In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit! Christ is Risen!
Dear brothers and sisters, the Church calls this day “Antipascha”—that is, “in place of Pascha”. We all rejoiced in Pascha of Christ; the Lord vouchsafed many to celebrate it at services in churches and partake of the Body and Blood of Christ. Some of you were able to attend services of Bright Week, to rejoice in such easy, joyful, festive and short (as compared to Lenten) services and cross processions, and this Sunday is like the renewal of Pascha.
One of the reasons for the existence of this service is historical. The celebration of Antipascha appeared because many pilgrims who came to the Holy Land, to Jerusalem to celebrate Pascha were late for the feast of the Holy Resurrection of Christ. For various reasons, not everyone arrived in time. And that is understandable, since there were neither airplanes, nor buses, nor modern ships at that time. And so, this service on the first Sunday after Pascha was compiled for them. Although it is a Sunday service, its composition resembles that of the twelve great feasts, and thus it is really the renewal of Pascha.
Today we also remember the event from the Gospel called “the assurance of the holy Apostle Thomas”, because it was the Sunday after the Resurrection of the Savior. We know that on the first day of His Resurrection the Lord appeared to His disciples (and Thomas was absent at that moment), taught them peace and blessed them to spread the Gospel, the Good News. He said, As My Father hath sent Me, even so send I you (Jn. 20:21); then He breathed on them (Jn. 20:22) and gave them the Holy Spirit. We know that later, at Pentecost, these gifts of the Holy Spirit would increase, and give the Apostles the power to preach.
When the Apostle Thomas learned the news of the Resurrection of Christ, he said that he would not believe it until he put his hands into His wounds. But there is nothing surprising in this “unbelief”, because we know that when in the morning the Myrrh-Bearing Women had brought them the news that Christ was risen from the dead, many of the Apostles did not believe either, and after His Resurrection, Christ had to some extent to assure those who saw Him. There is the detail—He ate in front of the disciples, ate the honeycomb, among other things. Why did He eat honey? At that time the Jews believed that honey chased away evil spirits. Since His transformed body no longer needed food, the Lord showed, including by eating honey, that He was not a spirit, let alone an evil spirit or a ghost. Therefore, against this background, the Apostle Thomas’ unbelief, or rather, his distrust of this news, sounded quite natural. And when the Lord appeared to the disciples on the following Sunday, where St. Thomas was present, we see how the Lord assured him.
The Apostle Thomas was, like all the apostles, a human being with his own character. We know the Apostle Peter as a rather impulsive and impetuous man; we also know that the young Apostle John the Evangelist was calmer; we know the other Apostles too. And St. Thomas was no exception—he had his own personality traits.
Firstly, if you remember, St. Thomas is called “the Twin” in the Gospel. Why? Because, according to tradition, St. Thomas was very much like Christ in appearance. Of course, Christ was recognized by His preaching, but the physical resemblance was so striking that the nickname “the Twin” stuck to St. Thomas for a long time.
The assurance of the Apostle Thomas
Secondly, we know his determination. When the Savior went to Bethany to resurrect Lazarus, we remember that the Apostles did not want to go with Him, as they were aware that the Jews sought to slay Him (Jn. 5:16). And when the Savior first said indirectly that Lazarus was asleep, and then said clearly that Lazarus was dead, the Apostle Thomas, if you remember, uttered these words: Let us also go, that we may die with him (Jn. 11:16). What do they mean? That there was no point in going there, since Lazarus was already dead, and it was extremely dangerous to go there. But with these words he expressed his faithfulness to the Savior: Let us also go, that we may die with him. And we know the destiny of this apostle—he preached in countries far away from the Holy Land: in India and in Mesopotamia. There is even a legend that he passed through the lands of what is now China, and like most of the Apostles, he was killed for preaching the Word of God.
There is a very important question of faith in today’s Gospel. Of course, we realize that believers are standing at the Liturgy now. But even among us believers, faith changes and wavers. Sometimes it is strong, sometimes it is weak, sometimes doubts arise not only in faith in God, but in faith in His Providence and in the meaning of our lives. And people who do not have faith in the Lord are the opposite people in some ways—they do not want, or sometimes do not know, what a deep, beautiful and unknown world of faith opens up to a person who comes to the faith. But faith depends on you and me. The Lord says in Revelations, Behold, I stand at the door, and knock: if any man hear My voice, and open the door, I will come in to him, and will sup with him, and he with Me (Rev. 3:20). And, of course, there are many different ways of acquiring faith. Sometimes it is present throughout your life, from childhood, sometimes it comes at a young or mature age, and sometimes it comes during an illness. We remember the story of the ever-memorable Metropolitan Anthony of Sourozh, about how he came to the faith. In fact, he was a protesting teenager who was not just annoyed, but even angry when others told him something about the Lord, about Christ, about the Orthodox faith, about Christian traditions, customs, and about his adolescence. Overnight, after reading a short passage from the Gospel, he suddenly converted, and the path of his life opened up before him. We know Metropolitan Anthony of Sourozh as a physician, as a monk, as a bishop, and as a wonderful spiritual father who spread the Word of God not only in the Western world, where he lived, but also to what was then Soviet Russia.
Metropolitan Anthony of Sourozh
There are, in a sense, two ways of acquiring faith in your life. The first is when you come to the faith on your own. But this still requires some kind of search, doubt, interest—even with a negative sign, as was the case with the future Metropolitan Anthony. Your search matters. The second is a personal example of someone who is near you or far from you, but an example that is known. And in this sense, the words of today’s Gospel spring to mind again: As My Father hath sent Me, even so send I you. How important it is, brothers and sisters, for you and me, a little flock (cf. Lk. 12:32), to go and preach to others! How do we preach? With words? Usually not, although there are people who are interested in hearing words. We preach with our deeds, lives and prayers. Realizing that at this moment God loves a non-believer no less than He loves me, who am now standing here on the ambo and delivering a sermon on this Sunday. Do not despair, do not be discouraged, pray for your loved ones, and do not withdraw into your shell. But a personal example is not always reliable, because it can vary.
There are two well-known stories. The first one is as follows. An elderly woman said: “You know, my grandmother was very religious.” Why? She was born before the Revolution, and a priest in their family on St. Elias Day or during the summer drought went to the field to do a prayer service to ask God to send rain. And according to her, the priest was always so sure that the Lord would help that he always took an umbrella with him when he went to the field to do a prayer service, in very hot weather, when the sky was absolutely cloudless. “And we children remembered that there was never a time when it did not rain after his prayer service,” she related.
And here is the second story. Another elderly woman said that her grandmother did not go to church and was not very religious. Why? Because once in her childhood she remembered a priest living next door to them. Once two or three weeks after Pascha she saw that priest through the fence feeding the dried up kulichi (Paschal cakes) that had been given to him in large quantities by his parishioners to pigs in his farm. And it so confused her that it left a negative impression on her soul for the rest of her life. Therefore, brothers and sisters, on the one hand, personal example is not always reliable, and on the other hand, how important it is, how important our behavior is, our adherence to our faith, especially if people know that we go to church. As soon as we something wrong, they will say to us, “You go to church, but you do such things!”
And here is the last thing I would like to say today. The words of today’s Gospel, which St. Thomas uttered when he saw the Savior, are very important. When Thomas saw His wounds, he exclaimed, My Lord and my God! (Jn. 20:28). So let this phrase be with us in different circumstances of our lives, whether happy or sad. We can put a lot into it. My Lord and my God! Christ is risen!
