John 20:19-29
Jesus Appears to His Disciples
19 On the evening of that first day of the week, when the disciples were together, with the doors locked for fear of the Jewish leaders, Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you!” 20 After he said this, he showed them his hands and side. The disciples were overjoyed when they saw the Lord.
21 Again Jesus said, “Peace be with you! As the Father has sent me, I am sending you.” 22 And with that he breathed on them and said, “Receive the Holy Spirit. 23 If you forgive anyone’s sins, their sins are forgiven; if you do not forgive them, they are not forgiven.”
Jesus Appears to Thomas
24 Now Thomas (also known as Didymus), one of the Twelve, was not with the disciples when Jesus came. 25 So the other disciples told him, “We have seen the Lord!”
But he said to them, “Unless I see the nail marks in his hands and put my finger where the nails were, and put my hand into his side, I will not believe.”
26 A week later his disciples were in the house again, and Thomas was with them. Though the doors were locked, Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you!” 27 Then he said to Thomas, “Put your finger here; see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it into my side. Stop doubting and believe.”
28 Thomas said to him, “My Lord and my God!”
29 Then Jesus told him, “Because you have seen me, you have believed; blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.”
Yesterday I had a discussion about truth with a gentleman…As we discussed some facets of truth, I quickly saw that truth gets individual and sometimes personal…In the discussion, it came up how seeing things of truth makes truth much easier to understand…You saw something or something happen and that makes it true...But when one is not there to witness the event or the fact or the truth, then truth becomes much more blurred…In my part of the discussion, I tried to explain that there are many things we do not get to see and yet they still are truths…We cannot be eyewitnesses to everything that is truth…There are many, many truths (like all the things that have happened in the past) we will not see and get to examine…And with many truths in the world reality and the truth can become distorted..
There are many truths that happen that really do not mean much to us in the course of our lifetime…But the big Truths, if we cannot see them, mean everything (to us) and then we have to make a decision on what we will believe as truth…These things become especially important when we are talking about God and Jesus…We were not there to witness things in the beginning… And God and Jesus were in the beginning…No one person saw God in the beginning, yet I believe there is a God…But many people did get to see Jesus and were eyewitnesses to Him, and they or those very close to these eyewitnesses wrote about Him in the four gospels…These (the four gospels) are another of the things that are very important to believe as truth, in my opinion…We weren't there with Jesus or when the writings of the four books took place, but we still can believe that the writings of the books happened…Now to believe what is written in the four gospels is another story and something else we can either believe in on not believe in...I believe it is important for each of us to know what we personally believe in...
Because we did not see certain Truths, does that dilute these truths?…I think it does for some people…But it doesn't have to and again, it depends on what one believes...If more people could see Jesus and He still physically walk the earth personally, He might have more followers, but this is only a guess…
St. John tells us about the story of Doubting Thomas and his inability to believe his friends and Disciples that they had seen Jesus after His death…Even though ten very close friends would have told Thomas what they had seen, he could not believe that Jesus was alive until he saw Jesus with his own eyes…Thomas did not see it, so he could not believe this Truth...Each of us individually and personally are the ones who make up and think up what we are going to believe in…We sculpt our own belief system over our lifetime...Truth was personal and individual to St. Thomas, just as I think it is personal and individual to each of us…