John 20:24Meaning & Commentary from the Church Fathers

Trusting in the intercession of the Apostle and martyr Thomas, I will preach first about his doubt, and then about his confession, the support and foundation of our Church.

When the doors were shut, the Savior entered to His disciples and again departed as He had entered. Thomas alone was absent.

But this too was a work of the divine dispensation, so that the disciple’s absence might become the occasion of greater immovability and firmness. If Thomas had been present, he certainly would not have doubted.

If he had not doubted, he would not have investigated carefully. If he had not investigated, he would not have handled. If he had not handled, he would not have proclaimed Him Lord and God.

If he had not called Christ Lord and God, we would not have been taught to hymn Him in this way. Thus, even by not being present, Thomas led us to the truth.

And when he came afterward, he made us firmer in faith.

I have come, friends, to pay you a debt. My debt is of such a kind that it enriches me as I pay it and benefits you as you receive it.

Now, fulfilling my promise, I wish again to speak with you about Thomas. At first he did not believe in the Resurrection of the Savior. Then, after he saw and handled, he believed in Christ and called Him Lord and God.

Therefore I call you to attention. I ask you to entreat holy Thomas, that he may place upon my lips his holy right hand, which handled the Master’s side.

May he strengthen my tongue to explain what you so greatly desire. Receive my weak words in silence and calm, that you may draw from them at least some small benefit.

When our Savior tore open the all-devouring womb of Hades and became the firstborn from the dead, He appeared to His disciples through closed doors. Then “Thomas, one of the Twelve, called the Twin, was not with them.”

O what a wonder! The object of desire appeared, but the one who desired Him was not there. The good Shepherd stood before His flock, but the sheep was wandering outside the fold, or better, outside the enclosure.

The King of heaven came in person, but the soldier was far from the divine camp. This happened, that Thomas was then absent, according to a mysterious divine dispensation.

If he had been present, he would not have doubted. If he had not doubted, he would not have handled Him. If he had not handled, he would not have believed in this way.

If he had not believed in this way, he could not have taught us to believe. Thus the unbelief of the disciple becomes the mother of our faith.

For we, who have not seen Christ, worship Him precisely because Thomas saw Him and worshiped Him. We, who have not handled the Unapproachable One, hymn Him because he embraced the Master with his own hands and hymned Him: “My Lord and my God” (Jn 20:28).

Perhaps he thought he would be altogether deprived of this vision. He certainly knew that the Lord is Life by nature, and that He is not powerless to escape even death itself and destroy the power of corruption.

He who drove this away from others, would He not remove it from His own flesh? Yet because of very great joy, Thomas draws near to unbelief.

With a strong and swift impulse, as it were, he longs to see Him already present and to be fully assured that He has lived again, according to the promise He had given.

For the Savior said: “Little children, a little while, and you will no longer see Me. And again a little while, and you will see Me, and your heart will rejoice” (Jn 16:16, 22).

I think this temporary lack of faith in the disciple was most providential. Through his assurance, we also, who live after him, might believe without doubt that the Father through the Son gave life to the flesh which hung upon the tree and underwent death.

Therefore Paul also says: “If you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved” (Rom 10:9).

The nature of flesh was not of itself able to give life. Rather, this work was accomplished by the operation of the ineffable and divine Nature, to which by nature belongs the power to make all things live.

Thus the Father acted through the Son upon that divine temple, the body of Christ. This was not because the Word was powerless to raise His own body.

It was because whatever the Father does, He must do through the Son. The Son is the power of the Father, and whatever the Son does is undoubtedly from the Father.

Therefore, by the small lack of faith of blessed Thomas we are taught that the mystery of resurrection is accomplished upon our earthly body and, as in the firstfruits of the race, in Christ.

We are taught that this was neither a phantom nor a shadow, as some suppose, appearing in human form and falsely assuming the features of our appearance.

Nor was it, as some foolishly claimed, a spiritual body, that is, a most subtle and airy body, or some other body as different from flesh as some understand and accept a spiritual body to be.

