In His various appearances to the disciples, after His resurrection Jesus goes to great lengths to prove, and prove again, that He truly has gone through death and has risen – to prove that He is physically real and that He is not a ghost. Jesus is patient with His followers’ failure to believe. He provides all these opportunities for His disciples to be sure that He is alive before He ascends into heaven. Through His resurrection He has conquered death and sin. And in rising from the dead He offers eternal life for all of us.
The experience of the disciples can comfort us. They doubted the resurrection, even when they heard first-hand stories from their friends, and, as we have heard today, even when they first saw the risen Christ. But they did come to believe and to believe with such conviction that they spent the rest of their lives sharing the Good News with others. If His skeptical disciples finally came to believe, then we too can be convinced.