During the forty days in which, after his resurrection, the Lord is reported and believed to have appeared to his disciples in diverse ways, not without reason does he serve them by his very word, his very lessons, his very mysteries, and strives, that he may turn the sorrow of the Lord's Passion, being perfected by the manifold sign of the resurrection, into the joy of your charity; and that he who before, by his own power, rose again in our body, may now also, through faith, rise again in our hearts. 'And when it was late that same day, the first of the week, and the doors were shut where the disciples were gathered together for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood in the midst of them' (John 20). 'When it was late':
it was late more by sorrow than by time; it is late when men's minds are darkened by the cloud of grief and sadness. It was late. Because although the dawn had given some indication of the resurrection, yet not yet had the Lord shone upon them with the full brightness of his own light. 'And when the doors were shut where the disciples were gathered together for fear of the Jews.' The greatness of the terror and of the crime had, by so great a whirlwind, at once shut in the house of the disciples and their hearts, and had so barred every entrance of light, that, their senses being more and more occupied by grief, the blind spreading of night was increased. No darkness of night is to be compared to the gloom of grief and dread, because it can be tempered by no light of consolation or of counsel. Hear the Prophet:
'Fear and trembling came upon me, and darkness covered me' (Ps. 54). 'And when the doors were shut where the disciples were gathered together for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood in the midst of them.' I ask, why is it doubted that the absolute Divinity could penetrate the secret of a closed body, and a dwelling of virginity barred in whole integrity—which after the resurrection of our body, thickened by mystery, enters and goes out through shut doors, and by such a sign shows itself the Author of every creature, to which no creature resists, which every creature serves in all things?
But if virginity knows not how to excuse conception and childbirth to its own Creator, if a closed door cannot deny entrance and exit to its own Creator, in what manner could the stone of the tomb, however great, however sealed by Jewish malice, resist the rising Saviour? But just as virginity and the door make faith of his deity by their own barriers, so the rolled-back stone affirms the faith of the resurrection, which, being rolled away, prepared no exit for its Lord, but in the night of faith affords and admits entrance. 'Jesus came and stood in the midst of them, and said to them, Peace be to you.' The hearts of the disciples were sustaining the continual battles of fear and doubt, of despair and hope, of failing and of magnanimity;
foreseeing therefore, as beholder, the wars of such thoughts, he first of all restores the peace of secrets to those who behold him, so that he who, being thus taken away, had left the matter of conflict, being restored to their eyes, might cut off the whole cause of contention. 'The disciples,' it says, 'rejoiced when they saw the Lord.' They rejoiced: as much as light is more welcome after darkness, calm after the gloom of storm, so much more acceptable is joy after grief. He says to them again, 'Peace be to you.' What does this bounty of repeated peace manifest, save that the quiet which he had enjoined upon the senses of each, he wills also to be preserved among them by the gift of repeated peace:
for he knew that they would have no small contests in the future concerning their hesitation, while one might boast that he had stood firm in faith, and another might grieve that he had doubted. Therefore, that he might cut off both the boasting and the swelling of the arrogant, and might heal and shut out the passions of him who had been made weak, the loving Governor, ascribing whatever had happened to the cause, not to the disciples, by the command of his own peace suppressed the wars that were to arise: lest one should reproach the other with what he himself, to whom all was owed, had granted for the future. Peter denies, John flees, Thomas doubts, all forsake him (Matt. 26; Mark 14; John 20):
to whom, had Christ not given his peace, both Peter, who was the first of all, would have been thought inferior, and the one who followed might perhaps have been unduly exalted against the first. 'As the Father hath sent me, so I also send you.' The word of sending does not diminish the Son, but declares that here he willed not the power of the sender, but the charity of the one sent, to be understood, when he says: 'As the Father hath sent me.' Not 'the Lord,' but 'the Father.' 'So I also send you.' Not yet by the authority of one commanding, but with the whole affection of one loving: I send you to the endurance of hunger, to the burdens of chains, to the squalor of prison, to the enduring of every kind of punishment, to the lifting from all men of the execrable yoke of death—all of which charity, surely, and not power, commands to human minds.
