SHOW ME!

 A REFLECTION FOR LOW SUNDAY

The nickname of the State of Missouri is the “Show Me State.”  The people of Missouri have somehow earned the reputation for not being gullible, not putting too much faith in what they hear.  On the face of it, that seems like a prudent approach to life, especially in these days when there’s so much fake news, when the Internet contains the slanted perceptions and twisted truths of everyone who knows how to type.  It’s true, we shouldn’t believe everything we read.  It must first be tested and proved, particularly when we don’t know whether we can trust the source.

It's a different story, though, when we do know and trust the person who gives us a first-hand account.  Our testing of what he tells us needs not to be quite so rigorous.  We trust he would not lie to us.  And yet, maybe he’s mistaken?  We might trust him, but we still need to verify.

 St. Thomas the Apostle didn’t come from Missouri, but he was still a “show-me” kind of man.  He was prudent enough not to trust everything people told him.  And when the Apostles came to him with the astonishing story that our Lord had risen from the dead, well, that was just a bit too much for him to swallow, and so he demanded proof.  Maybe he thought they were lying to him.  More likely though, he just assumed they were mistaken and that whoever they had seen was simply someone else.  A case of mistaken identity.  We’re tempted to excuse the reluctance of St. Thomas to believe what, after all, was a pretty incredible story.

The problem with St. Thomas, though, was that he didn’t have faith.  Not in the other apostles, who most certainly could have been mistaken or lying.  But it was his faith in God that failed him.  He chose to ignore what St. Mary Magdalene had told him just a week before, how two angels had appeared to her, saying “He is not here, but is risen: remember how he spake unto you when he was yet in Galilee, saying, The Son of man must be delivered into the hands of sinful men, and be crucified, and the third day rise again.”  As they listened to the words of Mary Magdalene, the apostles “remembered his words” and were already predisposed to believing in the Resurrection when our Lord appeared to them.  St. Thomas, however, wasn’t there, and his doubts persisted.  His faith in the apostles was certainly not enough and he was easily able to dispel their claims as a simple mistake.  But his faith in those words of the Son of God?  The God who can neither deceive nor be deceived, who cannot lie nor make mistakes?

Then finally he saw Christ.  He started to doubt his doubts, but still had a hard time believing.  Show me!  First the hands – what did they look like?  Were they blood-stained, with nail wounds oozing congealed blood?  No.  This was now our Lord’s glorified body.  His hands just had holes that you could see through, put your fingers through.  Thomas began to believe as he looked down next to the feet through whose holes he could see the earth below.  Finally, he came to the hole in Christ’s side.  He hesitated to persist in his wish to place his finger into that hole.  But our Lord made him.  What did he feel?  He put his hand on the Sacred Heart, beating within this mortal wound, a living person with a fatal wound that is not survivable.

A feeling of horror that he had doubted now dawns on St. Thomas like a bolt of lightning—I’ve doubted God, I’ve forced him to prove his words to me.  I’ve refused to believe this man who for me was subjected to these holy wounds.  A sickening thud in his stomach as he realizes what he’s done.  He falls to his knees and adores what he now knows to be God.  “My Lord and my God!”  It was a life-changing experience.  From that moment on St. Thomas saw everything, everything, in his life, through a different prism of what is real and true, and what isn’t.  He preached as far as India.  Finally, he died a martyr, willingly following in the sufferings of the Lord and God he would now adore for all eternity.