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The two disciples on their return to Jerusalem found the Apostles in varying degrees of unbelief. It is likely that Thomas was with the Apostles in the early part of the evening, but left early. The disciples of Emmaus had seen the Resurrection first with the eyes of the mind and then with the eyes of the body. The Apostles would see it first with the eyes of the body and then with the eyes of the mind.
The place where the disciples were assembled that Easter Sunday evening was the Upper Room; where Our Lord gave the twelve the Eucharist, only seventy-two hours before. Added to the doubts of the disciples was fear which prompted them to close the doors and to bolt them, lest the representatives of the Sanhedrin break in to arrest them on the false charge of stealing the Body. There was also a dread that possibly the people might storm, as they often did, the house of those who were unpopular. Though the doors were shut, suddenly in the midst of them appeared the Risen Lord, greeting them with the words:
Peace be upon you.
LUKE 24:36
He bade the women at the grave, who were plunged in grief, to rejoice; but now, having brought about peace by the Blood of the Cross, He came in His own Person to bestow it. Peace is the fruit of justice. Only when the injustice of sin against God had been requited could there be an affirmation of true peace. Peace is the tranquility of order, not tranquility alone; for robbers can be tranquil in the possession of their spoils. Peace also implies order, the subordination of the body to the soul, of the senses to reason, and of the creature to the Creator. Isaias said there was no peace to the wicked because they are at enmity with themselves, with one another, and with God.
Now the Risen Christ stood among them as the new Melchisedech, the Prince of Peace. Three times after His Resurrection, He gave the solemn benediction of peace. The first was while the Apostles were terrified and frightened; the second, after He gave proof of His Resurrection; and the third, a week later when Thomas was with them.
The Apostles believed at first that they had seen a Spirit; despite the words of the women, the testimony of the disciples of Emmaus, the empty sepulcher, the angelical vision, and the recital of Peter of his interview with the Risen One. His Presence, they admitted to themselves, could be accounted for in no natural way, since the doors were barred. Reproving them for their unbelief, as He did the disciples of Emmaus, He said to them:
What, are you dismayed?
Whence come these surmises in your hearts?
LUKE 24:38
He showed them His hands and His feet, which had been pierced with nails on the Cross, then His side, which had been opened with a lance, saying to them:
Touch Me, and look; a Spirit has not flesh and bones,
As you see that I have.
LUKE 24:39
It is very likely that the incredulous Apostles actually touched the Body of Christ; this might explain why Thomas later demanded such a sign; he would not be inferior to others. John, who had leaned on His breast the night of the Last Supper, was particularly interested in the side or heart. He never forgot that touching scene; for, later on he wrote:
Our message concerns that Word, Who is Life,
What He was from the first,
What we have heard about Him,
What our own eyes have seen of Him
What it was that met our gaze,
And the touch of our hands.
I JOHN 1:1
John too would remember it when he wrote his Apocalypse where he described the sacred humanity of the Lord enthroned and adored in heaven:
A Lamb standing upright,
Yet slain (as I thought),
In sacrifice.
APOCALYPSE 5:6
It was thus He would be recognized as One Crucified though now in glory, Prince and Lord. It was not that the cruel wounds were to be a reminder of the cruelty of men, but rather that by pain and sorrow, Redemption had been wrought. If the scars had been removed, men might have forgotten that there was a sacrifice, and that He was both Priest and Victim. His argument was that the Body that he showed them was the same that was born of the Virgin Mary, nailed to the Cross and laid in a grave by Joseph of Arimathea. But It had properties which It did not possess before.
Peter, James, and John had seen Him transfigured when His garments were whiter than snow, but the rest of the disciples had only seen Him as a Man of Sorrow. This was their first gaze upon a risen and glorious Lord. These nail prints, this pierced side, these were the unmistakable scars of battle against sin and evil. As many a soldier looks upon the wounds he received in battle not as a disfigurement, but as a trophy of honor, so He wore His wounds to prove that love was stronger than death. After the Ascension these scars would become as oratorical mouths of intercession before the Heavenly Father; scars that He would bear on the last day to judge the living and the dead. In an old legend it is said that Satan appeared to a saint and said: “I am the Christ” the saint confounded him by asking: “Where are the marks of nails?”
