Notes from Diocesan Clergy Tele-Conference Bible Study April 10, 2013
“And after eight days His disciples were again inside, and Thomas with them. Jesus came, the doors being shut, and stood in the midst, and said, “Peace to you!” Then He said to Thomas, “Reach your finger here, and look at My hands; and reach your hand here, and put it into My side. Do not be unbelieving, but believing.” And Thomas answered and said to Him, “My Lord and my God!” Jesus said to him, “Thomas, because you have seen Me, you have believed. Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.” – St. John 20:26-29
1) “My Lord and My God” as we know is the high Christological confession made by St. Thomas the Apostle regarding Jesus Christ.
St. Mark 8:29 & St. Matthew 16:13 – Jesus is recognized as Christ, the Son of the Living God by St. Peter.
St. John 1:18 – No one has seen God at any time. The only begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, He has declared Him.
St. John 6:46 – No one has seen the Father except the one who is from God; only he has seen the Father.
2) When we look at the manifestations of God in the Old Testament, there is a strong belief that the great Patriarchs had not only experienced God , that is, His glory.
St. John 8:56 “Your father Abraham rejoiced to see My day, and he saw it and was glad.”
St. John 12:41 “These things Isaiah said when he saw His glory and spoke of Him.”
St. John 1:51 - Jesus said to Nathanael, “Most assuredly, I say to you, hereafter you shall see heaven open, and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of Man.”
Genesis 28:12 – “Then he dreamed, and behold, a ladder was set up on the earth, and its top reached to heaven; and there the angels of God were ascending and descending on it.”
Though Jacob had an experience of God he never got to see Him. Nathaniel, however, was given a promise to see God which is the same promise granted to the Holy Church. The Old Testament Fathers saw the appearance of God, but the New Testament Church received the greater privilege of seeing the God-man, Jesus Christ, who was true man and true God. Though the Apostles encountered Christ on a personal level, they recognized the manhood of Christ more than His Godhood.
It was after the Resurrection and the encounter of our Lord with the Apostle Thomas that the fullness of the divinity and humanity of Christ was recognized and confessed. Thomas received the privilege and blessing of encountering the Risen Lord in person and acknowledging Him to be Kyrios and Theos.
In St. John chapter 20, we see the appearance of the Risen Lord to the disciples and the narration regarding the mark of the nails in His body. The Apostle Thomas said, “Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands, and put my finger in the mark of the nails and my hand in his side, I will not believe” (v. 25). This statement may not be Thomas’ doubt regarding the resurrection itself, but regarding the marks in the Resurrected body.
3) The Holy Scriptures teach us that our glorified resurrected bodies will experience four properties as an outflow of the beatified soul enjoying the vision of God's essence:
1) Impassibility - the glorified body will no longer suffer physical sickness or death, as Saint Paul teaches regarding the glorified body in 1 Corinthians 15:42, "It is sown in corruption, it shall rise in incorruption."
2) Subtlety - meaning that we will have a spiritualized nature in the sense of a spiritual body as did our Lord as we learn at 1 Corinthians 15:44: "It is sown a corruptible body, it shall rise a spiritual," i.e. a spirit-like, "body." We see that Christ's glorified body was able to pass through closed doors.
In St. Matthew 22:30 we see, “For in the resurrection they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are like angels of God in heaven.”
3) Agility - the glorified body will obey the soul with the greatest ease and speed of movement as we read in 1 Corinthians 15:43: "It is sown in weakness, it shall rise in power," that is, according to a gloss, "mobile and living."
4) Clarity - the glorified body will be free from any deformity and will be filled with beauty and radiance as we read at St. Matthew 13:43: "The just shall shine as the sun in the kingdom of their Father," and Wisdom 3:7: "The just shall shine, and shall run to and from like sparks among the reeds." Here clarity refers to not simply being "clear" but to being "bright."
Thus, for the Apostle Thomas, it is possible that the doubt he had was whether or not the glorified body carried the infirmities it had during its physical stature during the earthly life. By the appearance of the Risen Lord, a new revelation became clear regarding the stature of the risen body.
For the Christian, the sufferings and wounds we may experience in this temporary world will indeed be a witness and appear in our bodies as holy wounds. The wounds we may have experienced for the establishment of Christ’s Kingdom in the world will be a great witness before our Creator. As ordained clergy, we often feel and experience pain and suffering and sometimes even isolation from our flock, but all of this will remain as a witness and beautify our glorified body at the time of the resurrection. It is possible for this reason that the Church Fathers express the beauty of suffering in much of their writings.
In the funeral service of our Church, a prayer that we recite is “At your second coming, when all the mortal bodies on the earth will resurrect and reform, have mercy upon this servant.” This is the hope we have and what we await. Let us pray that at that moment, our glorified bodies with the sacred wounds will be a witness and lead us to be counted among the righteous.