April 21, 2026
Today, there is much talk of “building resilience,” “moving beyond the past,” “turning suffering into strength,” “working through grief”… It is good to contemplate the risen Christ as he appears among the Apostles in the Upper Room, trapped in their fear, trapped in their guilt. What does Christ do? He gives His peace, but He also immediately reveals His wounds, and even invites Thomas to put his finger and his hand into them. Jesus does not ask us to be all-powerful in the face of trials, but to believe in Him, to trust Him: “Have faith.” ” And it is as if, instead of trying to “heal our wounds,” we simply had to touch them—in other words, to pass through the place where it hurts—in order to be saved. Another Thomas, Thomas Aquinas, wonders—and we can see why—whether it would not have been more perfect for Christ to rise without his wounds. He would have shown a body whole, unblemished, clean… and we would have “turned the page” on the sufferings of the Passion. The theologian’s response is admirable:
Christ displays his wounds just as a victor displays the trophies of his victory.
They are the indisputable and eternal proof of his boundless love for us. And it is through our own vulnerabilities (from the Latin vulnus, the wound) that we are configured to him, and that we can be redeemers with him. Does suffering, when embraced, make us stronger humanly speaking? Christ never promised this, but he shows us his wounded side, “that gaping door that calls to us.” He does not ask us to be invincible, but victorious, to keep within us a door open to life, a theological strength of conquest that he himself will give us if we ask him, he who “goes forth as a victor and to conquer again.”
Then, following Saint Paul, we will be able to say: When I am weak, then I am strong. Since the Passion, nothing will ever be the same again: the body of Christ will forever bear the stigmata of suffering. And since that trial that has touched us, nothing will ever be the same again: we will remain marked, limping from the hip like Jacob after his struggle with the Angel. But is it not through our wounds united with those of the Risen One that we can love more intensely, more tenderly, more deeply? Our wounded heart, united with His, can become, as the Church Fathers said, the gateway to salvation. Let us not close this door!
