesus' wounds with his own hands below trust in testimony (vv. 24-29). After all, the main thing in the Kingdom is determined by trust - trust in God, trust in Jesus, trust in one another. It is the foundation of everything. Without it there is no Kingdom. And it cannot depend on the possibility of touching with one's hands what one believes in or the one whom one trusts. Not because this is forbidden, but because the main thing in the Kingdom cannot be touched with hands. The main thing in the Kingdom can be touched only with the heart. And everyone who wants to live the life of the Kingdom must be ready for this.