On poor Thomas, called Didymus
For the most part, my son walks in silence holding his skateboard in one hand, his bookbag draped over one shoulder. He is ten now, big, testing the limits of his independence, too cool for goodbye hugs — yet, out of the blue, walking from the subway on Allegheny Avenue he keeps reaching for my hand. It feels like an adult hand: big and puffy, sweaty palms. We take a few steps hand-in-hand, then he lets go, aware of himself again. A few more steps. Then, he reaches out again.
This is his first time in Kensington, a neighborhood in Northeast Philly. For his birthday, he got a new skateboard, and he was so excited to learn how to skate that we cancelled baseball camp and signed up for a week-long summer camp for skateboarding. This far north, the streets are no longer numbered like they are in our neighborhood. Instead, as we walk from the SEPTA station down Allegheny Ave, we read the beautiful cross street names: Emerald, Ruth, Amber.
The suffering here is staggering.
The neighborhood is notorious, of course, and I knew it’s reputation. I had been here before. But, still, walking with my son, it felt more severe: like Dorothy finally seeing in color, but the hues here were too much to bear.
Because the news reports and city hall debates cannot really prepare you for the complexity and the depths of the suffering when looking through a child’s eyes.
At Allegheny and Kensington, underneath the elevated train, is a crowd of people, some asleep on the sidewalk, others staggering in circles. There is a young man — twenty or so — who is standing, but bent completely over at the hip, swaying his torso gently side-to-side, asleep. A young woman takes a deep inhale of a crack pipe, and the man with her is looking into the empty syringe of a needle he found on the sidewalk. They are standing outside of a daycare center.
A block from the train station, there is a man who, at first, I think is picking up litter. But, as we get closer, it’s clear that he is digging out the small seams of the sidewalk to find discarded cigarette butts to roll a new cigarette. There is a young woman, with wavy blonde hair sitting on the ramp of a church. She has three needles lined up on a small piece of cardboard in front of her. Her elbow is bent with her hand by her face so she can inspect the front of her forearm. From her wrist to her elbow is nothing but one big scab that is pulsing red.
A young man dances on the sidewalk. It does not look fun. It looks like labor, like hard-work. Like a toy wound up that wants only to stop but cannot find the off switch. His eyes are bright with fury and desperation, and his dance moves are rhythmic but still stiff, jagged around the edges. There is no music, except for the rustle of litter in the wind, the blare of horns along the street, the rumble of the train arriving and departing overhead. He does not seem to notice anything, but when we are two steps ahead of him he says, “Don’t give up skating, my man. It gets easier the more you practice.” My son takes my hand and says thank you in a voice that no one, not even I, can hear.
When we turn off of Allegheny to the skateboard camp, I hope silently for a bit of relief. A man stops to piss on the sidewalk in front of us, and, as we cross the street to avoid the river of urine, we almost step into a pile of human shit. The litter is astounding: there are street crews here cleaning it up with snow shovels. They do not get it all. Not even close.
When we get to the skateboard camp, we sit on the steps, and breathe in and out. It was an intense 5 blocks: I can think only how beautiful those people were, and how there must be someone wanting them home, somewhere. I am stupefied by the suffering, by the futility of the snow shovels against the mountain of litter. I wonder how God could possibly matter here. We wait for a few minutes for it to open. My son rolls the wheels of his skateboard against his palm and says matter-of-factly, “I counted 37. Thirty-seven needles on the sidewalk.”
He was wrong. It was a lot more.
***
Ahead of Easter, I watched a few episodes of The Chosen with my family. It’s fine — in the way those sorts of things are — but these more than just a few critiques I might level at the writers’ room. Not the least of which is the very reductionist view of some of these characters.
Poor Thomas shows up early in the narrative of The Chosen — a surprising revelation, to be sure. But then, almost immediately, he begins to doubt everything. As if doubting itself was the most definitive thing about him.
Oh, the bad luck of poor Thomas, called Didymus, with his unique albatross tied around his neck: his nickname, Doubting Thomas.
