Low Sunday 19.4.09
Christ is risen from the dead but who knows it? Even His disciples have doubts, as represented by St Thomas before his moment of realization.
There are degrees of knowing. We tend to put too much weight on physical evidence. People will say: If God appears to me I will believe... much as Thomas said. But for some people no amount of proof is ever enough. They always want one more miracle, one more sign.
The task is how to get from the external signs of God’s presence to an internal faith. How to have such an internal certainty of God’s existence, nature, presence and purpose that there will be no more doubt.
When StThomas said, My Lord and my God, He was saying this to a particular person, not just making a general affirmation of a concept. He believed Our Lord to be God, and that is quite a statement. Not just, Oh yes I believe there is a God of some kind, but this man standing in front of me is God!
It is the specific nature of the faith that is so important.
We profess to be Christian, which requires that we believe Jesus of Nazareth to be God, yet we still manage to put our faith on a more distant level, less intense.
So today we have to set about localising or making more specific our faith in the person of Jesus Christ. So that our faith is not just a vague or cloudy notion, a kind of general idea.
Tentative faith means a tentative living out of that faith. How dogged we are by doubt and fear.
And how much progress we would make in holiness, evangelising, and even working miracles if we believed in God as we believe in other things, such as our own existence. We do not doubt earthly realities but when it comes to God we start swimming in doubt.
Once the belief in Him is rock solid we will behave differently. We will be wanting to please Him and have a horror of displeasing Him (Sin).
Remember Peter after they had fished all night with no result. Throw your net out the other side, and a huge haul resulted. What was Peter’s response: to fall on his knees, Leave me , Lord I am a sinful man. He was brought to an awareness of his true self and status.
When we are really brought face to face with God this is what happens. We not only believe but we repent.
Thus today is the feast of Divine Mercy.
Faith will make us ask for mercy. We ask it for ourselves and we go further, seeking it for others as well. That everyone in the world would know God as He is.
What a tragedy that people do not know Him. All the terrible things that happen in the world can be traced to this simple fact that people do not know God. They do not love Him and do not seek union with Him. If they sought Him they would find Him and they would then behave differently.
The subtitle to the Divine Mercy image is, Jesus, I trust in You. Maybe we could have it in brackets: I wish I did but I don’t, but please help me so that I can.
We may not be entirely sure but will become surer.
We do not demand miracles but we do ask Him to make Himself obvious, to increase our trust in him. To such a point that we will never again doubt His existence. Never again have fear, but be so grounded in Him, so immersed in His reality, that we can base all our lives on His will - which is nothing other than we should have been doing all along.
We know Him, we trust Him, we obey Him. May He reign for ever!
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