'Whose sins you shall forgive, they are forgiven them; and whose you shall retain, they are retained.' He gave the power of forgiving sins, who by his own breathing poured that very Spirit into their hearts and bestowed the Forgiver. 'When he had said this, he breathed on them, saying: Receive ye the Holy Spirit: whose sins you shall forgive, they are forgiven them.' Where are those who prescribe that sins cannot be forgiven to men through men; who oppress with cruel spirit those who have once fallen by the devil's prompting, lest they rise again; who withdraw care from the sick, medicine from the wounded, and deny it; who impiously mock sinners with despair of returning?
Peter forgives sins, and with all joy receives the penitent, and embraces this power granted by God to all priests—Peter, who after his denial, unless he had sought repentance, would have lost alike the glory of the apostolate and his life. And if Peter returned through repentance, who without repentance shall stand? But Thomas, when he had heard from his fellow-disciples that they had seen the Lord, answered: 'Unless I shall see the print of the nails, and put my hand into his side, I will not believe.' Why does Thomas thus require the traces of faith? Why does he so harshly examine one so tenderly suffering, one so tenderly rising? Why does his devout right hand thus reopen those wounds which an impious hand had inflicted?
Why does the hand of one submitting strive to re-probe the side which the lance of an impious soldier laid open? Why does the pitiless curiosity of one serving renew the griefs inflicted by the fury of persecutors? Why does the disciple thus require of the wound, that he may test the Lord by torments, God by punishments, the heavenly Physician by his wound? The power of the devil has fallen, the prison of hell is opened, the chains of the dead are broken, at the Lord's dying the tombs were torn up, and at the Lord's rising the whole condition of death was changed. From the Lord's own most sacred sepulchre the stone was rolled away, the linen cloths were loosed, and at the resurrection unto glory death fled, life returned, the flesh rose again, henceforth to know no fall:
and why, Thomas, do you alone, too cunning an investigator, demand that the wounds alone be presented to you as proof of faith? What if these things had been abolished together with the others—what peril to your faith would this curiosity have brought forth? Do you judge that no memorials of piety, no documents of the Lord's resurrection could have been found, unless with your own hands you furrowed those bowels ploughed by Jewish cruelty? This piety sought, brethren, this devotion demanded, that not even impiety itself should in the future doubt that the Lord had risen. But Thomas took thought not only for his own heart's uncertainty, but for that of all men:
and being about to preach these things among the nations, as a strenuous executor he sought out how he might establish the mystery of so great a faith. Certainly it was prophecy rather than hesitation. For why would he ask such things, unless he had known by prophetic spirit that the wounds alone had been reserved by the Lord as proof of his resurrection? Finally, of his own accord the Lord offered to the rest what this man later implores. 'Jesus came,' it says, 'and stood in the midst, and showed them his hands and his side.' For he who had entered with the doors shut, and was rightly thought by the disciples to be a spirit, could in no other way approve himself to be himself to those thus doubting, save by the very suffering of his body, by the very marks of his wounds.
Finally he came and said to Thomas: 'Put in thy finger hither, and see my hands, and bring hither thy hand, and put it into my side, and be not incredulous, but faithful.' That, when you again open them, these wounds may pour forth faith over the whole world—wounds which have already poured out water for a laver, blood for the price of all. Thomas answered and said: 'My Lord and my God!' Let the heretics come and hear; and, as the Lord said, let them be not incredulous, but faithful. Behold, Thomas crying out makes manifest that Christ is God and Lord not only as to a human body, but through the sufferings of a body subject to pain. And truly he is God, who lives from death, rises from the wound: because when he has undergone such and so great things, God lives and reigns for ever and ever.
