As a child, I was always afraid to tell my parents that I fell down somewhere and was wounded. However, the longer I hid the longer I suffered! My childhood tendency to hide my wounds has a bearing on the feast we celebrate on July 3, the feast of St. Thomas the Apostle.

John builds up the background of the post-resurrection appearances of Jesus to the disciples in the context of a mounting tension between the Jews and disciples. Jesus appears to the disciples while they were in absconding. Although, the gospel is silent about where Thomas was out for, it just tells that he was not with them – with them, who were afraid to go public as the follower of Jesus. Probably this would be the reason why Thomas poured out his emotions upon being excluded from the vision of the Risen Lord.

Thomas could not understand the logic why the Lord let him off, who unlike the rest did not sit locked up in a hideout, but was looking squarely to walk the talk he declared weeks before, “Let us go and die with him (Jn 11:16).” In a moment of despair and incredulity, Thomas yelled at his privileged companions, “unless I see in his hands the mark of the nails, and place my finger into the mark of the nails, and place my hand into his side, I will never believe (Jn. 20:25).”

Between the lines of Thomas demanding Jesus to show his wounds, the evangelist is actually showing the deep, bloody wound of Thomas himself – the wound of abandonment, desertedness and disbelief!

In Hermann Hesse’s book Siddhartha, there is a striking moment when the character Siddhartha, having deeply wounded by the unexpected tragedies of life finally presents his wound to a ferryman: “While he was still speaking, still admitting and confessing, Siddhartha felt more and more that this was no longer a human being, who was listening to him, that this motionless listener was absorbing his confession into himself like a tree absorbs the rain, that this motionless man was the river itself, that he was God himself, that he was eternal itself.”

Similarly, when Thomas presented his wounds to the Risen Lord, the Lord intervenes and heals his wounds. Thus, the feast of St. Thomas is an opportunity to present our wounds to the Lord – the wounds of loneliness, unwantedness, abuses, weaknesses etc… Happy Feast to all!