NOTES for Joh 20:19-31

We do not know everything that took place between Christ and His disciples after His Resurrection. On the one hand, this is very disappointing: we would so like to look in, to learn what He told them about His death, His descent into hell, and the Resurrection; to see Him perform some new miracles. He could have told them so many important and interesting things. But alas, no. The Evangelists preserve the mystery with great modesty; they show only what is sufficient for us to “believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing we may have life in His name” (Jn 20:31). The Holy Spirit who moves the Evangelists clearly wants to leave everything that happened during this period hidden, just as He leaves hidden everything that happened to Jesus in His childhood. This is not because it is some secret, special knowledge available only to the chosen. It is because everything necessary and sufficient for our salvation has already been told to us. One might even say that these Gospel verses are a special place for us, a place where the story of each of us is told: the story of how the risen Lord has already appeared to us. Perhaps, in His mercy, the Lord will later reveal to us in the New Jerusalem everything we did not see, but that comes later. For now, we should rejoice that we do not see how the Lord appeared to the apostles, because “blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed” (Jn 20:29).