Gospel of Jesus Christ according to Saint John

John 20:19–31

¹⁹On the evening of that same day, the first of the week, when the disciples were together, with the doors locked for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood among them and said, «Peace be with you.» ²⁰Having said this, he showed them his hands and his side. The disciples were filled with joy when they saw the Lord. ²¹He said to them a second time, «Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you.» ²²After saying this, he breathed on them and said, «Receive the Holy Spirit.» ²³«Those whose sins you forgive are forgiven, and those whose sins you retain are retained." ²⁴But Thomas, one of the twelve, the one called Didymus, was not with them when Jesus came. ²⁵The other disciples told him, «We have seen the Lord.» But he said to them, «Unless I see the nail marks in his hands and put my finger where the nails were, and my hand into his side, I will not believe.» ²⁶Eight days later, while the disciples were still in the same place, and Thomas with them, Jesus came, the doors being locked, and standing in their midst, he said to them, «Peace be with you.» ²⁷Then he said to Thomas, «Put your finger here and see my hands; reach out your hand and put it into my side. Stop doubting and believe.» ²⁸Thomas replied, "My Lord and my God." ²⁹Jesus said to him, «Because you have seen me, [Thomas], you have believed; blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.» ³⁰Jesus performed many other miracles in the presence of his disciples, which are not recorded in this book. ³¹But these were written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.

This was after the death of Jesus. On the evening of that first day of the week, when the disciples were together, with the doors locked for fear of the Jewish authorities, Jesus came and stood among them. He said to them, «Peace be with you!» After he said this, he showed them his hands and his side. The disciples were overjoyed when they saw the Lord. Again Jesus said to them, «Peace be with you! As the Father has sent me, so I send you.» And with that he breathed on them and said, «Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive anyone’s sins, their sins are forgiven; if you do not forgive them, they are not forgiven.» Now one of the Twelve, Thomas, called Didymus (that is, Twin), was not with them when Jesus came. The other disciples told him, «We have seen the Lord!» But he said to them, «Unless I see the nail marks in his hands and put my finger where the nails were, and put my hand into his side, I will not believe.» A week later his disciples were in the house again, and Thomas was with them. Though the doors were locked, Jesus came and stood among them. He said, «Peace be with you!» Then he said to Thomas, «Put your finger here; see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it into my side. Stop doubting and believe.» Thomas said to him, «My Lord and my God!» Jesus told him, «Because you have seen me, you have believed.» Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.« Jesus performed many other signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not recorded in this book. But these are written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.

Entering into faith without having seen: Thomas, the wound, and beatitude

How the scene of the "eighth day" reveals the universal path to Easter faith and transforms our way of believing today

The scene is familiar, almost too familiar. An absent man, a community in turmoil, a demand for proof, and, after eight days, the encounter that changes everything. Thomas the Twin has gone down in history as the symbol of unbelief. But to reduce this passage to a lesson on doubt is to miss the point. John 20:19-31 is much more: it is the Christological testament of the entire Gospel of John, the Gospel definition of mature faith, and the promise addressed to every reader who has not seen the Risen Christ with their own eyes.

We will begin by placing the text within its literary and liturgical context, then we will closely examine John's narrative grammar: how he constructs tension, resolution, and final beatitude. Three main themes will be explored—the peace offered to the wounded, the breath of the Spirit as a new creation, and Thomas's confession as a Christological summit. We will then see how this text speaks to our concrete lives, what roots it has in tradition, and how to make it a practice of meditation. The article concludes with a prayer and a call to enter, ourselves, into the eighth day.

The Locked Door and the Morning of the World: Context and Source Text

John 20:19-31 occupies a strategic position in the construction of the Gospel. It is not a mere epilogue. John has built his narrative like a great narrative arc—"In the beginning was the Word" (John 1:1)—and he completes this arc with two symmetrical appearances, separated by eight days, in the same locked room. This device is not accidental: it is the signature of an evangelist who thinks like an architect.

The immediate context is that of the first day of the week (Jn 20:1, 19). Mary Magdalene has already run to the empty tomb, met the Risen Lord, and gone to announce the news. Peter and the Beloved have seen the burial cloths. But the Eleven—Thomas is absent—are still huddled behind locked doors, paralyzed by fear. The first appearance to the group (vv. 19–23) and the second, eight days later, with Thomas (vv. 26–29), form a double scene constructed as a mirror image: same place, same greeting of peace, same gesture of showing the wounds, same movement toward faith.

