The Sunday after Easter always presents the event that took
place in the Upper Room one week after Jesus rose from the dead. Pope John Paul II also designated this Sunday
as Divine Mercy Sunday[1].
There are times that we have doubts in our faith. The Gospel
tells the story of someone who doubted Jesus, the great story of doubting
Thomas. To me it is understandable that Thomas had doubts. I am sure that he
doubted Peter and the others who had said that they had seen the Lord. These
are the same guys who only a few months earlier were squabbling with each other
over who would be the most powerful in the Kingdom of God. Jesus had told them
that they would be tested, but with the exception of John, they had all
deserted the Lord, including Thomas, who in his own bravado had said earlier, let’s go with him to Jerusalem and die with
him[2].
The fact the Thomas was nowhere to be found at the
crucifixion must have left him with some pretty negative feelings about
himself. And what was probably most devastating to Thomas is that for the first
time, he questioned his belief in Jesus. So Thomas was vocal in his
doubts. He doubted the other
disciples. He doubted himself. And
he doubted the Lord. This obviously changed when he saw the Lord. Pictures will
often show Thomas putting his hands in the marks of the nails on Jesus’ hands
and touching the Lord’s side, but actually Jesus only invites Thomas to do
this. Thomas’ response to Jesus was, My
Lord and My God[3]. Jesus’ next
comment was meant for us, You believe
because you have see. Blessed are
those who have not seen yet believe[4].
We have doubts in our faith. That is part of being a human
being. Faith asks us to take a step, a leap actually, away from all that we can
see, hear and sense, a step away from the limits of our rational capabilities
and a step into mystery. This is a difficult step for all of us, but
particularly difficult for us as our minds develops their intellectual prowess.
When we become teens, if not a bit before, we can do things with our mind that
we could not do as children. We can think in abstractions. We can conceive
concepts that do not exist in the real world but do exist in the world of
mathematics, in the world of literature, psychology, and so forth. When we were
eight, we could not fathom something that could not exist in the real world. We
can now. When was the last time you came across the square root of two? It
exists only in our minds. We have studied how a poet or author can create a
totally imaginative world and apply human emotions to this world to such an
extent that the reader can easily confuse the world with reality. And we have
studied how certain psychological realities determine people’s actions, even
though those realities are not physical but are purely mental.
But, now faith asks us to take a step into a deeper reality,
into that which is beyond our intellectual capabilities, a step into a
knowledge our minds can never come to on their own. So, it is normal for humans
to doubt, particularly as Teens, but actually throughout our lives. Add to that the fact that many in our
society transfer their own questions and doubts onto others, attacking the
faith of those who believe, particularly the faith of Catholics. We take
courses in high school, college and grad school with other students who
question our faith. We even have to put up with some teachers and professors
who treat us like naive children because we say that we believe in the Bible
and the teaching of the Church. On top of all this, we have crises in our lives
where our prayers appear to go unanswered. We pray for our parents to stop
fighting, but they don’t. We pray that our grandmother might get over her
sickness, but she doesn’t. We hear about the people who died natural disasters like
earthquakes and tornadoes, we are aware of the children who are starving to
death in Africa, the suffering taking place in Haiti, etc, and we begin to
question if anyone is hearing our prayers. Doubts in faith are normal. It takes
courage and determination to say, “In spite of what others say, and in spite of
my own questions, I still believe, Lord. I believe in your Word in the Bible. I
believe that your Son became one of us as the Bible said He would. I believe
that His sacrificial love on the cross earned for us the very life of God. I believe that no matter what my eyes
see or don’t see, my ears hear or don’t hear, no matter what my mind can
determine or what its limits are, you are still there for me, loving me,
filling me with a joy that doesn’t go away.”
And God, in His Mercy, sees us for whom we are, human beings
with doubts, but also people who have experienced His Love and want more of
it. We might feel bad about
ourselves for having doubts, but His Mercy, His Divine Mercy, is so great that
He sees us not as people with doubts, but as people who are searching for
Him. That’s why Divine Mercy
Sunday fits so perfectly with the gospel of doubting Thomas, ordinary
people like you and I called to
have extraordinary faith.
We need faith. We need forgiveness for the times that our humanity
has led us to doubts. We need to trust in the Divine Mercy of the Lord. We need
courage to withstand the attacks of the godless upon us. We need spiritual
strength to take a leap away from those who belittle us for our beliefs, a leap
away from our own doubts, a leap that refuses to let the crises of our lives
destroy our faith, and a leap into
the arms of our Savior ■
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