Amen. Although some things seem hidden by the depth of their mystery, yet no solemnity of ecclesiastical worship is unfruitful: a divine festival is not to be consecrated according to our wills, but to be perfected according to its own virtues. The Christian mind knows not to bring into despair those things which are of the tradition of the Fathers and strengthened by the times themselves, but desires to venerate them with the whole eloquence of devotion. 'Now about the midst of the feast day,' it says, 'the Lord went up into the temple' (John 7). What temple? 'Know you not that you are the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you?' (1 Cor. 3). Today the Lord has gone up into the temple of our breast, who so mercifully came down into the form of our body:
and that the ascent of God takes place in the height of the human heart, the blessed Prophet asserts when he sings: 'Blessed is the man whose help is from thee, O Lord: he hath disposed ascensions in his heart' (Ps. 83). 'Now about the midst of the feast day, the Lord went up into the temple.' Rightly about the midst of the feast day did the Lord go up into the temple, because he was about to grant us from heaven a perfect feast day: whatever was sublime, whatever tending to heaven was held in human hearts, the weight of the Lord's Passion had bent down even to hell. For this is why Christ for forty days abides and lingers on earth: and, if it be lawful to say so, he defers the meeting with the Father, suspends the Father's embrace, until he reveal himself wholly, and reform us unto the glory of his ascension.
In whose temple, therefore, Christ shall not here have ascended, into heaven that man shall not ascend with Christ. He went up into the temple and taught, and the Jews wondered, saying: 'How doth this man know letters, having never learned?' Well do they wonder at Christ, that without learning he knows, when they themselves are proved not to know the precepts of the law which they had learned and taught, the Lord saying: 'Thou art a master in Israel, and knowest not these things?' (John 3). The Jews wonder, now rebellious, they will not believe: they know how to wonder, they scorn to be wise, they are able to be ignorant. The Jews wondered, saying: 'How doth this man know letters, having never learned?' What the virgin bore, you disparage, you do not wonder at; what God feels and works in our body, you annul, you do not confess;
that the blind sees, the deaf hears, the lame runs, the dead rises, and Christ speaks all the secrets of God—you do not wonder? This alone, that he knows without having learned, this you wonder at? This is he who did not learn letters, but bestowed them; this is he who founded the sense by which letters are shaped; do you wonder that the Author of all, the skilled in the law, did not learn letters? God surely is present, the origin of all, who makes to be what was not; without having learned, he teaches. Not a few things seem to be lacking. Worldly speech, as it is uttered from human sense, serves and yields to human wits; but divine speech is in the power of the giver, not of the speaker. You have heard how that Zacharias, splendour of the high priesthood, fell dumb while he prayed;
the father of the voice was silent—'I am,' he says, 'the voice of one crying in the desert' (John 1); the begetter of the cry fell dumb; and he who had entered to bring back an answer, went out bearing silence. You see therefore that my silence, which before saddened you, comes from the ancient pontifical usage, not from the onset of some novelty. When he perceived that the bonds of his tongue had shut the door of his speech, he commanded by a nod that no one should inquire the causes of his silence, because he who had learned to know had not learned to speak the heavenly mystery: but this for a time, because the priest's word is deferred, not taken away; laid up, not denied; suspended by the mystery, not put to flight. In fine, that Zacharias is silent is not a penalty, but a sign;
it is not earthly weakness, but a heavenly secret; God who gives to speak, makes to be silent; and he commands silence, who implants the word; the divine word rules, it does not serve, because God is the Word; and therefore it speaks not when bidden, but when it bids; not when demanded, but when it grants; not when compelled, but when it comes. Whence, brethren, both when it comes, hear, and when it comes not, be patient; and when it gives itself, receive, and when it denies itself, pray; because the teacher receives that which the hearer deserves. Therefore the word was as much suspended for you as for me during nothing of the past, that our modesty might so conceal the cause of the woman's issue of blood and of the shameful wound, and her shame, that what she was silent about might be closed also by our silence (Matt. 9):
but let us return to the word we had begun. The Jerusalem fountain overflows when the angel stirs it (John 5), not when the drinker thirsts; so the priest's word abounds when God gives, not when the priest holds forth. Hence it is that Zacharias himself, who spoke prophecies to the peoples, is silent for himself, that we may not be ungrateful to God, if he willed us once to be silent, to whom he ever granted the word unoffended. That man disdains not to receive the word from the Son, to whom he had given the light: and you, sons, pray for us for a voice, that you may be able to hear the discourse. Restore my joy, that you may be able to possess the accustomed gladness and to fulfil that saying of the Apostle: 'Who is he that maketh me glad, but he who is made sorrowful by me?' (2 Cor. 2).