What John calls "the first day of the week" is laden with the full symbolic weight of Judaism and nascent Christianity. For a first-century Jewish reader, the first day is the one following the Sabbath, the day on which God said, "Let there be light." For a Christian reader, it is already the "Lord's Day," the dies Domini, the day of the Eucharistic assembly. By structuring his two appearances around two "first days" separated by a whole week, John inscribes these events within the very rhythm of the communal liturgy: Jesus comes to where the assembly gathers, each week, behind its doors.

The expression "eight days later" (v. 26) is, in Greek, meth' hèmeras oktô — literally «after eight days.» In the patristic tradition, the number eight designates the day beyond the week, the eschatological day, the new creation. It is the eighth day of circumcision (Lk 2:21), but also, for the Fathers, the symbol of the Kingdom that comes after the end of time. John is therefore subtly telling us: this scene is not merely a past event. It is a type of what happens every Sunday, every time the community gathers and the Risen Lord comes into its midst, whether the doors are closed or not.

The text is divided into three movements: the first coming (vv. 19-23), the rejected testimony (vv. 24-25), and the second coming with Thomas (vv. 26-29). All of this is followed by a concluding section (vv. 30-31) that reveals the purpose of the entire Gospel. This three-part structure is not rhetorical—it is pastoral. John wants the reader, like Thomas, to experience absence, doubt, and encounter.

The Parable of the Twin: A Literary and Theological Analysis of the Story

Absence as a condition of encounter

What is immediately striking about John's narrative is his care to specify that Thomas "was not with them when Jesus came" (v. 24). Why this clarification? It is not insignificant. John deliberately constructs a character who did not benefit from the first visit. This character is the literary representative of all those who, from the first century to the present day, have not seen. Thomas is the figure of the Christian of the second, third, and twentieth generations. He is our narrative alter ego.

His nickname is itself a significant construction. «Thomas, called Didymus (that is, Twin)»—John translates the Aramaic for his Greek readers. Twin of whom? Tradition has speculated widely. Some Syriac Fathers have said he was the twin of Jesus himself, which is theologically audacious but spiritually profound: Thomas is the one who resembles the Lord, who fully shares his human nature, who weeps and doubts and asks for proof. He is the twin of every human being who seeks God in the material world.

Thomas's statement in verse 25 is often cited as proof of his disbelief: "Unless I see... unless I put my finger... unless I put my hand... no, I will not believe." But let's look more closely. Thomas does not deny the resurrection in the abstract. He sets three concrete, embodied, tactile conditions. He does not say, "It is impossible." He says, "I want to touch." This emphasis on the flesh, on the marks, on the wounded body is precisely what John wants to highlight. In a context where Gnosticism is beginning to deny the bodily reality of the resurrection, Thomas the Twin is John's answer: the Risen One is corporeal, tangible, bearing his scars.

And Jesus doesn't scold him. He comes a second time. He addresses Thomas directly, by name, with a precision that echoes word for word the conditions Thomas set: «Put your finger here, and see my hands; put out your hand, and place it in my side» (v. 27). This mimicry of Thomas's vocabulary is an extraordinary pastoral act: the risen Lord descends into the language of doubt to raise up faith.

Thomas's response—"My Lord and my God!"—is the highest Christological confession in the entire Gospel of John. It echoes the opening line: "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was God." The arc is closed. The prologue of chapter 1 finds its fulfillment in the exclamation of chapter 20. And this confession is uttered not by a theologian in a library, but by a man standing before the open wounds of the Crucified and Risen One.

«"Peace be with you": peace that passes through locked doors

Jesus enters even though the doors are locked. This is not a technical detail about the nature of the resurrected body. It is a theological declaration: no human fear, no inner lock, no enclosure of the soul can prevent the Risen One from coming. The closed doors in John's account are a symbol of fear (v. 19 states it explicitly: "for fear of the Jews"). They are the doors we close when life has hurt us, when trust has been betrayed, when hope has seemed to die with Good Friday.

The first words of the resurrected Jesus to his assembled disciples were: «Peace be with you.» Eirene hymin. He repeats it twice in the same scene (v. 19 and v. 21), and a third time to Thomas during the second appearance (v. 26). This triple greeting is not a formula of politeness. In a Jewish context, the shalom This is an eschatological reality: it is the messianic peace foretold by the prophets, the reconciliation between God and humanity, the restoration of integrity. The resurrected Jesus enters into the fear of his disciples and offers them what the Old Testament had promised.

