Our Faith is Our Map
“Blessed are those who have not seen, yet believe”. (John 20:29).
God made us thinking, rational beings. It is natural for us to question and try to understand ourselves and the world around us. Having faith doesn’t mean that we have to stop thinking and questioning what it is that we believe. On the contrary faith may well spur us on to try and understand more and more, and ask more and more searching questions! That is the way God made us, faith in himisn’t a matter of blind obedience. Nor it is irrational. St.Anselm spoke of faith seeking understanding. Faith is not opposed to reason.
What I would like to do first is to talk about what St. Thomas teaches us precisely about faith. His doubts are a blessing for us because they open us up to what we need to know for our faith to be strengthened.
According to Indian philosophy, there are three ways to attain Moksha or Heaven. They are called Karma Marga (Way of Action), Jana Marga (Path of Knowledge) and Bhakti Marga (Path of Devotion). Thomas’ readiness to go and die with Jesus is his Karma Marga (John 11:16), Thomas’ raising questions point to the Jana Marga (John 14:5, 22), Thomas’ total dedication to god reflect his bhakti Marga (John 20:28; 21:2). I would ask you to focus on this three recorded sayings on St. Thomas in the Gospel which reveals his personality and spirituality and the what we can learn from each of them.
Firstly
The Consequences of Faith:-
Faith wasn’t meant to be merely conceptual but was supposed to be existential.
The First thing St. Thomas teaches us is about the consequences of faith. Faith is not only meant to be proclaimed, but also is meant to be lived. We are called to stake our life on what he reveals to us, to become a martyr, a witness, to what he reveals. St. Thomas showed this in the scene outside of Bethany, Martha and Mary sent word to Jesus that Lazarus was deathly ill and Jesus committed to going there. Some of the apostles noted that people were threatening to kill Jesus and tried to persuade him from walking into danger. But Thomas said, “Let us also go to die with him” (Jn 11:16). He was willing to die for Jesus who was going to die on the cross for him. That’s where faith leads. A faith that doesn’t trust in the Lord, in his promise of resurrection, in his teaching us the way to live and die enough to stake our life on his resurrection and ours, really isn’t worthy of the description “faith.” St. Thomas shows us that. Even though he, like the other apostles, would abandon Jesus in fear as Jesus was arrested in the Garden, even though he would spend the first Triduum cowering, he was one who, like Peter, had a willing spirit despite his weak flesh. And he knows that faith wasn’t meant to be merely conceptual. It was supposed to be existential. This is really an important lesson for us to grasp.
Secondly
Question Aspects of the Faith:-
To raise all of the objectionsto truths of faith, in order to understand the faith better.
The second is his statement during the Last Supper when Jesus was talking about his needing to go away but then come back again. Jesus stated, “Where I am going, you know the way.” That’s when Thomas, who had the guts to say what others were thinking but were perhaps too timid to ask, blurted out, “Lord, we do not know where you are going, how can we know the way?” His was what St. Anselm, basing himself on St. Augustine, would later call faith seeking understanding. He believed in the Lord, but wanted to understand better what Jesus was saying. We, too, need to be willing to ask questions of the Lord. Blessed John Henry Cardinal Newman once said’ that“a thousand questions don’t constitute a single doubt”. St. Thomas Aquinas’ whole method in the Summa was to raise all of the objections to truths of faith, in order to understand the faith better. I can’t wait to meet Jesus face to face and get a definitive answer to the humanity of Christ, a question that probably many others have already asked him! But these questions don’t cause us to doubt Jesus or what he himself has revealed. On the contrary, they help us to harden or solidify our faith.
Thirdly
The greatest theological confession“My Lord and my God.”
The wonderful formula of adoration , this great declaration of faith in the divin9ity of Jesus.
Thirdly, we come to the scene in John’ Gospel where Thomas is unwilling to accept the testimony of the other apostles, the women or the disciples from Emmaus, as if they were all together in a collective hallucination. He had obviously been struggling about the criteria to accept Jesus’ resurrection, almost certainly because he had been pondering Jesus’ words that he would rise from the dead. And he had come to the conclusion that the criteria would be Jesus’ wounds, which were the sign of his love, which would be the connection between Jesus’ risen body and his earthly body. Thomas somehow had instituted that for whoever would appear to be the same Jesus — even though his appearance could be different, his voice different, everything else different — the connection would be his wounds. That’s why he said what he did: “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.” He was in some ways a proto-scientist, but he was not someone testing God by incredulity. He knew what the marks of the Resurrection would be and that was what his sign was. So Thomas, as soon as Jesus appeared and said, “Put your finger here and see my hands, and bring your hand and put it into my side, and do not be unbelieving, but believe,” burst out with the greatest theological confession of Jesus’ divinity recorded in Sacred Scripture: “My Lord and my God.”He shows us that we just can’t merely take others’ words as if words were enough — since many people have put their faith in false claims. Our truly Christian faith must be in the crucified Christ raised from the dead, and for that we need to have contact with Jesus’ crucified love, with the person of Jesus, with the sufferings of Jesus. St. Thomas’ whole focus on Jesus’ wounds were like an ancient devotion not merely of the Crucifix but of the Sacred Heart — and Thomas knew that he wanted to probe and enter Jesus’ wounds.
Therefore inspired by the faith of St.Thomas. We need to seek to understand our faith better so that we might follow Jesus along the way. We, too, ask through his intercession for the grace to be able to die with Christ so as to live with him. We, too, ask for the grace to hide ourselves in Jesus’ wounds as Jesus, in his body, blood, soul and divinity comes within us to dwell within and heal our wounds. And we ask for the grace as we are about to receive him here ever to confess him as Thomas did as our Lord and God and bring Him and his message to the entire world.
Prayer:-
Jesus my Lord and God, sustain me in my moments of doubt and strengthen me in my moments of weak faith.
Amen.