After the confession of the Holy and Consubstantial Trinity, the whole meaning of our hope and the power of blameless faith are concentrated and contained in this mystery of the flesh.

For this reason the blessed Evangelist judged it profitable to set this matter forth in the following chapters.

Indeed, notice that Thomas does not merely wish to see the Lord. He requires “the marks of the nails,” that is, the wounds that were in the flesh.

Only in this way, he declares, will he fully believe and agree with the others that Christ has truly lived again. And He lived again, of course, according to the flesh.

For only what has died is naturally conceived as returning to life. Resurrection, of course, belongs only to that in which death had been present.

For the unbelief of Thomas was more useful for our faith than the faith of the believing disciples. When he is brought back to faith through handling, our mind, set above every doubt, is strengthened in faith.

The Lord, after His resurrection, allowed the disciple to doubt, yet did not leave him in doubt. So also before His birth He willed that Mary should have a betrothed, who nevertheless did not enter into marriage with Her.

The disciple who doubted and handled became a witness of the true resurrection, just as the betrothed of the Mother was the guardian of Her most pure virginity.

Why was Thomas not there when the God-man came to the disciples? This was by divine economy, that is, for greater assurance concerning Christ's resurrection.

It is true that the Evangelist is silent about where Thomas then was. Yet since at the time of the saving Passion all the disciples fled and were scattered, it seems very probable that he too, having then been separated from the Apostles, was still in the place where he had hidden.

But another perplexity arises from Thomas's not being there. How did he become a partaker of the grace of the All-Holy Spirit, since he was not with the other disciples when the Lord breathed and said, "Receive the Holy Spirit"?

The manner of this event resolves the perplexity. By God's command Moses chooses seventy elders and writes down their names, so that they may receive grace from God. All these await the grace, standing around the Tabernacle.

Only two men, Eldad and Medad, did not come to the Tabernacle, but remained in the camp. God descends in the cloud into the Tabernacle and gives grace not only to the sixty-eight elders standing before the Tabernacle, but also to the two absent ones, Eldad and Medad.

Both those present and those absent receive grace equally. The Spirit rests both on the sixty-eight who are in the Tabernacle and on the two who are in the camp. Both those in the Tabernacle and those remaining in the camp prophesy equally.

The first do so because they stood before Him, and the second because they had been chosen and enrolled. Divine Scripture says: "Two men remained in the camp; the name of one was Eldad, and the name of the other Medad. And the Spirit rested upon them. They were among those enrolled, but they did not come to the Tabernacle, and they prophesied in the camp" (Num 11:26).

The Old Testament is a prefiguration of the New. Therefore the grace then given to the elders signified the spiritual gift which the holy Apostles afterward received, as great Moses himself testifies, saying: "Would that all the Lord's people were prophets, when the Lord gives His Spirit upon them" (Num 11:29).

Therefore, as Eldad and Medad of old were counted worthy of the prophetic gift while absent, so here Thomas, though absent, received the authority to bind and loose.

Eldad and Medad received the gift because Moses had enrolled them among the seventy elders. Thomas was given the grace of the All-Holy Spirit because Christ had numbered him among the twelve Apostles.

Since Thomas was not found there when Jesus came, [...]

But is this so? Did not the other Apostles seek the very same thing? Did they not examine the wounds of Jesus and handle His side?

Thomas expressed the same general unbelief, but only in a more exact and definite form. This may have depended both on his character and on the manner he adopted for expressing his thoughts.

This is confirmed by the sharp contradiction with which he treated the disciples' testimony that they had seen the Lord. With the Lord's death he considered the whole matter finished. Hope had left his soul.

So when he was told that the Lord was alive, he considered it incredible. The certain deliberateness and intensity, even studied precision, of the speech in which he expressed his unbelief show that this unbelief was considered unbelief.

Moreover, in accordance with his character, it was deep unbelief, which could yield only to such decisive means as he demanded. Yet the depth of his faith afterward corresponded to the depth of this unbelief.