By: The Rev. Canon Charles H. Nalls
In this Holy Season, the psalmist invites us to sing “glad songs of victory”, for “[we] shall not die, but [we] shall live.” (Ps. 118:17) Eastertide proclaims that we “are not given over to death, but to life.” Could there be any greater gift or more emphatic proclamation of the value of life itself? We are freed from sin and lifted by Christ from death. With this victory, though, comes responsibility. From the lips of St. Peter we hear that we must obey God and not men, because we have heard, believed, and are witnesses to the promise of life eternal.
Yet, despite this incredible gift, the gift of life temporal and eternal, so many doubt. The account of St. Thomas in St. John’s gospel is emblematic of the struggle that many have with the question of obeying God on the life issues. Out of sight, out of mind is the mindset that leads to complacency and complicity. Following meeting the resurrected, living Jesus, the other disciples told him, “We have seen the Lord.” But, Thomas said to them, “Unless I see in his hands the print of the nails, and place my finger in the mark of the nails, and place my hand in his side, I will not believe.” (Jn. 20:25)
Here lies the heart of witness to the word of God and to the testimony of Jesus Christ. (Rev. 1:2) It is the reason that the voices of abortion survivors and women who have suffered from abortion are so vital. Modern doubters and those who would push the life questions out of mind can be changed by seeing the marks of the wounds in another, just as St. Thomas was changed. Just as we are changed.