In today’s gospel reading Jesus reminds the scribe and another disciple as they prepare to cross the sea ( Matthew 8  18-22 ) that following him comes at a cost. The storm they encounter is a sign of things to come.  Matthew’s gospel waits till Chapter 10 to name the Twelve in the boat with him.   

The apostles carry on his work in a special way. That’s why we celebrate a feast of an apostle each month in our church calendar. They handed on through “their preaching, by the example they gave, by the institutions they established, what they themselves had received–whether from the lips of Christ, from his way of life and his works, or whether they had learned it at the promptings of the Holy Spirit.”  (Catechism of the Catholic Faith 76)

 July 3^rd, we honor the Apostle Thomas. He reminds us that the witnesses chosen by Jesus were both weak and strong. Everyone in the Upper Room the night of Jesus’ resurrection believed that he had risen. The absent Thomas doesn’t.  “Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands and put my finger into the nailmarks and put my hand into his side, I will not believe.” Only when Jesus patiently appears to him a week later and has him touch the wounds in his hands and his side, does he believe. “My Lord and my God.”

Is Thomas unique in his weakness of faith? Were the others Jesus chose as foundation stones of the church unlike him? From the slight information the gospels provide, all the other apostles are both weak and strong–Peter, their leader, is a prime example.

Were the apostles changed completely by the Holy Spirit at Pentecost? Perhaps not as completely  as we may believe. The story of the two disciples on the way to Emmaus in St. Luke’s gospel may better describe the post-resurrection church and its leaders.

Hardly a triumphalist church and hardly perfect leaders. Their strength and their guide was the patient Jesus. The Risen Jesus was with them then and he is with us now.