It is admittedly an odd situation being an Orthodox Christian in the West around Easter time, at least most years when the Western and Eastern Easters do not fall on the same date. This year, we are one week behind, having celebrated Palm Sunday yesterday. I suppose in one sense this year I can identify with the Apostle Thomas, for whom Easter came a week later than it did for the other Apostles. During the week after our Lord’s Resurrection, he was possessed of disbelief in the Lord’s Resurrection and would only encounter the Living Proof and Living Lord the following Sunday, Thomas Sunday as it is known in both East and West.

This year I can identify with Thomas during this week in at least two ways. First, I have to admit that while I believe in the Lord’s Resurrection, knowing it as a certainly in one’s life is another matter. Not intellectually, but deeply as a lived experience that informs how I live each day. While I’ve had sufficient experiences (and the deep testimony of the Christian Church) to believe that the Resurrection is real, just as did Thomas who heard the testimony of his fellow Apostles, all ten of them and maybe others besides, my daily actions, I suspect, would be altered were I to place my own physical fingers on the Resurrected skin of the Savior’s wounds and look him in the face, as did Thomas. Doing that would surely wake up any man to a new vision of life. Seeing, for Thomas, and for many, is believing, but the Lord said blessed are those who have not seen yet believe–“believe” in the sense of living in a new way.

There are millions of men and women for whom believing yet not seeing is true. Preeminently the martyrs throughout history, including during our most recently completed century of carnage and woe and attacks against the Body of Christ. It is in the realm of martyrdom that my second identification with Thomas lies. During the Passion of the Lord, he with several of the other Apostles, were nowhere to be found. Whenever the going got tough, not-so-tough got going by avoiding the Cross. It was too painful to bear. And there was fear. I would be a fool to think to myself that I would have done otherwise.

As I look ahead this week to the liturgical services of the Passion, I have a nagging desire, not that I should avoid the Cross, but that I not experience the full measure of understanding the Love that the Passion discloses to us. There is a prayer we make to God, “wound our souls with Your love,” that expresses baldly and simply that understanding the depth of the love of God for us can cause a godly pain. Should my heart, along with my intellect, ever be fully exposed to the meaning and experience of the Suffering of the Lord on the Cross, I do not know if I could take it. It wounds, because the depth of the sacrifice reveals the depth of my sin.

Please, not all at once, Lord. Each year, yes, a little bit more. “Wound our souls with Your love,” but not too deeply, gently, a year at a time. It takes that long to recover from the previous year. When the Savior extends his wounded hands to Thomas in love, dare Thomas, or even need Thomas touch them with his own finger just to make sure? He surely felt a reticence to actually place his hand in the Lord’s lanced side. I approach the Passion, halting, and best, on my knees. It is beyond words.