Eph 2:19-22 / Jn 20:24-29
More than a century ago, Abraham Lincoln made the famous observation, “You can fool all of the people sometimes, and some of the people all the time, but you can never fool all the people all the time.” Quite so, yet a lot of our politicians keep trying!
For us, an important corollary of this is that you can’t fool God — ever — not even for an instant! Yet it seems that we keep trying. In today’s gospel, Jesus shows us once again his ability to read people’s hearts. It was the source of one of the great continuing sadnesses of his life: He could see the envy and hatred that so many people harbored against him, and for no reason.
What does the Lord see when he reads our hearts? Without doubt he sees our goodness — which we ourselves so often fail to see and trust — and he sees our desire to be true and to do the deeds of love. But there’s another part of us that he sees as well, our sins and failures, of course, but also those locked rooms whose doors we refuse to even open.
If the Lord sees what is in us and does not reject us, why should we fear to enter those darkened rooms and to see those parts of ourselves that we fear and shudder to face? The answer is that we shouldn’t, for, as the prayer says, “Lord, there is nothing that you and I can’t handle together!”
Remember that, trust him, and open those doors now!
