Doubting Thomas

For over a decade, I belonged to St Thomas the Apostle parish in Smyrna GA. The parish during that time was staffed by Missionaries of laSalette. For 5 years, one of the priests was a citizen of India, know as Fr Joy.

While at the church, Fr Joy arranged a donation of a larger than life portrait of the Saint from his home country, where St Thomas was said to have evangelized.

The painting is remarkable in a way that led me to the insight I am about to relate.

The saint is shown facing forward, with one hand raised. Several of the fingers are up and several are folded down. The upraised fingers are shown red, as if he had just removed them from Jesus' wounded hand.

One commentator, who I deeply admire and respect, at the link describes Jesus as scarred. But if Jesus presented himself to Thomas as scarred, there would have been no blood. I think a better word is wounded. Wounds ooze blood. Once healed, they do not.

When I first meditated on this, it came to me that presents an opportunity to think about healing.

I think most people like to think of healing as restoration to a prior condition. That seems to be the goal of medicine today. Scars are viewed as undesireable. The commentator linked to above held in his parable that scars can be a badge of honor.

Wounds, on the other hand, seem to be thought of as unhealed. Which made the painting of Thomas so remarkable. At the time of the encounter of Jesus with Thomas, he was resurrected. I think most Christians would hold that resurrection is a kind or class of healing.

Was the artist rejecting that notion?

I think not. I think that rather the artist was presenting a deep insight into what might be healing.

We use the term "breaking open the word" to describe exegesis of the scriptures. The scriptures speak of "breaking open hearts", esecially those that might have hardened.

I have experienced the brokenness of divorce and of involuntary unemployment -- the latter four times. I find that having been wounded injured by these events, I was also in some sense broken open. I can empathize more and better now. I can accept the metaphor of scarred, but find wounded better because the brokenness has not gone away.

Nor is it unwelcome.

Let us pray for all who have experienced brokenness or are going through it at this moment, that they will experience like Thomas the Lord, in, b and through whose wounds we are saved.