Good Fri & Easter...so what

So many people claim to believe in the Resurrection, and yet it means so little to them. It has no effect in their lives. It is not enough to celebrate Easter and say “Christ is risen!” Indeed, it is useless to proclaim it at all, unless at the same time we can say that we too have risen.

The long passage of time has brought with it a temptation to keep on speaking about Good Friday without being moved by it. We hear about Christ’s death, and we sit there bored, as if we were reading a newspaper. In fact, we would find a newspaper a good deal more interesting.

- C. F. Blumhardt in Bread and Wine: Readings for Lent and Easter (Orbis, 2005)

Thomas appears to have been a realist - reserved, cool, perhaps a little obstinate. He wanted proofs, wanted to see and touch. Then again, it might have been rebellion deep within him, the vainglory of an intelligence that would not surrender, a sluggishness and coldness of heart. In any case, he got what he asked for…in that state of unbelief which cuts itself off from everything, that insists on human evidence to become convinced. But nothing that comes from God can be proven like 2 x 2 = 4. It must touch one; it is only seen and grasped when the heart is open and the spirit purged of self. Only then can it awaken faith.

Romano Guardini in Bread and Wine: Readings for Lent and Easter (Orbis, 2005)