By his holy and glorious wounds

Acts 2:42-47 ‘All who believed were together and had all things in common.’

1 Peter 1:3-9 ‘He has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.’

John 20.19-31 Eight days later, Jesus came

Though you have not seen him, you love him.

Though you do not now see him,

you believe in him and rejoice with joy that is inexpressible and filled with glory,

obtaining the outcome of your faith, the salvation of your souls. (1 Peter 3.9)

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By his holy

and glorious wounds,

may Christ the Lord

guard us

and protect us. Amen.

These words are used at the Great Vigil of Easter as the Paschal Candle is prepared.

The priest or bishop will have marked the sign of the cross on the candle, and then, the first and last letters of the Greek alphabet, Alpha and Omega, signifying Christ says of himself in the Book of Revelation, ‘I am the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end.’ (Revelation 22.13)

Then he pushes five grains of incense, on what look like sharpened pins, into the wax of the candle.

Those pins signify Christ’s wounds: the wounds he incurred on the cross, and the wounds he showed his disciples after His Resurrection from the dead: wounds we call holy and glorious, and wounds of mercy and healing.

Why five wounds?

Two in each hand; two in each foot; and one in his side, made by the soldier’s lance, from which flowed blood and water. (John 19.34,37)

These wounds recall the pain and agony of crucifixion, pinning Christ to the cross, which He endured out of love for us and for the salvation of our souls.

These wounds also are a form of guarantee of two really significant things that are integral to our Christian faith:

1.    Jesus is no ghost; ghosts don’t bear wounds, no more than they eat and drink as we know the Crucified and Risen Lord did;

2.    These wounds also guarantee that there is no discontinuity or rupture between the man crucified and the man who is raised.

It is entirely wrong to speak of ‘the crucified Jesus’ on one hand and the ‘Risen Christ’ on the other, as if there are two different people, or that there is a ‘before and after’ Jesus.

We should speak of the Crucified and Risen Lord.

It reminds us that what we commemorated on Good Friday relates profoundly to what we celebrate at Easter and through these fifty days of Eastertide.

And these wounds, along with his breaking of bread and breathing of peace, are what makes Jesus recognisable is his wounds.

His Resurrection does not airbrush out the pain and agony as if that was incidental or not real: it was real pain, real agony, and it was necessary to reveal to us the depths of Christ’s love and power to save.

So, the wounds of Christ are not a peripheral interest but are, as the words that accompany the piercing of the paschal Candle say, they are ‘holy and glorious wounds.’

And this is not theory it’s personal, in the best way, as we see from that merciful and loving encounter Jesus has with Thomas.

On the Day of Resurrection itself, when the Crucified and Risen Lord had appeared to everyone, but when Thomas had not been present, Thomas famously, and somewhat impetuously, says:

“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.” (John 20.25b)

Eight days later, the following Sunday, i.e. today, Thomas is with the others when the Crucified and Risen One, breathing peace, comes to them again.

And Jesus’ means of convincing Thomas on His Resurrection is the wounds on His Body from the cross.

He didn’t subject him to a lecture, he didn’t suggest that the Resurrection wasn’t about his body being raised from the dead, as if the other disciples just had a warm feeling of memories of Jesus that made them think he is raised from the dead: no, the wounds are what Jesus uses to convince Thomas that he is the crucified and Risen Lord.

“Put your finger here, and see my hands; and put out your hand, and place it in my side. Do not disbelieve, but believe.”

That act of seeing and touching the wounds is what transformed Thomas’s incredulity into belief:

‘My Lord and my God!’ (John 20.28)

What a declaration!

Thomas really has got it!

The wounds of pain, agony and torment, are holy and glorious wounds, and they are wounds of mercy and healing.

Divine Mercy always relates to Divine Judgement: without judgement there is no mercy.

In the wounds of Jesus there is judgement because there we see marks of human sin and brutality and there is Thomas’ lack of belief, something we are all prone to share.

Christ’s wounds are more than enough to condemn us.

But, this is the thing, Christ’s judgment of humanity, of Thomas, of you and me, is merciful, not because Christ is a soft touch, not because he is woolly and let’s anything go, but because he wills us to be saved, he wills us to be one with Him and the Father, in the power of the Spirit, at peace with Him.

And that mercy flows to us, who, ‘have not seen and yet have believed.’ (John 20.29b)

What great mercy we are shown, that we are called blessed who have not seen, have not touched, but rely on the witness of Mary Magdalene, Peter, John, and yes, of Thomas, of saints through the ages, and yet have believed.

The poet Gerard Manly Hopkins, in a translation of words of St Thomas Aquinas puts it beautifully:

I am not like Thomas, wounds I cannot see,
But can plainly call thee Lord and God as he;
Let me to a deeper faith daily nearer move,
Daily make me harder hope and dearer love.

(Adoro te Devote, St Thomas Aquinas, trans Fr. Gerard Manley Hopkins, SJ)