“Put your hand into my wounds.” said the risen Jesus to Thomas, “and you will know who I am.”
The wounds of Christ are his identity. They tell us who he is. He did not lose them. They went down into the grave with him and they came up with him- visible, tangible, palpable. Rising did not remove them. He is who broke the bonds of death kept his wounds.

To believe in Christ’s rising from the grave is to accept it as a sign of our own rising from our graves. If for each of us, it was our destiny to be obliterated, and for all of us together it was our destiny to fade away without a trace, then not Christ’s rising but my dear son’s early dying would be the logo of our fate.

Slowly I begin to see that there is something more as well. To believe in Christ’s rising and death’s dying, is also to live with the power and the challenge to rise up, from all our dark graves of suffering love. If sympathy for the world’s wounds is not enlarged by our anguish, if love for those around us is not expanded, if gratitude for what is good does not flame up, if insight is not deepened, if commitment to what is important is not strengthened, if aching for a new day is not intensified, if hope is weakened and faith diminished, if from the experience of death comes nothing good, then death has won. Then death, be proud. So I shall struggle to live the reality of Christ’s rising and death’s dying. In my living, my son’s dying will not be the last word.

But as I rise up, I bear the wounds of his death. My rising does not remove them. They mark me.

If you want to know who I am, put your hand in.