Thomas

On Sunday morning the disciples were together with the doors locked for fear of the Jews, and Jesus came in through the wall. He stood in their midst and said to them, “Peace be with you.” When he had said this, he showed them his wounds, all opened in front of them. He didn’t want to hide them. There they were, naked without shame. They were healed, but still open, light shining through them. Jesus was smiling, proud of them, showing them like medals. His hands, palms first, and his feet, bare without shoes, for them to see the holes of the nails. He even opened his garments to show the big wound in his side. Once Saint Josemaria asked the sculptor who was carving an image of Jesus risen from the dead, to emphasised his wounds on the marble, saying: I need to see them. This is how we normally represent Jesus after the resurrection, coming to us with his full body on display.

Why did Jesus show his wounds to the apostles after the resurrection? Four reasons that I can think off. First to show them it was Jesus himself: it is me! I am the same, but different. They were also the proof of his crucifixion. He couldn’t come back to them with no marks; they would have thought he was a ghost. They say that martyrs keep the marks of their torture in their glorified bodies. This is how we represent them, Saint Lucy showing us her eyes on a platter, Saint Sebastian with arrows all through his body, Saint Lawrence holding his grill, Saint Catherine of Alexandria with her spiked wheel. When our Lord appeared to Saint Teresa of Avila as the risen Lord, she said he was the devil. They asked her: How did you know it? She said: He had no wounds.

Secondly, to show them how much he loved them: these are the proofs of my love for you, you can see the signs. They will be with me forever, as a permanent testimony of me being crazy about you. Like those mothers who have gone through a Caesarean section to have their babies, show their scars years later to their kids, a proof of how they came into the world.

Thirdly, please, don’t do it again. This is your doing; look at what you have done to me. Every time you sin you are widening my wounds. We feel bad when we see his wounds. We would have liked them to disappear: out of sight, out of mind. We prefer those sweet images of Jesus, peaceful and smiling. We don’t like to see his wounds, a reminder of all our iniquities.

Fourthly, he opened these wounds in his flesh for us to find refuge. He could have left the nails there, but he wanted them to be free, with open access. We have five doors, five entrances to his humanity. Five places, one specially very close to his heart, where we can find love, atonement and consolation. We have a long tradition of saints showing us how to heal our own scars, going through Jesus’ ones. If he went through his sufferings being innocent, what about us? We are the guilty ones. He became broken to repair our brokenness. As the prophet Isaiah says: “Through his wounds we have been healed.” Going through his wounds, our ones become a source of pride, medals that show a bit of own sufferings for him, a way to give something back.

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