DOUBTS AND FAITH
We should be childlike in accepting the Lord, but not childish.
In recent years,
the Second Sunday of Easter has also carried the name "Divine Mercy
Sunday." The focus of last week's celebration of Easter was on Jesus'
rising from the dead and His gift of new and eternal life. This week focuses on
those who receive this gift. This week the Church looks at us.
We begin back in
the Upper Room. It was the same place that the disciples ate the Last Supper
with Jesus and where He said, "This is My Body. This is My Blood which is
given up for you" (Mt. 26:26, 28).
In today's Gospel
reading, we encounter Thomas, also known as "Doubting Thomas." Thomas
did not believe what the other disciples had said about Jesus rising from the
dead. Like Thomas, they didn't have the courage to stay with the Lord when He
was crucified. Now they claim that He has risen from the dead. To Thomas this
sounded more like a dream than a reality.
Thomas did not have
faith in the other disciples. He also did not have faith in what the Master had
said. Jesus had clearly stated that He was going to die and then rise again. It
was not that Thomas wasn't courageous enough. Earlier, when Jesus had said that
He was going to go to Jerusalem and die, Thomas said, "Let us also go to
die with Him" (Jn. 11:16). The problem was that Thomas found Jesus'
prediction of rising from the dead too difficult to believe.
Thomas was not
present in the Upper Room the first time that Jesus appeared to His disciples
after He rose from the dead. So, Jesus appeared again to answer Thomas'
demands, "Unless I see the mark of the nails in His hands and put my
finger into the nail marks and put my hand into His side, I will not
believe" (Jn. 20:25). Jesus appeared again not only for Thomas' sake, but
for our sake as well. He looked at Thomas and said, "You have come to
believe because you have seen Me" (Jn. 20:29a). But Jesus looks at us too
- at all people from every age and from all over the world who were not in the
Upper Room - and says, "Blessed are those who have not seen and have
believed."
A "blessed
saying" is often called a beatitude. There are a lot of Beatitudes in the
Gospels. "Blessed are the poor in spirit...the pure in heart" and so
forth (cf. Mt. 5:1-12). The Beatitudes are addressed to the people who hear the
Lord and then through them they are spread to the rest of the world. But there
is one beatitude that is not addressed to the particular people with whom Jesus
is speaking, "Blessed are those who have not seen and have believed."
We are blessed by God right here, right now because we are putting our faith
and our trust in Him.
We will never have
full knowledge until we see God face-to-face. Part of us believes, but part of
us still has questions. In the Gospel of Luke, we read the story of the man
whose son was possessed by a demon. The father said to Jesus, "'If You can
do anything, have compassion on us and help us.' Jesus said, 'If you can!
Everything is possible to one who has faith.' Then the boy's father cried out,
'I do believe, help my unbelief'" (Mk. 9:22-24). Wow! That speaks
volumes.
When we received
the Sacrament of Confirmation, we received the Gifts of the Holy Spirit. One of
these was the Gift of Understanding. Through the Gift of Understanding, the
Holy Spirit helps us to accept the mysteries of our Faith. When doubts come
into our lives we need to call upon the Holy Spirit to strengthen this Gift we
received at our Confirmation. We need help to believe.
We are also
responsible for helping ourselves. Many
times we can have doubts about our Faith because our knowledge of it has not
matured. We should be childlike in accepting the Lord, but not childish.
Sometimes we have doubts and our faith becomes weak because we are seeking
answers. This is not bad, this is good. We are reaching out for the truth and
questioning that which was given to us by others. Each of us is called to
deepen our knowledge and understanding of our Faith through prayer, retreats,
and the reading of Scripture.
It is very easy to
be a person of faith when all goes well. But times of loss, marital problems,
or financial instability, can cause us to enter into a period of anger towards
God and a time of doubt in His mercy and compassion. This does not mean that we
have lost our faith. It simply means that we are being called to deepen our
faith.
In the Gospel,
Jesus says, "Blessed are those who have not seen and have believed."
We are all included in that blessing. None of us has seen Christ face-to-face.
But John's Gospel is a Book filled with stories of Jesus' miracles and healing;
of Jesus' teaching and preaching; of Jesus' passion and death, and love for the
world that led Him to the Cross so that, with Thomas, our doubts would give way
to faith. The Divine Mercy revealed in Easter makes the world new. With Thomas,
we too are able to say, "My Lord and My God" (Jn. 20:28).