The Marks of Christ

Alleluia, Christ is risen!  He is risen indeed, alleluia!  Today, since it is also Orthodox Easter, it’s a salutation shared by Christians throughout the world, east and west, which is a special joy.

WHAT an amazing gospel reading we have today.  There are so many ways you can go with it. John, that most amazing of gospels, closes his gospels with a final flourish, and a surprise—because of course Thomas is only found in John’s gospel.  Every line in our passage today is suggestive, every word is fruitful for reflection. From the thrice-repeated “Peace be with you,” to God’s promise of mercy in the forgiveness of sins, to the unforgettable encounter of Thomas with Jesus, there is so much here.

But I’ve just come back from spending Easter in Assisi, following in the footsteps of Saints Francis and Clare.  And Assisi, if you’ll forgive the pun in the context of the Thomas story, has a way of getting under your skin.  You don’t come back the same.

So as I tried to picture Thomas standing in awe before his Risen Lord, his eyes flitting from wound to wound—hands, feet, side—I kept seeing the stigmata of St Francis.  These were open wounds in Francis’ hands, feet and side, that tradition tells us were pierced into his body by a fiery cruciform airborne seraph while Francis was kneeling in prayer at La Verna, about a day’s walk north of Assisi.  Francis’ stigmata were burned onto my retinas because after Assisi, we spent a few days in Florence.  The Accademia Gallery in Florence is best known for the colossal perfect Renaissance marble manhood—all 17 feet / 5 metres of him—of Michaelangelo’s David.  But the other rooms of the Accademia are filled with wounded bodies: the wounded body of Christ, the wounded bodies of martyrs, and the wounded body of St Francis.  It seemed to me that in almost every other Florentine altarpiece in the gallery, no matter what the subject is in the upper main panels, in the little bottom panels, the artist has inserted a vignette of St Francis receiving the stigmata.  And of course, Francis and his stigmata feature on many stand-alone, large, dramatic paintings as well.  With the fiery seraph hovering mid-air, beaming down those straight red wound rays, the subject is so weird and wonderful that it seems it was artistically irresistible.

There are many who dismiss the whole mystical devotional phenomenon of stigmata as little more than a psycho-somatic pathology, semi-hysterical, self-inflicted.  But bear with me.  You don’t have to believe in the stigmata to learn something important from them on this second Sunday of Easter, as we seek a deeper understanding of Thomas touching the Lord’s wounds.

The stigmata for San Francesco signalled a self-identification with Jesus so complete that he bore the Lord’s wounds in his body.  And remember that the Apostle Paul, similarly in love and self-identified with Jesus, famously closes his letter to the Galatians, “From now one, let no one cause me trouble, for I bear on my body the marks of Jesus” (Galatians 6:17).  This was not a claim by Paul for stigmata in the medieval sense, but an ownership reference: slaves in the ancient world were branded with their owner’s mark, soldiers marked as imperial property, and followers of mystery religions tattooed themselves with tokens of their gods.  So widespread was the practice in the ancient world, the Galatians would have made the association immediately.

What were these marks for Paul? Paul’s stigmata were perhaps the scars and wounds left from the beatings, stonings, and shipwrecks he endured in his missionary travels—which he bore with pride, as witnessing to his conformity to Christ.  Some Christian traditions bear the mark of Christ on their bodies quite literally: Coptic Christians with a cross tattooed on the inner wrist; Ethiopian Christians, on the forehead.

Something similar is going on when we sign the cross on the foreheads of those being baptised with holy oil: “Christ claims you for his own. Receive the sign of his cross.” The actual oil may not endure, but as the book of Revelation affirms, the seal of the signing is indelible.  In baptism we belong to Christ forever more, as living members of his body, that body that Thomas touched so memorably, wounded and yet glorious.  As Christians, we belong not to a club, or a cult, or a philosophical discussion group for like-minded people, but to a living wounded body, the glorious body of Christ that is the Church.

A concept familiar to biologists and wildlife rehabilitators may be helpful here, that of “imprinting.”  Baby mammals and birds discover who they are and how to be their particular species, by imprinting on their parents.  In the same way, we discover our true and full identity by imprinting on Christ, on his body, on his example. In her letters of spiritual direction, St Clare of Assisi put it this way: “We become what we love, and who we love shapes what we become.” Ultimately, we learn how to be Christians, not from books or sermons or blogs or learned disputations, but by that kind of radical, primal encounter with the risen Lord that Thomas had—which caused him to cry out spontaneously, “my Lord and my God!”

Like Thomas, like St Francis, like St Clare, we learn what being a follower of Christ means, each in our own particular circumstances, by gazing on Jesus in prayer so intently that our soul, mind and body imprint on him and become conformed to him, so that we become channels of his grace, mercy and peace to a troubled world.  Christ imprints on us the same way that metal type imprints on paper or a seal in wax. Actually, the word that Thomas uses in the gospel for the wounds is not stigma, but typos, type: a model, a pattern.  And so Christ is our model; we are transformed according to his pattern.  St Clare again: “Gaze upon him, consider him, contemplate him, as you desire to imitate him.”  

Christ meets our loving gaze in prayer with his own loving gaze.  And in that gaze of Christ we are revealed in our original, true, and eternal identity as beloved children of God—as the hymn says, “ransomed, healed, restored, forgiven.” 

Thomas had the supreme blessing of being in the actual, physical presence of Jesus, in the flesh—“Do you believe, Thomas, because you have seen me?” But we too have the opportunity to see Jesus in the flesh: we have the ultimate, ongoing blessing of his presence, in our communion with the Lord who gives himself for us, and who comes to us in every Eucharist. 

Jesus, in our passage, says “Peace be with you!” three times to the incredulous disciples.  He assures them that, far from being angry with them for the abominable way that they behaved—they betrayed him, they abandoned him, they denied him—he forgives them everything, and desires their good.  That must have been a surprise for them.  He breathes on them the Holy Spirit.  As we come forward to receive the Eucharist or a blessing this morning, or we simply sit in prayer in our seats, can we feel Jesus breathing peace upon us? What would that feel like?  Can we know ourselves to be forgiven and loved, and of infinite worth?  Can we sense that invisible, but indelible, baptismal cross which may have been marked on our foreheads shining, blazing out, bringing warmth and light to ourselves and to others, marking us as living members of the body of Christ?  Can we then go out into the city, and back into our daily lives, radiant in that baptismal identity, and confirmed in our calling to be Christ’s body in the world?

Like Thomas, like Francis, like Clare, for us to live is to gaze on Christ, and to live in and for Christ.  May we ever find it the way of joy and peace.  

Alleluia, Christ is Risen!  He is risen indeed, alleluia!