Apr 3: My Lord and My God

Luca Signorelli (1441-1523): Doubting Thomas
La Basilica di Santa Maria, Loreto

Second Sunday of Easter

Gospel: Jn 20:19-31

Thomas answered Jesus, “My Lord and my God (NRSV, Jn 20:28)!”

Father, how often when we seek to find you we look outside of ourselves to the world around us. We seek evidence of your presence in your “footsteps,” your effects, in the world. We even prove your existence from your physical creation. Like Thomas we must be shown.

Father, you love us so much that your Word has become flesh to dwell among us in our Lord Jesus Christ. But that same Word who walked the earth also dwells within each one of us, even the most abject of sinners. Your Word calls us all into existence and remains always present to us challenging us to grow in your life that you share with us or, if we have rejected that life, to accept forgiveness and to start afresh.

Father, when we doubt, remind us to turn inward to find your Word closer than we are to ourselves. We may abandon you, Father, in sin but, in your Word always present to us, you never abandon us. You are there at every moment revealing yourself to us in him before whom we can only prostrate ourselves and declare: My Lord and my God.

Alleluia. Amen.