Let him come, therefore, let blessed Zacharias come into our midst, who by his pious example consoles us as we are silent: and by his own silence he does not suffer us to be sad over our silence. Let him come, let the forerunner of the Word come, the mirror of priesthood, the example of holiness, the prince of evangelists, the conclusion of the prophets. 'There was,' it says, 'in the days of Herod, king of Judaea, a certain priest named Zacharias' (Luke 1). While it is told under what king a certain priest lived, evils are tempered: there is ever consolation in grief, nor is a consoler lacking to him over whom a persecutor impends. 'There was in the days of Herod, king of Judaea, a certain priest named Zacharias.' Up to Herod, priestly holiness, the gravity of elders, the piety of the fathers, presided over the Jewish nation:
divine law was the right, ambition availed nothing there, rashness nothing, presumption nothing, since all was conducted by divine order, not human; but Herod, coming from a foreign nation, invaded the kingdom, violated the priesthood, confounded order, changed customs, spurned the elders, slew the young men, mingled the tribes, destroyed the pedigrees, corrupted the race, took away utterly whatever was of divine and human discipline. But what is this to holy Zacharias? Lest, therefore, any such thing should be believed to have been admitted in Zacharias himself, the Evangelist is compelled to relate thus: 'There was in the days of Herod, king of Judaea, a certain priest named Zacharias, of the course of Abia.'
Because the priestly line, transmitted even to him from forefathers, grandfathers, and fathers, endured, the time of the law and the whole discipline of sacrifice was preserved, in that the priest's merit and manner of life restrained the impiety of the king, the iniquity of the time, the frenzy of ambition, the fury of rashness. But let us hear what follows. 'It came to pass that he should set the incense, having entered into the temple of the Lord, and all the multitude of the people was praying without at the hour of incense.' At the hour of incense, brethren, the sun was now setting in the Jewish temple, that in the Church the morning might rise; and the evening was pressing upon Jewish doctrine, because the dawn of the Gospel was drawing near; the day of the law was darkening, that all might shine again in grace.
Hence it is that Zacharias, at the hour of incense, that is, in the last time of the legal ceremonies, in the prophetic Spirit offers incense: he offers prayers, he presses forward his desires, he commends his vows, he admonishes the time, he repeats the promises, he demands Christ. 'And all the multitude was praying without.' That therefore the people, who stood without, might be admitted, he prays; because those whom the law brings to the door, grace admits into the temple. 'And there appeared,' it says, 'an angel of the Lord, standing on the right side of the altar of incense; and Zacharias seeing him was troubled, and fear fell upon him.' It is no wonder, therefore, if the priest is troubled, if the teacher is amazed, if the prelate is afraid, if he is silent, the least of men, when he sees the greatest, if he abandons words when he beholds signs.
And lest Zechariah alone should seem to have been afraid, hear another prophet saying: 'Lord, I have heard thy report and was afraid; I considered thy works and was terrified' (Habakkuk 3). He who speaks with God is terrified; whence the angel speaks, he knows not. And what do we hold? Let us now say why the priest is silent. And the angel answering said to him: 'I am Gabriel, who stand before the presence of God, and I have been sent to speak these things to you and to bring you this good news; and behold, you shall be silent and unable to speak.' What guilt has one who is silent, if the power of the one commanding imposes the silence? Therefore we too, little as we are, who have been silent — take it that what we passed over in silence was not from forgetfulness but from timing, a matter of divine business, not of human reasoning.
Therefore let us not be sad, because, by God's gift, the silence of a moment shall be repaid by continued discourse, and the little of our sadness shall be turned into great joy. I give thanks to my God, who has turned for me the loss of speech into the gain of love; for how great your charity toward me is, your pallor betrayed, your outcry attested, your tears displayed, and your poured-out prayer made manifest.