NOTES for Joh 20:1-31
How are we to understand these words of the risen Lord: “Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed”? Are not those more blessed who saw the One risen from the dead with their own eyes, in whose lives this turning point occurred clearly and irrevocably, bringing the irrefutable realization that death had been conquered by the life of Jesus? And finally, why did the “other disciple,” in whom we can readily recognize Jesus' beloved disciple, not enter the tomb at first, having seen only a “hint” of the unexpected victory—the cloth that had covered His head? What would our faith be without the Gospel accounts of the Resurrection, and what would Thomas's faith have been without his encounter with the risen Jesus? By asking ourselves these difficult questions, we can try to comprehend the central question of our relationship with the Risen One: the relationship among experiential knowledge, the testimony of the Gospel, and faith as an incomprehensible contact with the One who conquered death.