DOUBTS AND FAITH
It is very easy to be a person of faith when all goes well. But the loss of a loved one or marriage and money problems can be stumbling blocks. Many times we have doubts and enter into a period of anger toward God. This does not mean that we have lost our faith. It simply means that we are being called to deepen our faith.
The second Sunday of Easter, in recent years, 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 – 27). We meet Thomas, Doubting Thomas. Thomas could not believe what the other disciples had said about Jesus’ Resurrection because he didn’t trust them. Like Thomas, they didn’t have the courage to stay with the Lord when He was crucified, and 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 foretold. Jesus had clearly said that He was going to die and then rise again. However, it wasn’t that Thomas didn’t have enough courage, after all, when Jesus had said that He was going to go to Jerusalem
Thomas was not present in the Upper Room the first time Jesus appeared to His disciples after rising 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 nailmarks, and put my hand into His side, I will not believe” (Jn 20:25). Jesus appeared again, not only for Thomas, but for our sake as well, yours and mine. He looked at Thomas and said, “Have you come to believe because you have seen Me?” (Jn 20:29a). Then Jesus looked at us, at all the people of every age, all over the world, who were not in the Upper Room, and He said, “Blessed are those who have not seen and have believed” (Jn 20:29b).
A blessed saying is often called “beatitude.” There are a lot of Beatitudes in the Gospels. Blessed are the poor in spirit… the pure of heart… and so forth. These Beatitudes are addressed to the people who hear the Lord and then through them, are spread to the rest of the world. But, there is one Beatitude that is not addressed to the particular people to whom Jesus is speaking: “Blessed are those who have not seen, but believe.” 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 wants to believe, but part of us has questions. The story of the man in the Gospel of Mark puts it so well. His son was suffering from epilepsy. He approached Jesus and said, “’Teacher, I have brought to You my son possessed by a mute spirit…But if You can do anything, have compassion on us and help us.’ Jesus said to him, ‘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 9:17b, 22b – 24)! Wow! That speaks volumes.
When we received the Sacrament of Confirmation, we received the Gifts of the Holy Spirit. One of them is the Gift of Understanding. Through this Gift, 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 the Gift of Understanding that we have been given. We need help to believe!
We also need to help ourselves. Many times people have doubts about their Faith because their knowledge of the Faith has not matured. We should be childlike and accept the Lord and His teachings, but not childish. We need to gain knowledge about our Faith through prayer, retreats, and reading the Scriptures. Sometimes we have doubts 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.
It is very easy to be a person of faith when all goes well. But the loss of a loved one or marriage and money problems can be stumbling blocks. Many times we have doubts and enter into a period of anger toward God. This does not mean that we have lost our faith. It simply means that we are being called to deepen our faith.
In today’s Gospel, Jesus says, “Blessed are those who have not seen and have believed.” We are all included in that blessing. None of us have seen Christ face-to-face. But John’s Gospel is a Book of stories that include Jesus’ miracles and healing, of Jesus’ teaching and preaching, and 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 at Easter does make the world new. With Thomas, we say, “My Lord and my God.”