Acts 2:42-47; 1 Peter 1:3-9; John 20:19-31

The ideal Christian community: living together peacefully and sharing everything they have. Brotherhood, bread and prayers, deep faith and equality.
The people admired the apostles for their attitude of embracing everyone and for not having any private possessions. The apostle’s faith and saintly lives would have been seen as the reason why they could perform miracles.
Sharing possessions can be challenging, so they sold their belongings and shared the income. However, it is interesting to see that the sharing is not done in equal parts but rather considering a combination of equality and solidarity: “according to what each one needed.”
The description almost sounds like a religious order, where the early Christians lived in these communities that determined their lives – but then there is a surprise: “They went as a body to the Temple every day”. So, they still follow the practices and habits of the local wider community in which they were brought up. The breaking of the bread is not done in a temple, a place of worship, but rather in homes where the people were gathering around a table. It might have been because they couldn’t openly admit that they are followers of Jesus Christ.

In Peter, we read that we are sons of God, which means that we are taken seriously and we are able to inherit. The expression “sons” goes much further than children as it doesn’t just refer to the genealogy but includes also rights and responsibilities.
Jesus’ death is our birth. This picture is very much connected to nature – God’s Creation. Salvation and joy for all is being given to us by the grace of God.

Eight days after the Resurrection, Jesus’ re-birth, he visits his friends. God created the world and the human beings in 6 days, God rests on the eighth day and looks at the Creation and saw that it was good. Jesus comes to his community, the community of those who had followed him during his ministry on earth.
The doors are closed and the disciples are hiding, locking themselves in so that nobody would surprise them. Yet, the resurrected Jesus who has overcome death, also overcomes locked doors. Jesus identifies himself to the disciples with his voice, by greeting them with the words of peace and by showing his wounds.
Once they recognise Jesus, Jesus fulfils the promise he gave to his disciples at the Last Supper: he sends them the Holy Spirit. It is through the Holy Spirit that they will be able to continue the work he had started and to forgive sins. Jesus commissions them.
However, as it happens also today in parishes where ministers are commissioned before they can carry out a certain ministry, there might be someone who misses the commissioning. Will this person have to wait for another group commissioning?
While Jesus offers Thomas to place his hand in Jesus’ wounds, this is only the first step: believing. It is not clear if Thomas actually placed his hand in Jesus’ wounds. However, there is no mention of the Holy Spirit and of a commissioning for Thomas.

Thomas, as anyone else who believes, will have life through Jesus’ name.

BM