Homily for Second Sunday of Easter  2012

1. There is a TV program in the Philippines that grants people’s wishes, more particularly to help the poor people get out of a miserable and poor situation. This particular episode just got me. They were helping out this extraordinary couple who earned their living as ambulant vendors. They would knock at people’s doors and offer their products. But the amazing thing of this couple is that the husband is blind and the wife is deaf. If somebody rang the blind husband would take the call. If they need to send a text message to their customers the deaf wife would do it. It just worked out well between them. They  seemed to be compatible, because they used each other’s woundedness to make life worth living. They touched each other’s vulnerability to get on with life.

2. It is the  same thing, more or less that has happened to Thomas in our gospel today. He refused to believe the words of his fellow apostles that Jesus has risen. He wants proof. He wants to see in order to believe.  This might be his weakness ‘to see is to believe.’ Jesus today, meets Thomas and used his weakness as opportunity to touch his wounds. Thomas did and he believed. What a life!

3. Friends,  homas believed in  Jesus because he not only saw the wounds but he really touched it. As followers of Christ, as Children of Easter so to say, as people called ‘Christian’ because of our faith in Christ, we are also called to touch the wounds of Jesus. Like Thomas, we may doubt our faith, but if we get in touch with our Lord, ponder on his wounds, and touch his wounds, our faith would be purified and intensified.

4.  What does it mean to touch the wounds of Jesus today?

   1. Our gospel tells us that Jesus sent us for a mission, as he has been sent  by the Father. We are sent for a mission, empowered by his Holy Spirit to promote peace, to forgive sins and wrongs others may have done unto us. Violence, loss of sense of sins are just few of the many wounds in our world today.

   2. Our First Reading also offers us another meaning of touching the wounds of Jesus by looking beyond our immediate surroundings, facing the woundedness of our time and society, and offer our means and resources to help those people who are in need in many ways: Moral, Spiritual, emotional, etc.

   3. Our Second Reading would remind us to keep up our Christian faith alive, because it is this faith that makes us victorious over the world. We may suffer persecutions, or intolerance, being stereotyped, or frowned upon, but if we keep up our faith in Christ today,  we are winners because we have hope that our sufferings are not all there is as Jesus showed. With hope and faith, we can be sure that behind the thick and dark clouds of life, is the clear and blue sky  of eternal union with God. After Good Friday, comes Easter Sunday.

 5.  As we continue rejoicing the event of the Risen Christ, let’s heed the words of Jesus today to receive his Holy Spirit, to proclaim peace, and to forgive sins. And like Thomas, we look around us, acknowledge our own woundedness and touch the woundedness of others. Let us the Risen Jesus to transform our woundedness into opportunity to live a more meaningful  Christian life.