NOTES for Joh 20:20-22

"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, 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.