If men had been left to themselves to form their own conception of the Risen Christ, they never would have represented Him with the signs and remnants of His shame and agony on earth. Had He risen with no memorials of His Passion, men might have doubted Him with the passing of time. That there might be no doubt of the sacrificial purpose of His coming, He gave them not only the Memorial of His death the night of the Last Supper, asking that it be perpetuated as long as time endured, but He also bore on His Person, as Jesus Christ, the “same yesterday, today and forever,” the Memorial of His Redemption. But were the Apostles convinced?
Then, while they were still doubtful,
And bewildered with joy, He asked them,
Have you anything here to eat?
LUKE 24:41
So they placed before Him a piece of meat and a honeycomb; He took these and ate in their presence, and He bade them share His meal. It was not a phantom that they were seeing. To some extent they believed in the Resurrection, and that belief gave them joy; but the joy was so great they could hardly believe it. At first they were too frightened to believe; now they were too joyful to believe. But Our Lord would not rest until He had completely satisfied their senses. Eating with them would be the strongest proof of His Resurrection. After raising the daughter of Jairus, He ordered that food should be given her; after the resurrection of Lazarus, Lazarus took food with Him; now, after His own Resurrection, He ate with His Apostles. Thus He would convince them that it was the same living Body which they had seen and touched and felt; but it was at the same time a Body that was glorified. It had no wounds as signs of weakness, but rather as glorious scars of victory. This glorified Body ate not as the plant draws in moisture from the earth because of need but as the sun imbibes the same from power. He had given some indications of what this glorified nature of His would be like in the Transfiguration, when Moses and Elias spoke with Him about His death. That was a promise and a pledge that corruption would put on incorruption, the mortal would put on immortality, and death be swallowed up in life.
After having proved to His disciples that He had risen by showing them His hands, feet, and side, and by eating before them, He gave to them the second salutation of peace, saying:
Peace be upon you; I came upon
An errand from My Father,
And now I am sending you out in My turn.
With that, He breathed on them,
And said to them, Receive the Holy Spirit.
JOHN 20:21
The first salutation of peace was when they were frightened; now that they were filled with the joy of believing, the second salutation of peace had reference to the world. His concern was not with the world of His public life, but the whole world He had redeemed. A few hours before He had gone to His death He had prayed to His Father:
Thou hast sent Me into the world on Thy errand;
And I have sent them into the world on My errand.
JOHN 17:18
Continuing the idea, He said that He was praying not only for those that would be His representatives upon earth but for everyone throughout history who would believe in Him.
It is not only for them that I pray;
I pray for those who are to find
Faith in Me through their word.
JOHN 17:20
Thus the night of the Last Supper before going to His death, He was concerned about His mission to the world after His Crucifixion—a mission into a world that had rejected Him. Now, after the Resurrection, He reiterated the same idea to His Apostles, the twelve stones of the foundation of this city of God. In the Old Testament the high priest put stones on the raiment he wore over his breast; now the true High Priest engraved living stones on His heart. His mission and their mission was one. As Christ was sent and through His suffering entered into glory, so now He bequeathed to them His share of the Cross and, after that, His glory.
