I Will Know You in Your Wounds

“Then he said to Thomas, ‘Put your finger here and see my hands, and bring your hand and put it into my side, and do not be unbelieving, but believe.”

~ The Lord, Jesus Christ to St. Thomas the Apostle, gospel of John, 20:27 NAB

Do you know someone close to you who has deep scars of some type, whether physical or emotional or both, and the circumstances surrounding those scars?  If you know the scars and the circumstances, do you not have a more intimate bond with them than someone else who is acquainted yet hasn’t this knowledge?  You do, and this knowledge draws you closer to them if you have the capacity for compassion and love, and if this compassion and love can flow freely from you to them.  But, these things can become thwarted or blocked by some obstacle – some vice or wrong or injustice, whether actual or perceived, which has been done between you two, where distrust is allowed to grow and fester.   True?

Isn’t this what happens between us and God when we commit sin or become self-absorbed, e.g., through anger, in some way?  By our sins or bad actions, we lose the ability to be tender and we become hardened.  We forget Who our Friend Is, and we inadvertently begin blocking the flow of life-giving love and mercy into our own souls such that we are unable and, eventually, unwilling to allow the love and compassion to continue flowing into and then out from us to others in need.

Is this not what happened to St. Thomas the Apostle?  Yet, when he returned to investigate and touch the Very Wounds of Christ, his spiritual eyes were opened and he knew with faith…the obstacles were removed and he was once again able to believe and hope and love…

“Thomas answered and said to Him, ‘My Lord and my God!'”

~ Gospel of John, 20:28 NAB

Was this not a miraculous healing of Thomas’ soul which had become hardened?

Ponder the Wounds of Christ during Lent.  Touch His Wounds in the Sacrament of Reconciliation.  There is constant, salvific healing there.

God Makes Himself Small for Us

God makes us small relative to the universe, and then He makes Himself small, too, for us.

He makes Himself small in His infant birth to Mary.

He makes Himself poor in order to commune with the poor.

He is greater than the universe, yet He desires to be smaller than or as small as those persons to which He gives existence.  Why?

Who He Is absolutely demands that He conform to being small since Love draws the Lover to the Beloved that the two may experience communion on a common level, but a level which is even more intimate and deeper than even the cutest smallness.  This descent into intimacy must be infinite and fulfilling at every level of intimacy, and it is a constant descent…a constant “falling in Love.”