Faith
Doubt
St. Thomas, along with his brother Apostles, spent three full years in ministry with Jesus. He traveled with them, lived with them, ate with them, and slept with them. He saw the great works of Jesus, and experienced the highest highs and the lowest lows.
After the Resurrection, he was the only Apostle not present when Jesus first came into the Upper Room. Upon his return, his brothers must have been ecstatic to share with him further confirmation that the Easter rumors were true. His response?
“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.” John 20:25
He heard this incredible news, the fulfillment of what he dedicated a considerable portion of his adult life to, and he doubted. One quote in a man’s life, forever tagged with the “Doubting Thomas” moniker.
The insertion of this story, but also the fact that one Apostle was conspicuously absent when Jesus appeared, is an injection of hope for us modern-day doubters. We’ve read the stories, heard the news, and studied the theology. But still, no matter how great and personal our encounters with God have been, we have moments where we question. Can it all be true? How can this be real?
In His ministry, many people asked Jesus to work signs and wonders for Him.
Many of them were probably sincere in their doubt. They thought, “If I could just see something with my eyes, then I can be freed of this doubt and believe.” It’s easy to imagine how we would react if Jesus was back, but we only learned about him on short form videos and social media. Would we believe?
Doubt is curiosity of the intellect, contending with difficult truths, and discovering the beautiful gift waiting for us in plain sight. God asks us to have faith like children: they hear and believe. Still, He will be satisfied with our belief if we choose to accept and love Him after a review of the evidence.
St. Paul told us to test everything. True doubt is not an outright rejection, but a reserved acceptance. We want to believe, but we need to gather more information. The test of or mettle is what conclusions we draw at the end. Have the courage to go out and find that information; read the documents, find the right book, listen to podcasts, and go deeper in prayer. Place your finger into the nailmarks and your hand into His side. And in the final analysis, when you have all the research and your hands are covered in His blood, choose life.
Vocation
In God’s plan of salvation, we each play a role. Whether quietly ministering to our corner of the world, or gaining some degree of fame through skill or office, we’re invited to do our small part to carry forward His vision. In Catholicism, we traditionally consider this to be vocation. Every vocation is one of service and holiness; what changes is the recipients of our good actions. In marriage, spouses minister to each other and their families, calling both on to holiness. In priestly and religious life, the recipients of ministry is the Church herself.
Yesterday we celebrated the 40th jubilee of the priest who married Alison and I. For one hour, thirteen years ago, this priest celebrated our wedding and now our home is full of children striving for holiness. And that was just one hour of his priesthood.
Moments like this lay bare the effect of good works and good action. In one small moment, one yes can reverberate throughout time and space causing more goodness, more light, more holiness. This is the power of yes and the power of vocation, like a ripple in a lake, growing bigger and spreading far beyond just the first action. Though we may not always see it, or even know its effects, we always accomplish greater things when we say yes to God and to our vocation.
Gaze
The disciples in yesterday’s Gospel were sent out in pairs to proclaim the good news and returned joyful at what they experienced. With only the holy name of Jesus, they were able to project power over evil. As the Apostles continued the ministry of Jesus after Easter, people would lay the sick out on the path before the Apostles in hopes that their shadow might bring healing.
Of the four types of prayer, adoration is set apart. It doesn’t ask for anything, but instead returns to God the love and honor He is due. It’s a prayer of praise for who God is. In a philosophical sense, it is the metaphysical acknowledgment of God as He is. David captures the spirit of this prayer perfectly:
So I have looked upon you in the sanctuary, beholding your power and glory. Psalm 63:2
Eucharist Adoration is a powerful experience because it’s a personal encounter with Jesus. We sit in the sanctuary, a holy place set apart, and gaze upon our Lord; and He gazes back. It’s a profound moment of created and creator, together. We cannot look at God, and be seen by Him, and not be changed.
Time in prayer is never wasted, and all types of prayer have their proper place. In petition, we bring God our needs. In contrition, we express our heartfelt regret for our errors. In thanksgiving, we show gratitude for many blessings. In adoration, though, we recognize the reality of God and praise His greatness.
Deafness
Like characters in the Bible, there are many stories in the lives of the saints that we can identify with. Saints are not perfect people, but imperfect people who rose above themselves to live heroic virtue. St. Augustine’s culturally acceptable lifestyle before his conversion is perhaps the easiest example. So, too, is Peter’s distancing himself from Jesus on Good Friday.
The hardest part about living the Christian life to the fullest isn’t just walking away from the ease and convenience of normal. The hardest part is confronting the question: what if it’s all real?
