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| The Doubting Thomas |
The skeptical Thomas wasn’t there that day. Thomas is portrayed as the quintessential doubter. Lo and behold, a week later, Jesus appears again. And then, Thomas makes that awesome declaration of faith: “My Lord and my God.”
To be human is to question. Christianity proposes that we were born to be in relationship with God. Otherwise, we will experience a hunger, a feeling that something is missing in our lives. St. Augustine, in his classic autobiography Confessions, captured this hunger eloquently:
“Our hearts are restless until they can find rest in you, O God.”
Centuries later, Leo Tolstoy wrote a book titled A Confession. Even with a loving wife and thirteen children, still one question haunted him: “Is there any meaning in my life which will not be annihilated by the inevitability of my death?” Tolstoy discovered that the simple farm people of Russia found the answer through their lively Christian faith—their relationship with God. No human relationship will satisfy us completely, because we were created to live in a relationship with God. Jesus said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life.”
We cry out for healing and mercy, which we celebrate today: divine mercy. Jesus Christ, through the mystery of his dying and rising, has freed us from death and nothingness so that we can be in relationship with God forever. Christianity challenges us to live an authentic life, to be true to ourselves.
Many indicators point to God. The universe, e.g., presupposes an orderer, just as a watch presupposes a watchmaker. There are also indicators that there’s no God, e.g., evil. But faith is a calculated risk. Blaise Pascal’s wager captures that risk. He was a 17th century mathematician, inventor, philosopher. Pascal’s wager goes like this:
One does not know empirically whether God exists.
Not believing in God is bad for one’s eternal soul if God indeed does exist.
Believing in God is of no consequence if God does not exist.
Therefore, it is a safer bet to believe in God.
Jesus lives, and because he lives, you and I live: in relationship with God forever. Someday this bodily existence of ours, like that of Jesus crucified and risen, will be transformed, into a new kind of spiritual embodiment. What precisely this will be we don't know. That is why we hear at every funeral Mass the words, “For those who believe, life is not taken away, life is merely changed.” Let us pray that the gift of faith will empower us, like Thomas, to exclaim every day, “My Lord and my God.”
We continue to celebrate the Easter miracle: Jesus Christ lives, and because he lives, we live. Have you ever witnessed a Easter miracle? I have. An alcoholic resurrected to sobriety; an estrangement between parent and child bridged; a terrible wrong forgiven. Think today about how you can create an Easter miracle for someone else.
