On the evening of the same day when Jesus rose from death, appeared to the apostles. Not to all of them, because Thomas was missing. When he returned, you can imagine how they gave the news and shared their personal experience of the Resurrected Christ. Did he believe them? No, and he was determined never to believe them. Why? What was missing in the communication of the apostles, that they did not succeed in making him believe? The two men in the empty tomb, on the other hand, managed to make the women believe there and then. What is the difference between the announcement of the apostles and that of the two men? Both of them stated facts that could be experienced: “We have seen the Lord”, and “look where they have laid Him, He is not here”.

It seems that sharing experience, by itself, is not enough, to bring faith. Actually, what made the three women believe was when they remembered what Jesus had said very often before His passion, as recalled to them by the two men. This is something which the apostles could have done with Thomas but they did not. Maybe they expected Thomas to trust their word. And why should he? Were they trustworthy? Was Peter trustworthy, he who denied of ever knowing Jesus? Is man’s word and experience trustworthy? What can make it trustworthy? You know what made the word of the two strangers in the tomb trustworthy? Their recalling what Jesus had announced before His Passion and Death, and their looking into the experience both they and the women were having of the empty tomb as a confirmation of that Word.

Therefore it is not just my experience, our experience, but the way our experience confirms the Word of God as being fulfilled here and now. At the moment, the Church, and the Pope with us, is going through a very terrible tempest; this is our experience. But can we see Acts 27 and 28 being fulfilled in our lives as we celebrate the 1950th anniversary of that providential shipwreck?… “No one will be lost”.