What if, at the Mass, that bread and wine is truly flesh and blood? What if, in Eucharist Adoration, I’m looking upon the physical body of God? What if the stories of Marian apparitions are true? What if Mary really did appear to Juan Diego and paint her image on his cloak with flowers? What if St. Padre Pio could be in two places at once, and what if his stigmata is real?
The list is endless, but if it’s all real, what would I have to change about myself? If I encountered Truth and accept it, I could never be the same. Everything would have to change as I conform myself to God’s Will, and lay down my priorities. And, what if, in doing so, I end up more free, more joyful, authentically happy, and satisfied.
St. Augustine describes God as calling and shouting, breaking through his deafness so that he could hear Truth and be transformed. God makes all things new, and wants nothing more than our freedom. We can go to the ends of the earth, and He will still be there. When He does break through, when we do hear His message, may we choose well.
Fiat
God’s perfect plan is predicated on the participation of man. This principle, though it confounds human understanding, is most brilliantly illustrated in Mary’s fiat. Her yes set in motion a ripple that continues to move throughout space and time.
In each of our lives, we are asked for the same yes. God places us precisely where His plan needs us, in the family and surrounded by the people He chose. He wants us to help in His mission and plan, but he can only do so with our consent.
God’s love for us is ardent, and it can be confusing for Him to love us this intensely, but then also to grant us free will. The self-reinforcing nature of God only further validates His existence. If God does love us with a love that is so pure, how could He at the same time impose it upon the beloved against their wishes? How could He, in the name of love, violate the autonomy of the beloved? Instead, respecting His nature, He offers love unconditionally, and then waits patiently.
In every case where someone has given their yes, God has done incredible things. Most of them, we will never know. But some of them, namely in the lives and virtue of the saints, we do know. These are ordinary people, anonymous to culture, who allowed God’s grace to work through them, whose names are now raised to the honor of the altar.
God has great things in store for us, but He needs our fiat to get started.
Let the Fire Fall
It’s easy to see fire as purely destructive. There’s nothing quite as jarring as seeing a photojournalist’s images of a neighborhood after a wildfire sweeps through. The homes reduced to slabs, mighty timbers turned into toothpicks, fully loaded cars left behind as empty husks. But fire’s role in our ecosystem is essential to new life.
Fire consumes all that it touches. It takes the dead and the detritus and sweeps it away, reducing it to elemental nutrients that are essential to the creation of new life. Pests and disease lose their hosts and are wiped out; animal life finds new homes in the burned trees. Nitrogen, phosphorous, and potassium are released into the soil through the ash functioning as a natural fertilizer. Certain timber and brush seeds lay dormant in the ground until a fire sweeps through to activate their growth cycle. Out of the charred landscape, nature heals itself and green shoots appear. The fire did not destroy for destruction’s sake; it cleared the path for something wholly new.
In Scripture, we see the Holy Spirit appear in two forms: dove and flame. The dove flies over Jesus at His baptism in the river Jordan. Sacred art never omits the Spirit’s presence at this moment in Jesus’ life, as He emerges from anonymity and begins His public ministry. The dove, like the messenger to Noah that the flood was over, is white and pure, and symbolizes the physical presence of God.
After Jesus’ passion, death, and resurrection, He spent time encouraging the Apostles and making final preparations for the sending forth of the Church. But after He ascended back into Heaven, His once courageous friends reverted to the mean. They were simple men, up against a government, institutional religion, and the scholar class. They, understandably, cowered in the upper room. This was their safe place, and it was easier to be among friends than to be out challenging the world order.
These close personal friends of Jesus spent three years living with Him and experiencing every incredible public and private moment with Him. With just a short period of His physical absence, they couldn’t cope. They were the best evangelists in the history of the Church, hand-picked and trained by God, and yet they doubted their ability to take the gift they were given and distribute it to humanity.
In this locked, hidden place, fire burst through. Like the episode right after Easter, the Apostles cowered and God entered. God with them, and no longer restrained in their belief, they spread out to the corners of the known world and experienced every grace, challenge, and persecution that is evangelization. The fire of the Holy Spirit cleared out the fear and old ways of their prior life. They were sent into the world, standing in truth, and confident in their training.
One of the great benefits of the Bible that it shows us that the difficulty of our flaws and situations are not unique. We have a proud heritage of people of virtue failing miserably, but refusing to give up. Always push forward, never settle. We are never alone and we can always know the end of the story: fire comes in and God wins.
The Holy Spirit is with us, burning in our hearts, pushing us today to share the truth we hold in our hearts with family and stranger alike. This is a mission that seems too important to be entrusted to us, and incredibly it is our charge. If this is what we were made for, if this who we are, if this is the greatness and adventure for which God has brought us to this place and at this time, then let the fire fall.