But there's more. Immediately after saying "peace," he shows them his hands and his side. This gesture is disconcerting if one doesn't understand Johannine logic. Peace is not offered. despite the injuries, but through they and by They. The wounds of the Crucified One are proofs of peace. What John tells us here is that Easter peace does not erase the Passion—it transfigures it. The glorified body still bears the scars. The resurrection is not a return to the previous state, as with Lazarus. It is a transformation that integrates death and makes it the place of life.

This logic is of paramount importance for contemporary pastoral care. It tells those who are wounded, bereaved, and marked by life: your scars are not an obstacle to encountering God. They are sometimes the very place where you can meet Him. The Risen One comes with His own scars. He knows what it is like to be pierced by the sword.

The disciples «were filled with joy when they saw the Lord» (v. 20). John here fulfills a promise made in chapter 16: «Your sorrow will turn into joy… and no one will take your joy from you» (Jn 16:20, 22). Easter joy is not the absence of pain. It is the presence of the Risen Lord in the heart of transformed pain.

«Receive the Holy Spirit»: the breath that recreates the world

The scene in verse 22 is one of the most powerful in the entire New Testament. Jesus breathes on his disciples and says, «Receive the Holy Spirit.» In Greek, the verb enephysesen — he breathed — is exactly the same as the one used in the Septuagint (the Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible) to describe the creation of man in Genesis 2:7: «God breathed into his nostrils the breath of life.»

John here constructs a theology of the new creation. Just as God breathed life into clay to create a living being, the Risen Christ breathes the Holy Spirit into the community of disciples to bring forth the new humanity. This is a Johannine Pentecost, interior and discreet, which precedes and prepares for the Pentecost of Luke (Acts 2). The two accounts do not contradict each other; they complement each other: one speaks of the intimacy of the gift, the other of its missionary power.

This inspiration is immediately linked to the mission: «As the Father has sent me, so I send you» (v. 21). The model of mission is Trinitarian. Jesus is sent by the Father with the fullness of divine love. Likewise, the disciples are sent by Jesus, bearers of this same love and this Spirit. There is a continuity—one might even say a pastoral consubstantiality—between the mission of the Son and the mission of the Church.

The power to forgive and retain sins (v. 23) is given within this context of inspiration and sending. It must not be isolated from its context. It is not an abstract legal power: it is the capacity of the Church, animated by the Spirit, to continue the reconciliation that Jesus inaugurated. Wherever the disciples go, the Spirit will go with them to make possible the encounter between divine mercy and human suffering.

The breath also echoes chapter 3, where Jesus tells Nicodemus that «the wind (pneuma) blows where it wishes» (Jn 3:8). The Spirit is free, unpredictable, untamable. He, too, enters through closed doors. And in this breath, something fundamental is said about the nature of the Christian life: it is not primarily the observance of a law, but the reception of a breath. One does not become a Christian through effort, but through inspiration—in the most literal sense of the term.

«"My Lord and my God": the confession that establishes faith

Thomas's confession in verse 28 is a high point. It is the most complete human response to John's Christological revelation. Let us analyze it word by word.

«My Lord» — Kyrios in Greek, translation of the Hebrew divine title Adonai, itself a substitute for the unpronounceable name YHWH. In the Greco-Roman world, Kyrios is also the title of the Emperor. Thomas makes a radical choice here: he recognizes that Jesus, and not Caesar, is the Lord of his life. It is a political act as much as a spiritual one.

«" My God " - Theos. This is the first time in the Gospel of John that a human being directly calls Jesus "my God." The prologue had said it in the third person ("the Word was God"). Here, Thomas says it in the first person, in the relationship, in the face-to-face encounter. It is no longer a theological proposition; it is a personal address. And this address is made in the presence of the wounds. Thomas does not say "my God" despite the cross; he says it. because The cross is there, integrated into the glorious body.

The possessive pronoun "my" is often overlooked in commentaries, but it is essential. "My Lord and my God"—not just "the Lord" or "God" in general. Thomas appropriates the revelation. He speaks of what concerns him personally. Biblical faith is never an abstract adherence to propositions. It is always a relationship: "my God," "my Lord." This is the register of Abraham ("the Lord my God"), of the Psalms ("My God, my God"—Psalm 22), of Paul ("He who loved me and gave himself for me"—Galatians 2:20).