To most Christians, the story is likely familiar. After Jesus rises from the dead, Christ enters the closed room where the disciples are hiding, all but Thomas. By the time Thomas gets back, Christ is gone. And when the others tell Thomas what had happened, he says, “Unless I see the nail marks in his hands and put my finger where the nails were, and put my hand into his side, I will not believe.” Jesus appears again later, shows himself to Thomas, and Thomas professes his belief. Jesus says to him, “Because you have seen me, you have believed; blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.”
It is not a bad selling point if your goal is to convince folks in the Mediterranean that Jesus Christ rose from the dead: He’s not here right now, but, trust us, Peter says to a crowd of skeptical — dare we say reasonable — first-century Roman citizens. Besides, folks: Blessed are those who have not seen and yet still believe. *wink wink*
***
In March, NPR published a story about Afghanistan. After seizing power, the Taliban assured their citizens and the international community that girls would be allowed to return to school. For months, there were delays: blamed on Covid, blamed on the aftermath of the war. But then, in March, there was word that schools would finally re-open.
After months away, girls across Afghanistan showed up to school. But they were turned away. The Taliban banned girls from attending school.
In the story, a young woman shares her experience. She speaks in Pashto, but before the translator can share her words in English, the young woman begins to weep.
When I think again of this story, I am at Mass, kneeling. And I think of the sound of this young girl weeping. The priest says — on the night before he died — and I am thinking now of the images of Ukraine, of the photo on the newspaper of the woman amidst of cloud of gray. And the priest says, let us proclaim the mystery of faith. And now I am thinking of my mother, and her family, and my family navigating the tragic loss of a young mother.
Behold the lamb of God, sounded different at that moment. It sounded like an invitation into suffering. A strange stitching together of the personal and the global: like a stitch, too, it cut a hole in order to connect.
It is all one suffering.
But only say the word, and I shall be healed.
In other words, weeping is the same in all languages.
***
Poor Thomas would likely be more highly regarded had not early Christian bishops deemed his gospel heretical. Found in the desert of Egypt, The Gospel of Thomas is a collection of striking sayings of Jesus Christ. Some of it is duplicated in the gospels found in Christian scriptures, but much of it is not. In one passage, Jesus Christ says, “If those who lead you say to you: ‘Look, the kingdom is in the sky!’ then the birds of the sky will precede you. If they say to you: ‘It is in the sea,’ then the fish will precede you. Rather, the kingdom is inside of you and outside of you.”
But, dear Thomas, what do you mean by “outside of me”? Like, here, on Allegheny Avenue? Here, where the woman’s scab is larger than her forearm, where the needles outnumber prayers? Can we find the kingdom in the bombed hospitals of Ukraine? In the shuttered all-girls schools of Afghanistan?
Dear Thomas, when I look outside, it is hard to see the kingdom. Sometimes, all I can see is the suffering.
***
On the train home, the door to the other car opens, the please-do-not-pass-through-the-doors doors. The sound is like Pavlov’s bell for those who frequent SEPTA: it reminds you to look away, that the person passing through the cars is about to make an awkward plea, for money or food, or both.
The man begins his speech, but I am looking at my phone. It is familiar enough that, despite not listening, I am almost certain of what he said: Can I have your attention please? I am Paul, and I have been unemployed for six months. I am trying my best to get back on my feet, but I don’t have any money for food today. Can you spare a dollar so I can get McDonald’s? The man stands there, posed with his head hung down. He looks ashamed, and perhaps he is. I am cynical enough now, hardened enough by the frequency of this performance, that I sometimes will think that the look of shame is part of the act.
There is nothing on my phone, but I flip through it anyway. The staring allows me to avoid the guilt of the $20 bill in my pocket that, if I lost it in the washing machine, I wouldn’t even notice.
Next to me, though, my son is rummaging in his pocket. He is looking right into the eyes of this man. He pulls out the wad of dollar bills I gave him. He needed $1 to pay someone back at camp, but in my immense generosity, I gave him $5. He carefully peels back one bill to set on his lap, and he hands over to this man $4. The man takes it, and he walks away. My son looks over at me and says, “I told you I only needed $1.”
What I learn from my son is this: doubting his suffering, avoiding his gaze, that is the sin of the world.
Blessed are those who have not had to see, but look anyway.
***
Dorothy Day — a saint for the rest of us — writes beautifully about suffering: “Love and ever more love is the only solution to every problem that comes up. If we love each other enough, we will bear with each other’s faults and burdens…No sacrifice and no suffering will then seem too much.”
