Acts 5:12-16 / Apocalypse 1:9-13, 17-19 / John 20:19-31
It has been a week since we celebrated Easter Sunday. It would certainly be nice to take a break and have a little rest.
Because Lent is a spiritually packed season, with a sharp emphasis on prayer, penance and almsgiving, along with the Way of the Cross, Confessions, etc.
All that reaches its peak with Holy Week and especially at the Holy Triduum, where Maundy Thursday moves on to Good Friday and into Easter Vigil and then Easter Sunday.
We can imagine the physical state of the priests on Easter Sunday evening, almost like a state of spiritual comatose. It was a long week with a busy weekend.
There is this so-called Easter joke, of a boy who came home after a long day at school. He told his mother that he has a stomach ache.
His mother told him, “That’s because there is nothing in your stomach. You’ve got to put something in it.” And she quickly prepared some food which he ate and he felt better.
On Easter Sunday, the boy went with his parents for the evening Mass. After Mass, they met the priest at the entrance. The priest shared with them that it was a long and tiring weekend and that he was having a headache.
Then the boy remembered what his mother told him and he said to the priest, “Father, you are having a headache because there is nothing in your head. You need to put something into your head.”
Stomach ache or headache or backache, if it’s not serious, can be cured and we can get better quickly if there is the correct medicine.
But there are some pains that are difficult to cure. It is not so much a physical pain like a headache or stomachache, but rather spiritual, like a heartache.
Heartaches are difficult to cure because there is no medication for it, and what is needed is not so much a cure but more of a healing.
It can be said that the disciples in the gospel were suffering heartaches from a number of causes. There was guilt from betraying and denying and deserting Jesus, there was the fear of the Jews, their faith was broken and the future was just blank hopelessness.
It was a heartache that no medicine can cure because it was more than a physical pain – it was a spiritual pain that required a spiritual healing.
It was in this state of utter despair that the Risen Lord Jesus came and stood among them, and His first words were “Peace be with you”.
And that was what the disciples needed most. Jesus came not to settle scores but to sooth the sore and painful hearts that were broken with guilt and pain.
And Jesus even came back again eight days later just for Thomas, who had said, “Unless I see the holes that the nails made in His hands and can put my finger into the holes they made, and unless I can put my hand into His side, I refuse to believe.”
We can understand how the disciples and especially Thomas felt. With a shattered faith and blank hopelessness, it was very difficult to believe, especially in something like the Resurrection.
Just a week ago, on Easter Sunday, when the whole Church was celebrating the joy of the Resurrection, terrorists attacked and bombed three churches and four luxury hotels in Sri Lanka, leaving more than 250 people dead.
One of the targets of the horrendous Easter Sunday bombings was St. Anthony’s Church, which is renowned as a place of worship open to all faiths. But the bombings have shut its doors for now. For the first time in its 175-year history, people can’t go into the church. In fact, all worship services have been suspended throughout Sri Lanka.
The church is fondly called a “miracle church” because her patron, St. Anthony, has a reputation of a “miracle worker”, and no prayer request, no matter how big or small or strangely specific, is left unanswered by St. Anthony, as the people would testify.
But on Monday, despite the church grounds being cordoned off and no one was allowed to enter the church, still a large crowd gathered around the perimeter, staring at the building, praying perhaps. Faith is shaken and broken, like the disciples in the gospel.
They have witnessed horrendous carnage and the loss of innocent lives. So will the horror erode the people’s faith in the power of God and of the Church?
Fr. Leo Perera, a Sri Lankan priest has this to say: You cannot keep people away from here just because of something like this. They will keep coming back because this is the time they need the presence of God in their lives. In no way this will affect the state of the Church and the faith of her believers.
Maybe this explains why many people still came together to stand in front of the church. Yes, they come to express sadness and horror at what took place at the church. Yet they came to express hope.
In the darkness of the hour, the church continues to be a symbol of hope, with many Sri Lankans choosing to stand together despite the terror and horror that have unfolded before their eyes.
And with the church closed and worship services suspended for the time being, the Risen Lord Jesus now goes out to stand amongst the people.
The Risen Lord Jesus stands among them to heal their heartaches and despair and to bring them peace.
We too must stand with the Church and the people of Sri Lanka and to offer prayer for them, since they can’t even go to church to pray.
And let us also learn from them and see how the Risen Lord Jesus will heal their heartaches with His peace.
Their heartaches are also a mirror of our own heartaches. Their healing will also give us hope that our own heartaches will be healed.
That is the power of the Risen Lord Jesus. His peace and His mercy is what is needed to heal our heartaches and the heartache of the world.