Jesus responds with the beatitude of verse 29: «Because you have seen me, you have believed; blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.» This statement, far from being a reproach to Thomas, is an opening to all future believers. The beatitude is spoken in the present-future tense: it addresses the generations to come, you and me, all those who will never see the wounds of Christ with their own eyes, but who will believe based on the word of witnesses. Thomas is the last of the first generation. We are the first of all subsequent generations. And we are declared blessed.

This text speaks to our lives

In personal life: faith despite absence

The first lesson of John 20:19-31 for our daily lives is that the absence of the visible Jesus is not an obstacle to faith—it is, paradoxically, the normal condition for us. We all live in the "in-between": between the resurrection we profess and the full vision we hope for. Like Thomas during those eight days, we can experience periods when faith seems absent, when others bear witness to a joy we do not yet share.

John tells us that Jesus is coming back. That he will not abandon those who doubt. That if we persist in remaining in the community—even in our skepticism, even with the doors closed—he will appear. Thomas's condition is not to deserve the visit, but to be present when it comes. To remain in the assembly, even wounded, even unbelieving, is already an act of faith.

In community life: doubt has its place in the Church

The text also teaches us something valuable about the Christian community: doubt is not its enemy. Thomas is not excluded from the Eleven because he refuses to take their word for it. He remains with them. And it is within this community, maintained despite the tension, that the encounter becomes possible.

Christian communities that leave no room for questioning, for doubt voiced aloud, for the "Thomas" within their congregation, end up producing superficial faith or comfortable hypocrites. The Gospel of John legitimizes demanding questions. It shows a Jesus who answers them with patience and precision, without condescension.

The mission: to bear witness through the wounds, not in spite of them.

The missionary application is perhaps the most surprising. Jesus sends out his disciples (v. 21) immediately after showing them his wounds. The sending comes from the wounds. It is not the glorious and impassive Jesus who sends—it is the Risen One still bearing the marks of the nail and the spear. Authentic Christian mission cannot dispense with vulnerability. It is not about presenting a triumphant God, but a God who has passed through death and bears its scars.

For an evangelist, a parent, a spiritual director, this logic is transformative: it is not your competence or your holiness that bears witness, but your ability to show how God has worked through your own wounds. The credible Church of the 21st century is a Church that shows its wounds transformed, not a Church that pretends to have had none.

Deep roots: resonances of tradition and theological scope

The scene of the eighth day is not isolated in the Christian tradition. It has resonated in all the great moments of theological and spiritual reflection.

At the house of Ignatius of Antioch (died around 107 AD), Thomas's confession is already cited as an anti-Docetic argument. In his Letter to the Smyrnaeans, Ignatius insists on the bodily reality of the Risen Christ against those who claim that he only suffered in appearance. From the very beginning, Thomas becomes the guarantor of the complete incarnation.

Augustine of Hippo He interprets the scene of Thomas as a divine pedagogy. In his Sermons on John, he notes that God sometimes allows doubt for the good of those who will doubt after us: "Thomas doubted so that we might doubt no more." This providential reading is characteristic of Augustinian thought, where even human failings serve the divine plan.

Gregory the Great, In his Homilies on the Gospel, Gregory elaborates on the final beatitude: «Faith that accepts visible testimony is less meritorious than that which rests solely on the testimony of the word.» For Gregory, Thomas is therefore, paradoxically, a figure inferior to those who will believe without seeing—and that is us. We receive a grace that Thomas did not have.

In the 12th century, Bernard of Clairvaux He transforms the scene of the eighth day into a meditation on the relationship between humility and faith. In his commentary, Thomas's outstretched hands are the gesture of the soul relinquishing its own judgment to open itself to revelation. The act of touching becomes the symbol of the lectio divina : approaching the Scriptures with bare hands, without intellectual defenses.

In contemporary theology, Hans Urs von Balthasar Thomas Aquinas sees in the wounds of the Risen Christ the place of the revealed Trinity: the open side, from which flowed blood and water (Jn 19:34), is the expression of Trinitarian love—the love of the Father who gives up the Son, the love of the Son who surrenders himself, and the Spirit who emanates from him. By touching these wounds, Thomas touches the heart of Trinitarian revelation.

