Low Sunday 27.4.14 Knowing with certainty
When Our Lord rose from the dead He appeared to His disciples in several appearances, at one stage to five hundred at a time (1 Cor 15,6)
He did not, however, appear to those who opposed Him such as the Pharisees, Herod, Pilate etc.
It seems only those who loved Him could appreciate seeing Him. Loving Him (at least partially) is a pre-requisite to having faith in Him. Our Lord expects us to believe in His resurrection even though we have not seen it. If He expects this it must be possible.
Seeing is not everything. We make it everything but there are other ways of knowing things besides seeing them. Knowledge can come other than through sense experience.
This event of the Resurrection is knowable in another way. Not through the external senses but from the interior, we discover the truth by living in it. If we live as the Lord directs us His grace will act on our minds and hearts, and somehow, between mind and heart we will know with certainty that Christ is risen.
We come to know Him through prayer, through the sacraments, through experiencing His presence in a thousand different ways.
There is much we do not understand but we have a strong interior certainty that all that is said of Him (by the Church) is true and that we could stake our whole lives on this truth.
This is not just head knowledge but knowledge from the heart as well. Our hearts yearn for this truth and that yearning is fulfilled.
We sense instinctively that death is not the last word. (Even the pagans think this much.)
We look around at the beauty of the world, and believing in a God of life, a God who can make life so abundantly, we sense that He would not allow death to wipe out all He has made.
Nor does He allow it. The new Adam bursts forth from the tomb triumphantly and sets in motion a whole process of restoration which we now experience.
Our Lord meant it when He said, Blessed are those who have not seen and yet believe.
The vast majority of His disciples did not see and yet believe. We are blessed not just because it requires an extra effort of faith to believe something we have not seen; but blessed because if we do believe it must mean we are in some measure living the truth in which we believe.
More blessed are you because you are not just looking for external signs but you are letting your soul do the talking. You are letting your soul register interiorly what cannot be obtained through the exterior senses.
We have allowed ourselves to become imprisoned in a sense world.
Our religion is one of the heart, which appeals to the poetic, yet is not lacking in objective proof.
There is something for everyone in this religion. If we want head knowledge there are many pieces of evidence which point to the Resurrection being true.
If we want heart knowledge just do what He says and the belief will come.
If we believe first we will act on it, but it is also true to say that if we act first the belief will come.
If I sit back and say, I need a miracle before I will believe, I probably won’t get that miracle and will probably also continue in a life of sin which will blur the understanding even more.
This is why people like the Pharisees, despite seeing so many miracles, still did not acknowledge Jesus. Their hearts were blind (Jn 9,41).
We still use our brains but we also use the heart, and thus we see it all come together.
If we are humble and faithful enough to see it through to the end we will be able to say with Thomas, My Lord and my God.
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