Vigils Reading – 2nd Sunday of Easter

BLESSED ARE THOSE

WHO HAVE NOT SEEN

From a commentary by St Augustine

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My dear people, you, like myself, are well aware that our Lord and Savior

Jesus Christ is the one physician capable of bringing us eternal healing and

salvation. We know, too, that it was in order to accomplish this that he took

upon himself the weakness of our human nature, otherwise that weakness

would have remained with us forever. He equipped himself with a human body

liable to death, so that in and through that body he might conquer death itself.

And though, as the apostle tells us, it was his human weakness that made it

possible for him to be crucified, it was his divine power that enabled him to

return to life.

That same apostle says: He will never die again, neither will death have

any further hold upon him. All this you already know and believe, and also the

consequences flowing from it; we can be sure that the miracles he wrought while

he lived among us were meant to encourage us to accept the gifts from him that

should never pass away nor have an end. Thus he gave back sight to blind eyes

that would shortly be closed again in death; he raised Lazarus from the dead

only for him to die again. His bodily cures, indeed, were never meant to last for

ever, even though at the end of time he is to give the body itself life everlasting.

But because “seeing is believing,” he used these visible wonders to build up

people’s faith in even greater marvels that could not be seen.

Let no one then be found to say that since Christ Jesus our Lord no longer

works such miracles among us, the Church was better off in its early days. On

the contrary, in one recorded testament, the same Lord set those who have

never seen and yet believe before those who believe only because they see.

Indeed, so great was the disciples’ weakness at that time, that when they saw the

Lord they found it necessary to touch him before they could believe he had really

risen from the dead. They were unable to believe the testimony of their own

eyes, until they had handled his body and explored his recent wounds with their

fingers. Only after this was done could that most hesitant of all his disciples

exclaim: My Lord and my God! Thus it was by his wounds that Christ, who had

so often healed the manifold wounds of others, came to be recognized himself.

Now we may ask: could not the Lord have risen with a body from which all

the marks of wounds had been erased? No doubt he could have; but he knew his

disciples bore within their hearts a wound so deep that the only way to cure it

was to retain the scars of his own wounds in his body. And when that confession:

My Lord and my God! Was uttered, what was his answer to it? You believe, he

said, because you have seen me; blessed are those who have not seen and yet

believe.

And who, my brothers and sisters, are those if not ourselves and those

who are to follow after us? When, later on, the Lord had departed from human

sight and faith had time to strike roots into people’s hearts, those who believed

in him made their act of faith without seeing him in whom they made it. The

faith of such believers is highly meritorious, for it springs from a devoted heart

rather than an exploring hand.