The liturgy itself bears the mark of these resonances. The Second Sunday of Easter, now called "Divine Mercy Sunday" since Saint John Paul II (in memory of Saint Faustina Kowalska), is organized around this Johannine passage. The Pope's intuition is precisely Johannine: the wounds of the Risen Christ are the sign of God's infinite mercy. To look upon the wounds of Jesus is to contemplate the love that did not shrink from death.

Lectio divina

Entering the eighth day

This meditation can be practiced daily, in ten to twenty minutes, alone or in a group.

Step 1 — Close the door (2 minutes). Settle in quietly. Imagine the room locked. Let your own fears, doubts, and disappointments surface. Don't try to banish them. Name them silently: "I'm afraid of…", "I don't understand…", "I no longer believe in…" These are your closed doors. This is the starting point.

Step 2 — The peace that enters (3 minutes). Read or recite the two peace greetings slowly (vv. 19 and 21). After each repetition, pause. Ask yourself: In which area of my life do I most need this peace? Let the words settle, without analyzing them.

Step 3 — The wounds shown (5 minutes). Contemplate Jesus' gesture of showing his hands and side. Then, with the same honesty, show your own to God. What has hurt you? What do you carry within you that you are ashamed to show? Offer these wounds in the same spirit: not so that they disappear, but so that they may be transformed.

Step 4 — The breath received (3 minutes). Breathe slowly and consciously. With each inhale, welcome the Spirit. With each exhale, let go of fear. The breath in verse 22 is not a metaphor: it is made present through your own intentional breathing in prayer.

Step 5 — The personal confession (2 minutes). Conclude with Thomas's confession, making it your own: "My Lord and my God." Say it slowly, using the possessive pronoun. Let it be the truth of your moment, even if you're not sure of all its implications. Faith often begins with the boldness of speaking the truth.

Contemporary challenges: believing without seeing in a world saturated with images

The beatitude of verse 29—"blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed"—rings as a paradox in our culture. Never in human history have we been so inundated with images. We live in a civilization of the visible, the verifiable, of "I saw it on the internet, so it's true"—and simultaneously in a civilization of deepfakes, manipulation, and distrust of everything we see. We have too many images and not enough truth. Thomas, in this context, is more relevant than ever.

First challenge: intellectual skepticism. The prevailing scientific positivism makes empirical verification the sole criterion of truth. Within this framework, faith in the resurrection seems naive, pre-critical. Johannine's response to this challenge is not to deny the importance of verification—John himself insists on witnesses, on precise accounts, on concrete details—but to show that Easter faith transcends, without contradicting, the order of proof. Thomas is not condemned for wanting to see. He is invited to go beyond seeing. Mature faith is not blind; it is perceptive in a different way.

Second challenge: religious disaffiliation. Millions of our contemporaries have left Christian communities, often because of wounds inflicted by the institution itself. They are like Thomas during those eight days: absent, wounded, refusing to take at face value the word of witnesses they no longer trust. John's response is not to blame them for their absence, but to wait, to remain in the community despite everything, and to let the Risen Christ return. For Christian communities, this challenge means: be the place where Thomas can return. Be the open room, not the closed door.

Third challenge: meaningless suffering. For many, the question is not "Does God exist?" but "Why so much suffering if God exists?" The wounds of the risen Jesus are the most direct answer in the New Testament to this question: God does not eliminate suffering from the outside. He experiences it from within. The Risen One is the one who suffered death, not as a spectator, but as an active participant. His glorious wounds tell us that God is not absent from human suffering—he emerged from it transformed, and he invites humanity to this same transformation.

Fourth challenge: spiritual mediocrity. Many practicing believers do not live a faith akin to Thomas's confession—they live a sociological, inherited, comfortable faith. John 20 challenges this mediocrity: authentic faith comes through crisis, through absence, through questioning. It emerges, like Thomas's, at the end of a night of doubt and a personal encounter. Communities that do not offer space for this journey produce superficial Christians.

Prayer for the eighth day

Lord Jesus, you know how to pass through the doors we have locked out of fear, the doors of our barricaded hearts, the doors of our crumbling certainties, the doors of our endless grief.

You know how to enter where we had stopped expecting you.

