Sermon by Father Alex McAllister SDS                   Index

 

Second Sunday of Easter, Year B—2003 Homily

We have just heard one of the most famous stories in the scriptures, the one about Thomas the Twin or Doubting Thomas, as he is better known.

I think that there is a connection between these two titles given to the Apostle Thomas and one, to some extent, explains the other.

You will notice that in our text it does not say ‘Thomas the Twin’ but ‘Thomas called the Twin’. If he was a real twin then he would surely be described ‘Thomas the Twin’ and therefore we must assume that he wasn’t actually a twin himself.

However, there is a very old tradition that St Thomas looked like Jesus and if this is true then it most likely explains why he was ‘Thomas called the Twin.’ He looked like the Lord and had presumably been occasionally confused for Jesus. Or at least enough times for a joke to be made out of it and for him to be given this nickname: the Twin.

So you can imagine the scene written about in today’s Gospel. Thomas comes in to the upper room, the others say, ‘We have seen the Lord.’ And Thomas doesn’t believe them. It would be quite natural for him to take this stance because he was absent when Jesus made his appearance.

But it was surely even more natural for him, who was called the twin, to disbelieve them because he was always being mistaken for Jesus. You can imagine him saying, ‘It must have been someone else, after all I’m being mistaken for Jesus all the time!’

I don’t know if any of this is true. But it sounds plausible and actually makes the Apostles seem a bit more human. Not that anyone ever had any illusions that Thomas was anything other than human. After all he doubted and we can all identify with him in his disbelief.

If belief comes easy to you then you are very lucky indeed. I think that most of us are at various times assailed by doubts. And for some this is a lifelong affliction.

We frequently worry and ask ourselves if all this is true, and if it’s not true are we not therefore completely wasting our time? Are we the gullible victims of one of the world’s greatest ever confidence tricks? Have all these Popes and Priests been conning us for centuries just so they could live a comfortable life?

But then we reflect a bit deeper and we think of some deeply holy people that we have encountered in our own lives and we think that they were too genuine in their faith and piety for it all to be a hoax. And we think of all the good that religion has achieved and the nobility of life that it has led so many people to, despite a few notable exceptions.

And we wonder why it is only we who experience these doubts and anxieties.

But, of course, most people have experienced lack of faith. Here we have before us the example of St Thomas, and look at St Peter before him. And look down the ages to the millions who have struggled with their faith.

And that is just what we are supposed to do—struggle with it.

We must be very careful not to confuse faith and certainty. If we were certain then there would be no need for faith—we would already know and an act of faith would be unnecessary.

God has arranged things so wisely that we can never be certain about anything concerned with himself. So many scientists have studied things like the Shroud of Turin, and any number of miracles and have never been able to get to the bottom of any of them. And I don’t believe they ever will.

There was a television programme recently about the funeral casket of James, the so-called brother of Jesus. It has been studied and studied and still no one can prove 100% if it refers to Jesus, the Son of God.

There is at the very heart of Christianity what you can only call a deep and reverent agnosticism. It is not disbelief. At it’s deepest level we simply do not know if Christianity is true or not. If we are to continue with it then we can only go on in faith.

We know from the teaching of St Paul that the three greatest virtues are faith, hope and love. These three virtues are inextricably linked and we see their connection at precisely this point.

We examine the teachings of Jesus and his Church and we understand their importance and yet we cannot be absolutely certain that they are true. But we want them to be true. It is our greatest desire that the promises of God will be fulfilled. This is the virtue of hope.

And why do we want all these things to be true and the answer is because we want to be close to God and we want to experience the power of his salvation in our lives and we want to be happy with him for ever. This is the virtue of love.

If our lives are full of hope and love then we need not be over concerned about faith. We realise that obsessive anxieties about the existence or not of God are of little importance. The fact is that we want it all to be true. We want to believe in Jesus as the Son of God. We want to believe the salvation he promised us. We want to believe in life after death.

Of course, it is not the wanting that makes it happen. But realising that these desires in us are truly noble and life-enhancing helps us to still our minds and helps those unwanted doubts to slip away. And we gradually experience a deeper and deeper peace of heart

Eight days later Thomas saw the Lord who invited him to place his hand in his side. Thomas doubted no longer and indeed made one of the greatest of all acts of faith: My Lord and my God.

Jesus replies with the equally memorable words: Blessed are those who have not seen and yet believe. This blessing includes most of us. We have not seen—we do not know any of it for certain but we believe.

We make that act of faith; we make that decision to reach out into the darkness with hope and love in our hearts.

One day we will like Thomas see the Lord face to face but also like Thomas we will not need to put our hands in his side to verify what we have always known to be true.