Wounds…

It is still Eastertime. My favorite character at Eastertime whom I’d like to consider a “friend” is Thomas. Prefixed to his name always almost is the adjective “doubting”. He doubted because he was hurting. The first time he met the Risen Lord was one week after Easter. At that meeting, two wounded men met. The first wounded man was Jesus. He met the apostles and showed them His wounds. It sounded like Jesus showed them His wounds with an element of pride. Aptly so, because those wounds were not wounds of defeat. They were wounds of love. They were wounds of victory and triumph. They were not aching wounds. They were not stinking wounds. They were wounds of glory. They were wounds of love that is ready to sacrifice without measure.
He showed them His hands and His side. He did that not to rebuke or to accuse. He did that to show them the depth of His tender love.

The other wounded man was Thomas. He did not have wounds on his skin. He had no bleeding wounds on his flesh. His wounds were from within. His heart was wounded by disappointment. He felt deceived by the Master. He felt defeated after having staked everything in Jesus. He thought Jesus was the Messiah. He thought Jesus was the King. He questioned why Jesus died like a criminal. He thought Jesus would save Israel. Why could he not even save Himself from His oppressors? Thomas was disappointed. He felt duped. He was almost fully convinced that he made the wrong decision in following this Carpenter from Galilee. He really had a deep and gaping wound- within.

The wounds of the heart take longer to heal. The wounds of the heart are settled deep within for years and years. They take longer to heal because we can hide them and pretend that they do not exist. We smile from the outside but we cry deep inside our hearts. We can talk and act and move along and do things and function normally as if there were nothing wrong with us, as if there was nothing lacking inside of us.
Some of us can walk around feeling wounded and beaten for all these years without our closest friends and family even noticing or seeing them through the ‘masks’ we conveniently wear as we go through our suffering for so many years.

Not for long enough. Sooner or later, as we get older, we begin to fall into severe self-pity and think that our family and friends are too great or too busy to listen to our heartaches and inner wounds. The wounds start to re-surface. The pains we so long have been hiding all these years start to bother us. They start to bother people around us, too. We become very vulnerable and overly sensitive to slight provocations. We easily react in the highest degree to people around us who do slight errors and mistakes against us. Later, we even think they are insensitive for not detecting our woundedness and offering us the balm we secretly seek and crave for.

At Eastertime, two wounded men met. The first one had glorious wounds. The second one had gaping, aching wounds inside of him. The first one was ready to heal by the power of His wounds. The second one needed healing for his wounds but he had nobody to heal them.
Then they met. The first one healed the second. At the end of the meeting, both of them had glorious wounds, ready to heal more wounds.

Thousands are wounded around us. Some carry anger against unfaithful spouses, boyfriends, girlfriends, lovers. Some carry hatred and resentment against merciless fathers and brothers who had repeatedly abused them physically and sexually when they were young, innocent and helpless. Some carry anger against officemates and classmates who sow intrigues and spread gossips. Some carry secret anger and disgust because of problems and conflicts of decades ago within the family that were not faced squarely and resolved openly. There are so many of them, as many as the stars that we see in the clear evening sky.

But unfortunately, even if we try to mask our deep-seated anger and resentments, the human person in us has its way of seeking some kind of expression someday somehow.
These resentments, thoughts of revenge and resisting actions and actuations begin to take different forms. They are sometimes expressed in sarcasm, irritability, physical distress, annoyance, insecurity and violence. These pain we have been keeping inside our hearts all these years slowly takes a different shape and comes out in our everyday dealings with our family, friends, and community.

The point is that truly wounded people cannot hide their wounds behind masks for long. Time will come a time when they will start to affect every inch of their being and also their environment. If they succeeded in making people believe that everything in themselves are fantastically alright for sometime, sometimes, they cannot fool themselves for a long time, for all the time in their lives. Because inner wounds are too painful to bear as time goes on. They need to be healed. These wounds must need healing.

If given a choice, they all want to touch the wounds of Jesus. They want to know for sure that someone loves them enough to be wounded and maybe even killed for the love of them. The problem is: they cannot see Christ anymore. They can only see the people who claim to carry the name of Christ. The question is: Are they like Christ? Do they really live their lives as Christ did or prescribed? Are the Christians today wounded enough in the name of love that they can heal those who are wounded? Are our Christians of today wounded in such a way that allows them to heal those who are wounded?

Are our Christians truly risen from the death of indifference and selfishness, and antipathy that they can resurrect shattered hopes and bring back lost and broken lives?

Have a blessed Easter to all of us!