Our Lord did not say, “As My Father sent Me so also I send you,” because there are two entirely different Greek words used in the original for “sent.” The first word was used to describe both Our Lord’s mission from the Father and the mission of the Holy Spirit; the second word implied rather a commission, and had reference to Christ’s authority as an ambassador. Christ came forth from the eternal bosom of the Father in His Incarnation; so now the Apostles would go forth from Him. Just as Our Lord had insisted on the difference between “My Father” and “Your Father” so now He stressed the difference between the respective missions. Christ was sent to manifest the Father because He was one in nature with the Father; the Apostles, who were the foundation stones of the Kingdom, were to manifest the Son. As He spoke these words they could see the glorious scars on His risen Body. Imprinting them on their mind, they understood that as the Father had sent Him to suffer in order to save mankind, so the Son was sending them to suffer persecution. As the love of the Father was in Him, so the love of the Father and Himself would be in them. The authority behind the apostolic mission was overwhelming; for its roots were in the analogy of the Father sending His Son and of the Son sending them. It was no wonder that He told them that whoever would reject one of His Apostles would be rejecting Him. Though Thomas was not there, he nevertheless would partake of the gifts, even as St. Paul did.
Then Our Lord breathed on them as He conferred some power of the Holy Spirit. When love is deep, it is always speechless or wordless; God’s love is so deep that it can be expressed humanly by a sigh or a breath. Now that the Apostles had learned to lisp the alphabet of Redemption, He breathed on them as a sign and an earnest of what was to come. It was but a cloud that would precede the plenteous rain; better still, it was the breath of the Spirit’s influence and a foretelling of the rushing wind of Pentecost. As He has breathed into Adam the breath of natural life, so now He breathed into His Apostles, the foundation of His Church, the breath of spiritual life. As man became the image of God in virtue of the soul that was breathed into him, so now they became the image of Christ as the power of the Spirit was breathed into them. The Greek word used to express His breathing on them is employed nowhere else in the New Testament; but it is the very word which the Greek translators of the Hebrew used to describe God’s breathing a living soul into Adam. Thus there was a new creation as the first fruit of the Redemption.
As He breathed on them, He gave them the Holy Spirit, which made them no longer servants, but sons. Three times the Holy Spirit is mentioned with some external sign; as a dove at Christ’s baptism betokening His innocence and Divine Sonship; as fiery tongues on the day of Pentecost as a sign of the Spirit’s power to convert the world; and as the breath of the Risen Christ with all of its regenerative power. As the Lord had made clay to anoint the eyes of the blind man, showing that He was the Creator of man, so now by breathing the Spirit upon His Apostles did He show that He was the regenerator of the life of the clay that fell.
When Our Lord was at the Feast of the Tabernacles, watching the water brought up from the pool, He said that if any man believed in Him, He would cause fountains of living waters to flow from His bosom. The Scriptures add:
He was speaking here of the Spirit,
Which was to be received by those
Who learned to believe in Him;
The Spirit which had not yet been given to men,
Because Jesus had not yet been raised to glory.
JOHN 7:39
At that celebrated feast, He affirmed that He would first have to die and pass into glory, before the Holy Spirit could come. His words now implied that He was already in His state of glory; for He was bestowing the Spirit. He was now associating the Apostles with the life of His Resurrection; at Pentecost, He would associate them with His Ascension.
Next He conferred upon them the power of forgiving sins. There was even to be a distinction between sins that the Apostles would forgive and sins they would not forgive. How they would distinguish between the two would evidently depend on hearing them. He said:
When you forgive men’s sins, they are forgiven,
When you hold them bound, they are held bound.
JOHN 20:23
As the Jewish priest pronounced who were clean and who were unclean among the lepers, so now Christ conferred the power of forgiving and withholding forgiveness on sinners. Only God can forgive sins; but God in the form of man forgave the sins of Magdalen, of the penitent thief, of the dishonest tax collector, and of others. The same law of the Incarnation would now hold; God would continue to forgive sins through man. His appointed ministers were to be the instruments of His forgiveness, as His own human nature was the instrument of His Divinity in purchasing forgiveness. These solemn words of the Risen Savior meant that sins were to be forgiven through a judicial power authorized to examine the state of a soul and to grant or refuse forgiveness as the case demanded. From that day on, the remedy for human sin and guilt was to be a humble confession to one having authority to forgive. To be humble on one’s knees confessing to one to whom Christ gave the power to forgive (rather than prostrate on a couch to hear guilt explained away)—that was one of the greatest joys given to the burdened soul of man.
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