Locked Doors
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This past Sunday, we hear the “Doubting Thomas” passage from the Gospel of John. I call it that because that’s what we often refer to it as, and it’s the main focus of homilies. And even though Thomas has a strong faith, so much so that he’s one of the few outside the main Apostles who says something more than once in the Gospels, this is what he’s known for and often referred to as.
But maybe he’s not as bad as the rest of the Apostles. After all, the setting begins with the disciples, in fear of the Jewish leaders, hiding behind locked doors. This is Easter Sunday, and they were told by Mary Magdalene that she saw Christ.
Yet these guys are still hiding out of fear.
So why wasn’t Thomas with them? Maybe he heard Mary’s witness and went out boldly to look for him. Maybe the reason he wanted to see Jesus himself wasn’t because he doubted God, but because he doubted the other disciples, because they were envious of Thomas’ boldness and he wondered if they were making it up to try to make themselves feel better for hiding.
Maybe this passage is more about trusting the witness of the Apostles (aka the Church) regardless of some of their actions. That we can know that the bread is truly Christ’s Flesh and the wine is truly His Blood when it is consecrated in the Holy Mass, whether we can actually see, feel, smell, or taste Him or not.
So that’s not what I intended to talk about, but it just came out as I was writing and I’m going to leave it there.
Back to the locked doors…
When we read this passage, as noted before, Thomas is the main character. But look at the context – first time Jesus appears is Sunday. Thomas wasn’t there. The next time, Thomas is there. And we get this beautiful profession of faith from him – “My Lord and my God!”
But where does Jesus appear? In the same place. With the doors locked again. Jesus has already appeared to them, and He’s breathed the Holy Spirit on them, commissioning them to go out and forgive (or retain) sins.
Yet these guys are still hiding out of fear (it doesn’t say it’s out of fear this time, but with everything else being the same, why would they lock the doors?).
We are the disciples behind locked doors.
Week after week. We come to Mass. We hear the Word of God, we pray the prayers, we see and consume Jesus. And then we are commissioned to go out in the world. But do we actually do anything different with out lives? Do we try to become who God created us and continuously calls us to be?
Most of us don’t. We might not lock the doors when we attend Mass, but we keep whatever we believe, whatever we hear, and whatever we commit to locked up.
Fr. Aidan Kavanagh writes in his book, On Liturgical Theology, that in worship we are often brought to “the edge of chaos,” because what God challenges us to do with our lives would drastically change how we live. It doesn’t often feel like that, likely because we aren’t really paying attention. We aren’t taking the message to heart, into our daily lives, because we’ve heard it so many times. We also get distracted by everything else that demands our attention, or so we put our faith – and God – on the backburner. But if we really, sincerely think about it, what Christ leads us to do with our lives is crazy. Do you actually love you enemies? Do you truly humble yourself when faced with opposition or challenges? Do you honestly die to ourselves? Maybe sometimes, but it is easy to make excuses.
It’s also so incredibly easy to just point fingers at all the people who we see as worse than us. And I am so guilty of this. Often times I hear a message at Mass, and my immediate thought is of someone in my life who I think really needs to hear it. Only if I’m fortunate do I realize that it’s me who really needs to hear it.
And so, over 2,000 years later, many of us continue to hide our faith – and our mission – behind the locked doors of our hearts. Let’s try to make next Sunday – and every day after – a little different.
