One With Doubting Thomas

Doubting Thomas. One of the twelve Apostles. The man who called the rest of the Apostles liars when they told him that Jesus was back from the dead.

Imagine that, having Peter and James and John and all the rest of the Apostles; the men you've called brothers while following Jesus; having them come and tell you that Jesus isn't dead after all. You saw the Romans kill Him, at the request of your fellow Jews. You stood there and watched, helpless to do anything for your Lord, as he was crucified. Then you helped bury him in a donated tomb, rushing to be finished before the Sabbath began.

Now your brother Apostles are standing in front of you, telling you that He isn't dead? And you're just supposed to believe them? You saw His dead body with your own eyes. He is dead, there’s no denying that. So you tell them no. You won't believe them unless He stands in front of you and you can put your hand into the wound on His side, and your fingers in the nail holes in His hands.

They must be mad, all of them driven crazy by their grief. Jesus of Nazareth is dead and buried. It's impossible that they saw Him alive and well.

But then the unbelievable happens. You see Him again. He stands in front of you, calls you by name, invites you to touch His wounds.

Your brother Apostles were right, Jesus is alive again. You doubted them, said you needed evidence. The Lord Himself came as your evidence. You doubted, only to have your doubts ts erased.

How often do we doubt? I know that there’s been many times in my life where I asked for proof, evidence, a reason to believe something I deemed unbelievable. I’m sure you’ve done it too. We're in good company with Doubting Thomas on that.

Its ok though. It's simply human nature to doubt. We're flawed creatures, made in the image and likeness of God, but with free will. He gave us the ability to choose what we believe in, and a natural result of that ability is to doubt.

The question is whether we trust in God for our proof. There are so many things in our Faith that we can't fully understand; the mysteries of the Church. Miracles such as Juan Diego's tilma, the shroud of Turin, the hundreds of Eucharistic miracles that have occurred across the world, all the Marian apparitions. Science tries to find a way to explain them, yet can't. But we believe because we have irrefutable proof in their inexplicable existence.

The biggest mystery of our Faith though, is one that we don't have proof of. The Blessed Trinity – Father, Son, and Holy Ghost – individual yet one. We can try to explain it as St. Patrick did with the three-leaf clover. At the end of the day though, we won't be able to fully comprehend just what the Trinity means until we join God in Heaven. This is one mystery that we have to push past our doubts and just believe.

Our Faith is full of mysteries and things that seem as though they must be fiction. God knows that sometimes we need proof, just as Doubting Thomas did. Sometimes though, we just have to believe without proof. We need to have faith in our Faith.