See, then do

A homily for the Second Sunday of Easter, April 16, 2023

Acts 2:42-47, 1 Pt 1:3-9, Jn 20:19-31

One of the many great advantages of having a doctor as my dad was the supply of free copies of Highlights for Children magazine that piled up in his waiting room, alongside ancient Time, Good Housekeeping and Reader’s Digest relics. It was heaven for a voracious reader like me.

Back then, as I recall, Highlights had a feature called “Tommy the Talker and Danny the Doer.” And if it wasn’t a Highlights feature, Tommy vs. Danny appeared somewhere. So let’s go with it.

The gist of the column, which appeared in all or nearly all of the issues, was that Tommy would have grand ideas and get everyone excited and anticipating whatever he was ballyhooing: a parade, a fair, a school play … almost always some sort of event that would lead to everybody rallying around him.

Hooray for Tommy!

Tommy for president!

Danny, on the other hand, would listen to Tommy’s broad-brush ideas and turn them into real plans, functional plans, and then either execute them by himself or put together a team to make Tommy’s extravaganzas happen.

Danny who?

Oh, wait, the guy with the broom or hammer or paintbrush? Him? Really?

Tommy talked, Danny did, and Highlights readers were supposed to model themselves after one or the other (hint: Danny).

Though the Tommy-Danny relationship is not an exact parallel to that between Didymus and the Apostles, I always think of those preachy little scenarios whenever I hear or proclaim this Gospel passage.

Through the words of John, the Apostle Thomas — forever dubbed Doubting Thomas — becomes the poster child for “Seeing is believing.” He makes a lot of noise about the only way he will accept the truth about Jesus’s resurrection: touching the Messiah’s wounds. Such a contrast from the calm but loving and accepting welcome the other Apostles gave Jesus on his previous visit.

Lots of talk spews forth from First Century Tommy, until Jesus confronts him and challenges him to quell his doubt. Jesus offers the nail marks and the slash wound from the lance. Thomas sees and believes.

The noise The Doubter had been making prompts Jesus to remind him that many people who have not seen or felt what he has nonetheless are believers.

And that truth has held for two millennia.

It continues to apply to us, as St. Peter wrote in his letter:

Although you have not seen him you love him;
even though you do not see him now yet believe in him,
you rejoice with an indescribable and glorious joy,
as you attain the goal of your faith, the salvation of your souls.

And we do believe, and we do rejoice, in this season of Easter alleluias and every day of our lives.

But there’s another truth in today’s Gospel passage that often gets overshadowed by the belief-doubt storyline, a Danny the Doer truth.

As John recounts it, during Jesus’s first visit with his entourage, he establishes what we have come to recognize as the priestly ability to forgive sins in God’s name. And Jesus tells the Apostles to get ready for missionary work.

“Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you.”

Check your sandals for holes in their soles, Jesus hints. Divvy up the territories and decide if you need a traveling companion or not.

People need to hear the good news, the Lord reminds his team. It’s time for talkers to be doers and doers to be talkers.

And, because of the order in which our Scriptures are proclaimed at Mass, we’ve already heard in the passage from the Acts of the Apostles about how Christ’s Law of Love had begun to transform the world.

To create believers among people who never saw the face of the Nazorean.

Now, thanks to AI and deepfakes and other computerized (mis)information, we live in an era when none of us can be sure that we can believe what we are seeing. So how do we handle trying to believe what we cannot see?

If we embrace our faith, if we strengthen our relationships with our gracious triune God, we will see Truth with the eyes of love, and that vision will guide our lives. We will know him, and we will love him, and we will answer his call.

The Easter season, our season of conversion, reminds us that Jesus still needs Tommy disciples to speak his words and Danny disciples to do his work, all rolled up into one.

Us.