"My Lord and My God!"

By Phil Wood

Now Thomas (also known as Didymus), one of the Twelve, was not with the disciples when Jesus came. So the other disciples told him, "We have seen the Lord!"

But he said to them, "Unless I see the nail marks in his hands and put my finger where the nails were, and put my hand into his side, I will not believe."

A week later his disciples were in the house again, and Thomas was with them. Though the doors were locked, Jesus came and stood among them and said, "Peace be with you!" Then he said to Thomas, "Put your finger here; see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it into my side. Stop doubting and believe."

Thomas said to him, "My Lord and my God!"

Then Jesus told him, "Because you have seen me, you have believed; blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed."

                                                                                    John 20:24-29

As we live into Eastertide, and track with what happened after Jesus rose from the grave, we see that this is the time, about a week after Jesus first came to the disciples, when Thomas came to grips with the amazing, unbelievable thing that had happened – and the stunning realization of who it was he had been following the past three years.

I would like to challenge you this morning to spend some time contemplating the painting below by Caravaggio, a 16th century Italian painter. Seriously, find a quiet place to sit, where you will not be distracted, and simply gaze at this painting for several minutes.

Let your eyes wander over the scene as a whole, just taking in the situation. What exactly is happening, who is doing what?

Let your eyes come to rest on the face of Jesus. What do you see there?

Bring your eyes to rest on the face of Thomas and imagine yourself in his place at the time when this was really happening. What are you feeling as Jesus takes your hand and guides it toward the hole in his side? What is your reaction at that moment when the truth rushes in?

"My Lord and my God!"

Dwell in that moment, let that truth wash over you, and let the Holy Spirit guide your thoughts...

Caravaggio was a master of chiaroscuro, the use of light and shadow to achieve a sense of volume in modeling three-dimensional figures in a two-dimensional work. In this work entitled, "The Incredulity of Saint Thomas," the artist uses a dark background to make these figures, modeled by light and shadow, stand out.

But that dark background has another purpose. It abstracts the scene from its setting, freeing it from a specific time or place to show that this encounter of faith is not tied to a historic moment but to an eternal truth – one that affects us all even 2000 years after the fact.

Br Andres Colmenares, LC, in a Legionary Brothers blog, points out, "We have all gone through one stage of our life or another when living our Christian faith was more difficult than normal. Something happens that makes us put into question the very beliefs that were inscribed in our hearts. But Christ's constant yearning is for us to 'Believe and doubt no longer.'"

Perhaps you're going through a time like that right now. But let not your heart be troubled. As Br Andres suggests, you can go to Jesus now, let him take your hand and direct it toward his wound, so that all doubts might be dispelled and you can say from your heart, "My Lord and my God."

"Art can warm even a chilled and sunless soul to an exalted spiritual experience. Through art we occasionally receive – indistinctly, briefly – revelations the likes of which cannot be achieved by rational thought.

"It is like the small mirror of legend: you look into it but instead of yourself you glimpse for a moment the Inaccessible, a realm forever beyond reach. And your soul begins to ache..."

                                                                        Alexander Solzhenitsyn