We do not have a God that vanquishes suffering. The resurrection does not conquer wounds — Thomas shows us that! Instead, we have a God that is revealed through suffering, as long as the suffering transcends the self and moves to the collective, moves to love, moves to bearing the burdens of others.
Our instinct is to want to erase suffering. Of course it is!
We are all like Marthas running around Allegheny Avenue trying to figure out where to donate to solve this problem; where to volunteer; how to petition for safe injection sites and free housing. All of that is fine, good, and virtuous.
But, what is harder to live with is that bearing another’s suffering is not the same as easing their suffering. It is harder to sit down at the feet of the suffering like Mary and listen. And, while we are not meant to create a world of suffering, our path of love must pass through suffering, to feel the burden of addiction, the blasts of the bombs, the hopelessness of young girls across the world — to suffer with people is the particular challenge of the moment for most of us.
Blessed are those who have seen such suffering, yet still believe.
***
Thomas braves the streets to purchase a flask of grain, some grapes, a sheepskin of wine. The others have entrusted him with the money now that Judas has abandoned his duties. He stops and looks at the world: can you still be bickering about the price of horseshoes when the God of the universe has risen from the dead!
But, the streets of Jerusalem are normal. Almost nothing seems new. He tucks his things under his arm. Along the narrow street, he thinks he sees a palm branch, withered and dead.
He gasps. Roman soldiers are stationed at the street corner he must pass by to return to his comrades. He hears the men speaking quick, in Latin, and he understands so little. But he pauses, fiddles with his sandal strap, and tries to eavesdrop. He makes out the women. He understands, the one called Jesus. He thinks he hears, alive again. He thinks they say, find them and arrest them.
Could that be accurate? He wished his Latin was better.
He wants to run, but forces himself to go slowly to avoid suspicion. He must warn the others. He gets to the house — the one which only a few nights ago they celebrated Passover — and inside, he sees Mary of Magdala sweeping the floor. She is frantic when he walks in, and the broom hits the floor as she runs to him and grabs the folds of his tunic.
He was here! The others, they saw him! The Teacher was here! Thomas is shocked, he drops the wine and the grapes and the grain onto the floor. A small mountain of millet piles onto the neatly swept floorboards.
Leaving the mess, Thomas climbs the ladder and jumps onto the landing. He knocks — at first, he pounds, then, remembering, makes the requisite two quick knocks, one loud, two more quick — and the door opens. Mary is behind him.
Peter says, We saw the Lord!
Here? Like a ghost? Thomas asks.
No no no, not a ghost at all. He walked right through the door, into the room!
Thomas is perplexed. Through the door? The Christ, through a door? Thomas imagines it: the God of the world. The God who raised up the mustard seed, the wheat chaff, the fruit of the vine. The God who touched lepers, who traced lines in the dirt, who ate baked fish and red wine. The God whose body suffered and died!
His wounds! Were his wounds healed!?!
Peter shrugs. The others look at each other. You know, I don’t remember.
Thomas stares at the door. Friends, this is the God who bled. Who died. The God who suffered. Through a door!?! He looks back at Mary, who gazes at each of the others intently, with eyes that know. She remembers the gardener, the Christ. Thomas says, Brothers, I trust you, but until I can see his wounds, until I know he who has suffered, I cannot believe.
The others rebuke him, and accuse him of denying the truth.
But Thomas tilts his head and nods toward Mary’s knowing look. He is sure: he is not denying the truth. He is preaching it.
And when Jesus returns once more, he is sure that Thomas is there. Thomas, my friend. And Thomas does not wince. He sees the open wounds on his hands and feet. He does not refuse to look. He does not scroll through his phone. He does not forget.
Instead, he puts his fingers against the wound to feel the pain. To connect directly with the depth of the wound. To connect the vulnerability of our human life with the divine vulnerability of God. To bear it with the Christ. To see the sin of the world and to know the first step is always a love that is willing to simply bear it. To be near and not wince. To recognize resurrection is not the end of suffering, but the collective bearing of it.
To know that open wounds are empty tombs.
Blessed are those that put their hands into the pierced side of the world and do not look away.