If we look carefully at the Thomas we meet in today’s gospel reading, we will see ourselves, writes Christian Brother Julian McDonald. Each of us, if we are honest, will acknowledge that we struggle with unquestioning belief in Jesus’ resurrection. We would like the comfort of divine reassurance. But that is simply not available. In all four gospels, it emerges that all the disciples struggled to make meaning of the various encounters they had had with the risen Jesus. It was only after several appearances and repeated reassurances from Jesus himself that they grew into accepting that he had truly risen.

Holy Week begins and ends in drama. It starts with Jesus’ dramatic entry into Jerusalem, mounted on a donkey, writes Christian Brother Julian McDonald. The Gospel readings of Passion Sunday and Good Friday are extensive presentations by Matthew and John of the dramatic events that constituted the passion and death of Jesus. We are each invited to choose for ourselves the role or roles which fit or coincide with the way in which we are living out our lives. The liturgy invites us to choose our own parts, to identify in those three dramas with the players in whom we recognise ourselves. It invites us to be participants rather than observers who have paid for comfortable seats. What follows here is a series of scenes that might draw us into the drama and help us to make our own meaning of it, Let us allow the drama to unfold and let us take our part.

Br Julian McDonald CFC reflects that in this Sunday’s Gospel reading, Jesus invites us to be on the lookout for all those Lazaruses we encounter who are bound-up, oppressed, less than fully alive or yet to find the freedom needed for living wholesome lives. “Unbind them”, he says to us, “let them grow free.”

This Sunday’s gospel invites us to stop and consider where and how we are blind, wilfully or inadvertently, writes Christian Brother Julian McDonald. It also reminds us how Jesus insists that our role as Christians is to reveal God’s goodness, love mercy and compassion to the world by the way we live. Do we dare illuminate our world by letting our light shine?

Today’s gospel story of the encounter at a village well between Jesus and a Samaritan woman is one that has been repeated in a multitude of different ways in every known culture. It resonates in the mind and heart of every decent person who has even an ounce of compassion, tolerance and open-heartedness. We have all experienced people who are obsessed with passing on to the younger generation the bitterness of family feuds or fanning the flame of prejudice that divides communities and even keeps different racial and religious groups apart.