Second Sunday of Easter (Year C): The Word That Breaks Through Locked Doors
Translated from Original German
Dear sisters and brothers,
Today's Gospel places us within the human experience the disciples represent: locked doors, fear, uncertainty. Their fear had sealed them off — not just from the outside world, but from life itself. Everything they had placed their hope in seemed broken and lost. And yet, it is precisely into this situation — into their fear, their despair, their death — that the living Word breaks in.
The Gospel tells us that Jesus came and stood among them. But this is not a story of physical appearances or miraculous proofs. What is being proclaimed is deeper: it is the dawning of faith where there had been only fear. It is the sudden realization that death does not have the final word. It is the experience of encountering Christ — not as a figure from the past, but as the living Lord who addresses them, here and now, with the word: “Peace be with you.”
The disciples’ eyes are opened, not to a spectacle, but to a new reality. They are awakened to a life that death cannot destroy. They are called out of their closed world into a mission of reconciliation and forgiveness. When the Gospel says Jesus breathed on them and said, “Receive the Holy Spirit,” it is speaking of the new life that faith brings — a life animated not by fear, but by the Spirit of Christ himself.
But faith is not automatic. Thomas stands for all of us when he says, “Unless I see... unless I touch...” He wants certainty, proof, something he can hold in his hands. And isn’t that what we often want too? A guarantee that can satisfy our senses, a faith that requires no risk.
Yet the Gospel shows that faith is not born from proofs. It is born from the Word that addresses us personally, summoning us out of unbelief into trust. When Thomas is called by Christ’s word — “Do not be unbelieving, but believe” — he responds, not because he has verified the wounds, but because he has been encountered by a reality beyond what he could demand or control. His cry, “My Lord and my God!” is the response of a heart that has been grasped by grace.
Today, we are not asked to believe because of ancient miracles, nor because of reports of what others have seen. We are invited to hear the living Word that confronts us in our own time, our own fear, our own death. Christ speaks peace into the locked rooms of our hearts. Christ breathes his Spirit into our present moment.
And this Word, when we receive it in faith, creates life in us — a life that is no longer imprisoned by fear or guilt, but opened to forgiveness, reconciliation, and hope. Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed. Blessed are we, when we open our hearts to this living encounter, and allow the breath of Christ to send us out as bearers of peace and life to the world.
