Sermon by Father Alex McAllister SDS                    Index

Second Sunday of Easter, Year B

A priest had been in a particular parish ten years. A man came up and said: Father, when you came I was full of faith. But after listening to you for ten years talking in your sermons each week about doubts now I'm so full of them I feel I have lost the faith that I was so sure of.

The priest repiled: What you've lost is your prejudices.

Faith. A very small but a very often misunderstood word.

I looked faith up in the new catholic catechism, the definition given was as follows:- Faith is a divinely given disposition of the mind, by which we begin to share in God's understanding of himself.

Well right there in that definition you can see that the first requirement for faith is to have an open mind. The problem is that what most people describe as faith is the very opposite, it is a set of opinions acquired in youth which seems to the person to explain the meaning of life and death. And woe betide you if you rock that faith.

Actually, faith is something different. It is not something intellectual, it is not the solution to a maths or physics problem. It is something much more personal and profound. It is trusting God, even when the intellect is confused.

Look at Thomas in today's Gospel. He was definite in his refusal to believe, but then he meets the Lord face to face and in that encounter makes perhaps the greatest ever recorded statement of faith.

A lot of people might say that it is the Church which teaches us our faith, we have it in the creed every week. It is true that the Church does tell us what is true about God and how to live one's life in accordance with his will. But this is to miss out an important part of that definition: Faith is a divinely given disposition of the mind, by which we begin to share in God's understanding of himself.

The sharing part is essential. We begin to share with God his understanding of himself. This draws us right into the heart of the mystery of God. We share with him. We become involved with him. We begin to see things the way he does. We come close to him and do not want to separate ourselves from him.

The type of person who depends on a set of beliefs is keeping God at a distance. The person whose life is full of faith is motivated by the God they have grown to know and love through hours of prayer. We recognise such people whose lives are full of faith as saints. We see them in our midst. They are not people who go around mouthing formulas and hurling anethemas. No, they go around doing good deeds.

There are many people in our world who cannot find faith. They say: I so envy your faith. But they go no further. They do nothing about it. They want to believe like people who want to get to university but don't study.

Faith is divinely given. It is not something we can come to of our own accord, you can't just get it like an apple off a tree. But you can put yourself in the way of it. You can, if you have a great many doubts and anxieties about your faith, strengthen it. This is done by doing things that inspire faith. It is done by prayer and worship, it is done by trusting others, it is done by loving your neighbour, by living the kind of life that Jesus would live.

God bestows the gift, but we need to be in a position to receive it. I ask the person who says they admire my faith if they go to Church, if they pray, if they live as a Christian. Don't get me wrong here I'm talking about good people to start with. But often one finds that they only go to Church at weddings and funerals and Xmas and Easter. They don't give themselves a chance. The old phrase: faith is caught not taught, has a great deal of sense in it. These people never expose themselves to infection.

Faith, hope and love are often placed together. Paul says the greatest of these is love. But the truth is that they are integral to each other. Placing these three virtues next to each other is very helpful when it comes to our considering faith. Because both of the others immediately lead you to think in terms of a person. You love someone. You have hope in someone. And so we should not think so much in terms of faith in some thing as faith in someone; the only one worth having faith in is God, the maker and sustainer of all that there is.

As St Augustine says: There is no love without hope, no hope without love, and neither hope nor love without faith.

I've drifted away from Thomas. One thing I do want to say about him; he said: Unless I can put my finger into his wounds I refuse to belive.

Thomas points to a very important truth. The risen Christ bears the wounds of the cross in his body. This is very important because it indicates something quite crucial. The death on the cross is not something which took three hours and then is forgotten by God. No, Jesus bears the wounds. They do not go away, the work of redemption attained it's climax on the tree of Golgotha but the work will go on till the end of time.

By his wounds we are healed.

By his faith in us we find faith in him.