Today’s Gospel - we can get in the weeds identifying with doubting Thomas. I get it. I certainly do. I wish the Lord would appear in front of me right now and show me his wounds. That he would stand in front of me and dispel all the doubts that run around in my brain. But then I wonder, would even that be enough?
But Thomas isn’t the point of today’s Gospel. The most important thing in today’s Gospel, or at least the line I can’t get out of my head, is this, “Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you.”
Christ came to bring peace to humanity, and he won that peace for us by destroying the power of sin and conquering death so that we would be reconciled to the Father. This is all done, though. So what is there to do now?
“As the Father has sent me, so I send you.”
If we are sent, just as Christ was, then we are called to live in the hope of the resurrection. We are called to recognize our identity as sons and daughters of God. As children of God, we are called to step forward and claim our inheritance. We can do this by imitating the life of our Savior.
How did he live? He loved his Father in Heaven above all things: staying behind in the temple at 12, finding deserted places to pray, never losing sight of his Father, even as his humanity was overwhelmed with sorrow and grief on the Cross.
He loved his neighbor as well. He then healed the sick, cast out demons, brought sight to the blind, gave hope to the poor, and even raised the dead to life. He would forgive sins, which are the deeper, more painful, but hidden wound that prevents true healing of the human heart. These works of mercy were not some side-show on MERCYTOUR 33AD, there were works of Christ loving his neighbor.
This is what we are called to imitate: We are to love God with our entire heart, mind, soul, and strength; We are to love our neighbor as ourself. When we follow these commands, we do more than just imitate Christ. When we live these commandments, we participate in his mission and in his life.
But, like we can get bogged down with Thomas’s doubt in today’s Gospel, we can get bogged down with the sins we are running from, the struggles with faith we might have, or even a preoccupation over our own salvation. We can easily get stuck here, circling the threshold but never taking possession of the amazing inheritance God has invited each of us to receive. We miss that we have already been saved, and we were saved for life in God, so that we may become like God, and all we really need to do is actually live like children of God. If we live this way, we are running away from evil, yes, but we aren’t necessarily running to life with God.
This Sunday, we celebrate First Communion in our parish for many of our children. When we receive the Eucharist, as these children will receive for the first time, we are receiving God himself. We are being transformed into God’s children, because when we receive the Eucharist we are being invited to be in relationship with God more intimately than at any other moment of our lives. We are being united with the source of all creation and, hopefully, allowing him to make us into what he always created us to be. This is made clear in the prayer the priest recites as he pours the wine and water into the chalice at the offertory, “by the mystery of this water and wine may we come to share in the divinity of Christ who humbled himself to share in our humanity.”
Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you.
We are called to be sons and daughters of God whose inheritance is eternal life and peace with God. Our mission is to love God and our neighbors. What do we need to turn over to God so that we can stop focusing on what we’re running from and start focusing on who we are running to?