Divine Mercy Sunday

If you watch enough of Dateline, you’ll never answer the phone or email again. Predators are everywhere, we’re told, and we will never be smarter than they are. It’s best to be suspicious of everyone.

I wonder if Thomas had heard reports that Jesus was alive, and his broken heart couldn’t take any more disappointment. It was best to keep his heart hard. Religious zealots were everywhere. Nobody was going to make a fool out of him.

And now his own brothers, the ones who had witnessed Jesus raise Lazarus, met him at the door, ecstatically shouting that they had seen the Lord!

But Thomas would not be fooled. No. “Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands and put my finger into the nail marks, and put my hand into his side, I will not believe.”

You can almost hear the catch in his voice. He’s fighting back tears. He wants to believe with everything in him. But he knows what the Romans did to Jesus. He can’t be alive. Can he?

And then, on the next Sunday night, Jesus appeared again! He went straight for the dumbfounded (and overjoyed!) Thomas. Can you imagine if Jesus took your fingers and placed them over his wounds, and put your hands in his side? You would fall to your knees, like Thomas, and cry, “My Lord and my God!”

After his life-changing experience of the Risen One, Thomas set out to tell the world what he knew. He traveled all over the Middle East and Asia, and eventually died in India, where he is revered among the Indian Christians as the patron saint of India.

He preached the Divine Mercy of Jesus.

Have you had an experience of the Risen Lord?

Kathy McGovern ©2025 www.thestoryandyou.com