HARD TO BELIEVE IN JESUS? YES, AND THANK GOD FOR THAT!

In 2024, the Gospel for the Sunday after Easter (also known as "Octave Sunday") is taken from John 20:19-31.

The previous weeks gospel, also taken from St. John, described the first hint at the resurrection which the Apostles received. Peter and John, running to the tomb, were convinced that the body had not been taken, because the burial wrapping cloths were left behind - the head sheet was even folded neatly and set aside. That's not something body snatchers did back then (surprisingly, theft of corpses was not uncommon in that age).
Obviously, something else was going on, and they were beginning to believe.

But the others were skeptical, even fearful.
The two disciples on the way to Emmaus heard the women’s story about Jesus appearing to Mary Magdalene, but they didn't really believe it....until Jesus appeared to them.
The others were confused, and hid out in the upper room, afraid that the Jewish authorities might arrest them....until Jesus appeared to them.
In 19-31 we read about the Apostle Thomas, who was absent when Jesus came to the rest of the group. Because he missed out, he flatly refused to believe the testimony of the other ten, that they had seen and been with the living Resurrected Jesus.
"Only with my own eyes will I believe it," he stated."
So Jesus made good on that call, and gave Ol' Tom the individual tour of his crucifixion wounds. Thomas THEN believed.

It often surprises, and even amazes us, that the Apostles were ever reluctant, or unable, to believe that Christ had risen from the dead, to live forever in glory with his Father in heaven. But we have the benefit of hindsight, and a comfy chair, whereas they did not.

And we must also remember that during their two or three years with him, they saw a man of flesh and blood. Yes, he was a man with apparent divine powers; he performed obvious miracles which they witnessed.
But that actually was not new in their time. Certain prophets of the old covenant had such powers, also. And the world of Jesus and the disciples had a new prophet showing up each week doing, "miracles." So they were somewhat, well, 'de-sensitized' to such things.

Besides, Jesus had “emptied himself” of God-ly divine nature when he became a man of flesh. He ate, and drank, and sweated and, presumably, pee'd behind the bushes like any other guy. He, himself, didn't glow, or shoot laser beams from his fingers, after all.

And even though he had foretold his resurrection many times, the idea that he could really BE God, as well as a man, was something they could not then grasp. So, they were conflicted; death of His human body was their expected outcome, especially after what they had gone through watching him die.

But we should be eternally grateful for their slowness of faith. It had incalculable value for the future Church, and for all of us.

If they had been expecting the Resurrection, and anxiously looking forward to it, people would say that they imagined it, that they persuaded themselves it had happened.
Indeed, there have been proud men through the ages, full of themselves and their "judgements," that have said that the story of the resurrection is one of a mass hallucination, although the evidence proves otherwise.

They will not change their mind on that, and any evidence is rejected because, after all, they talked themselves into it in the first place. Hallucination - or such contrived imagining as theirs - is born in a mind already expecting a certain outcome. So they stand stubborn, and challenge the Resurrection as a hallucination.

Because of this, we can thank the Apostles, and especially Thomas - the last to give in - that our faith in the Resurrection and divine glorification of Christ is that much the stronger.

Our Scripture passage concludes with this...
"Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of his disciples that are not written in this book. But these are written that you may come to believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that through this belief you may have life in his name.

After Thomas put his own finger into the wound on the side of Jesus, Our Lord said, "...you believe now because you have seen...but truly blessed are those who will believe and not see what you have."

And because Christ Himself was the author of Christianity, our faith did not end before the first Easter week had passed. He rose in glory, and this knowledge spread rapidly to the then known world... and it is still spreading thanks to its divine originator.

In closing, I recall some modern commentator making the unlikely observation that he believes in Christ and His Resurrection, thanks to the Watergate scandal during Nixon's presidency.

In that event, 12 men were party to what was a lie, a secret among themselves - but they could not keep that lie longer than three weeks before it all fell apart.

Yet the disciples of Jesus went on for 40 years, around the world, facing every kind of deprivation, with all but one dying for their faith in the Resurrected Jesus - something they themselves had seen and were party to.
No lie, deception, or supposed hallucination could withstand that sort of test.

How prophetic, then, were the words of the Gamaliel at the meeting of the Sanhedrin which tried to prevent the Apostles from preaching the new Christian faith: “if this plan or work is of men, it will overthrown; but if it is of God, you will not be able to overthrow it” (Acts 5:38-39).

— Adapted from The Sunday Readings , Cycle B, by Fr. Kevin O'Sullivan, O.F.M. at catholicculture.org