St. John perfectly illustrates the truth in his Gospel, where he uses poetry and prose to tell the story of Jesus. Today we should not be too hard on Thomas, who will for ever be labelled “doubting†Thomas. Thomas has given us permission to have our doubts, but Peter and John are assuring us that once we overcome them our joy will be beyond description. The challenge for us is to experience in the light of the Gospel and see that our stories are part of God’s unfolding story. Clearly the members of the early Christian community, described in the Acts of the Apostles today, had made the leap of faith and were living in a new and dynamic way, sharing their lives in a spirit of faith and love. The temptation is to look at that early idyllic picture of community life and consider it too good to be true and beyond our imitation; but that would be to miss the point and fail to read the whole story. It would be like reading only the first half of today’s Gospel, about when Jesus came to His disciples on Easter night, and not reading the story of Thomas’ doubts on the following Sunday. If you read on in the Acts of the Apostles, you will find plenty of disagreements and misunderstandings in the early Church. But they continued to trust that the Spirit would guide them and lead them to the truth.