System of Logic
The world is awash in bad ideas, and far too many people are willing to accept them at face value. In the parts of the world where the Church accommodates by moving away from its teachings, the Church is suffocating in an ocean of relativity. In the parts of the world where the Church stands firm on truth as an act of charity, it thrives as a lighthouse.
Many question how the Church’s teachings and doctrine are relevant in the world today. The curious get into the voluminous published materials that not only explain the what, but the why. A great place to start is the Catechism, which provides bite sized summaries with plenty of cross-references and footnotes to flesh it out.
Church teaching is not arbitrary, but a system of logic that stitches together what it means to be human and how to live a good and fulfilling life.
This is a confusing time, where our phones provide us with access to bad ideas that would never flourish in a world of more filtered and limited communications. It is incumbent on us to challenge and scrutinize these ideas. When we challenge them, what do they yield?
Unpacking the truth on which the Church stands reveals a self-reinforcing understanding of the human person and man’s place in the world. It is an understanding that yields unrivaled deference to the dignity of the human person and stands opposed to any idea, action, or law that seeks to degrade that dignity.
It’s a truly radical philosophy, but one that opens up a world of fulfillment, joy, and peace for those who have the courage to raise their questions and see what the Church says in response.
Mercy
The Church is many things, but one of its best attributes is that it is a place for thinkers. Theology, the study of God, is one of the most complex subjects in the expanse of human understanding. Its object is not the secrets of the animal kingdom, the building blocks of the universe, or the next big thing. It is the quiet contemplation of truth, itself.
We all benefit from these great thinkers who have spooled out nearly every aspect of Scripture, Traditional, and doctrine. To be sure, there are still areas that are beyond the limits of the human intellect, but for those depths that have been plumbed are great treasures.
Divine Mercy is one of these areas. A newer area of theological inquiry, Jesus’ apparitions to St. Faustina in the early 20th century reflect God’s intense desire to reveal more deeply this aspect of His nature. The timing could not have been more perfect. In the time between two world wars in less than a generation, and the atrocities that were committed, what better time in salvation history was there to remind humanity of the depths of God’s mercy?
In those apparitions, Jesus used specific language to try to communicate how far this mercy reaches. He described unfathomable depths, and mercy that flows out in torrents. Those are not words that we use frequently; they’re almost like trying to think about how deep the ocean is, or the expanse of space.
We rely on God’s mercy to overcome our frailties in hope of obtaining all that He has promised. It is a gift of love and friendship offered by a loving Father to His children, and is for all who have the courage and hope to accept.
Jesus is King
Who is this Jesus, the one to whom the crowd flocks, then condemns? Who is this Jesus, who claims to be the Son of God, who challenges every convention and system? Who is this Jesus, whose breath brings healing, whose words alter the trajectory of lives, whose spit opens the eyes of the blind? Who is this Jesus, who posses a power so perfect that even brushing the tassel of His cloak is enough to end hemorrhaging? Who is this Jesus, whose flesh is essential to our survival, whose blood washes away every sin, whose hands wipe away every tear? Who is this Jesus, who chooses to enter into the imperfect through the Eucharist, leaving them perfected? Who is this Jesus, God indivisible, integral, and whole? Who is this Jesus, the living sacrifice, who lays out His plan and patiently waits for our fiat?
Jesus is King.
Witness
I’ve always had great respect for evangelical Christians and LDS. When we lived in the Deep South, it wouldn’t be unusual for a car to pull into our neighborhood, and its occupants split off into pairs knocking on doors. I worked with the LDS extensively in my prior job, and their two-year mission is something else. These are people who are truly convicted, and willing to knock on your door and tell you all about it.
Our Catholic understanding is that the Spirit gives each of us our own unique gifts, and our mission is to flourish where we’re planted. Not all of us can be missionaries in India, but some of us are. Not all of us are incredibly talented musicians, but some of us are. For the most part, living our faith in our career and homes, and passing on the faith to our children is our mission.
Last week, Alison and I took our two oldest kids to a Forrest Frank concert. The algorithm introduced me to Forrest a little more than a year ago, and I thoroughly enjoy his music. There is a dynamism to his work that makes each song an adventure. The fact that he infuses these fun melodies with profound prayer is all the better.
Forrest is about my age, and his opening act was even younger. But for three hours on a weekday night, 10,000 people came together to pray and enjoy great music. I had a good time, but I was also impressed with the fact that these people took their talent and chose to bring their faith to those who do and do not yet know God.
St. Paul reminds us of the importance of encouragement, and to be generous building each other up. I think every person in that arena that night went home encouraged.