Tonight, Lord, I am Thomas, sitting in my closed house. I have not seen what others say they have seen. I have not felt the joy they describe. Something within me resists, something within me demands proof, something within me cannot bring itself to take their word for it.

Don't leave me to my skepticism. Come back. Come back as you came back for him, with peace on your lips and wounds in your hands.

Show me your wounds, for they are what I recognize. They are what tell me that you are real, that you are not a phantom, that you have gone through what I am going through, that death has not taken you and that it will not take me either.

Breathe on me, Lord. Breathe on the places in my life where life seems absent, where breath is lacking, where I go around in circles as if in a tomb.

May your Spirit enter through the cracks in my crumbling certainties, through the breaches in my despair, through the gaps in my clumsy prayers.

And if one day—perhaps this day—you appear at my closed door, grant me the grace of Thomas: not only to say "the Lord," not only to say "my God," but to dare to say both together, to say them in the first person, to say them as if my life depended on it—because it does.

My Lord and my God.

Blessed are we, Lord, who have not seen and yet believe. Blessed are we in this eighth day that lasts, in this endless week that is the time of the Church, the time of hope, the time when you continue to come behind our locked doors, every Sunday, every morning, every time we gather in your name.

May your peace be with us. Now and forever. Amen.

Faith that never ends

John 20:19-31 is not a text about doubt overcome. It is a text about faith won—and about the path that leads there. This path passes through fear (the closed doors), through demanding conditions (Thomas's conditions), through personal encounter (the coming of Jesus), and culminates in the highest confession of the Gospel: "My Lord and my God."«

But the final clause of the text (vv. 30-31) shifts the focus toward us. John tells us that he wrote his Gospel so that we might believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God—and so that by believing, we might have life in his name. The purpose of the text is not knowledge but life. To believe, according to John, is not primarily to subscribe to a doctrine; it is to enter into a new life, a life whose source is the name of Jesus.

We are the recipients of the beatitude in verse 29. We have not seen. We will not see, in this life, the pierced hands or the opened side. But we have received the testimony of the apostles, the tradition of the Church, the sacraments that continue the gesture of the breath, and the Spirit who dwells in the gathered community. Every Sunday is an eighth day. Every Eucharist is a door crossed. Every absolution is a "whose sins you forgive.".

The final invitation of this gospel is simple and radical: stop being an unbeliever, be a believer. Not because it's easy. Not because all your questions are answered. But because Jesus is coming—and he is coming for you.

To go further

• Reread John 20:19-31 every Sunday for a month, noting what resonates differently each time according to your inner state.
• Identify your current "locked door": what specific fear is closing your heart to God's action at this time?
• Practice the confession of Thomas — «My Lord and my God» — as a short daily prayer, consciously and in the first person.
• Sharing a doubt or a question of faith in a trusted community: letting Thomas in you pull you out of isolation.
• Contemplating each week a transformed personal wound — a difficulty overcome that has borne fruit — as an icon of the glorious wounds of the Risen One.
• Reread the prologue of John (1, 1-18) in the light of the confession of Thomas (20, 28): identify the narrative arc that John has constructed and note the correspondences.
• To offer someone in doubt not an answer, but a presence: to be, for this "absent" person, the community that remains open until their return.

References

Primary Sources

• John 20:1-31 — Greek text (Nestle-Aland 28th edition); liturgical translation AELF.
• Augustine of Hippo, Tractatus in Evangelium Johannis, leaflet. 121-122 (on Jn 20, 19-31), PL 35.
• Gregory the Great, Homiliae in Evangelia, Homily 26 (on Thomas), PL 76.
• Bernard of Clairvaux, Sermons on the Song of Songs, sermon 28 (on faith and the wounds of Christ), SC 431.
• Ignatius of Antioch, Letter to the Smyrnaeans, 3, 1-2, SC 10 bis.

Secondary sources

• Raymond E. Brown, The Gospel According to John XIII-XXI (Anchor Bible), Doubleday, 1970 — reference commentary for chapter 20.
• Hans Urs von Balthasar, Glory and the Cross, t. I (Appearance), Aubier, 1965 — on the theology of the wounds of the Risen One.
• Xavier Léon-Dufour, Reading from the Gospel according to John, t. IV, Seuil, 1996 — French exegesis of reference on Jn 20.
• Ignace de la Potterie, The Truth in Saint John, Analecta Biblica 73, Rome, 1977 — on the Johannine faith.

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