Doubt is a perennial reality of the human experience and therefore a part of the Christian life. And in today’s Gospel we see that doubt has been part of the discipleship experience since the very beginning.
I think that when we experience doubt in our faith life it may well mean that we are really engaging in and wrestling with the deepest realities of the Christian mystery. So, it is not necessarily a bad thing. I believe that most all of us, at some time, have doubts about some aspects of our faith, just like the father of the young boy possessed by a daemon, in the Gospel of Mark, who cried out to Jesus, “I do believe, help my unbelief.” And like so many of the saints who have gone before us, who wrote about their doubts, their unbelief, and yet persisted in the faith they had -- however small, however strained -- and are held up today as examples for us to follow.
So, St. Thomas gets a bit of a bad rap, remembered down through the centuries as “Doubting Thomas.” I say “a bad rap” because we forget that Thomas is one of the very first human beings to ever hear of the resurrection of Christ! How would
you have responded to the very first stories of those who claimed to have seen Jesus, alive? Risen from the dead?
Imagine what it must have been like for the first disciples. They had pinned all their hopes and dreams for a new and different future on this one person, Jesus, and then they saw him executed by the Romans, die on the cross and laid to rest in a tomb. All their hopes hung on that cross and seemed to die with him.
Then, in the midst of their sorrow, fear and trembling, Jesus appears to them and imparts to them “his peace” -- the peace of the Risen Christ! This deep and abiding peace was to calm and fill the space of their fear and trembling. And then he breaths on them and gives them the gift of the Holy Spirit.
This gift was to embolden them as he sent them out into the world to proclaim the Good News that death had been defeated, our sins will be forgiven and even though our bodies die we will live in Christ forever!
The peace of Christ is an integral part of Christian life and of the Easter story. This peace is like no other peace…it is Christ’s peace…it is a transformative peace that flows forth directly from the Risen Christ to us.
In this Easter season let us open our hearts and minds ever more fully to the presence of the Holy Spirit, dwelling within each one of us. Knowing that this Spirit is calling us and emboldening us to proclaim the peace of the Risen Christ to a broken and suffering world.
Have I embraced the fact that the Holy Spirit dwells within me, in a real and powerful way? How can I show forth Christ’s peace in my daily life, in the midst of the chaos and suffering that is all around us?
May the peace of the Risen Christ be with you always,
Fr. Tim
I think that when we experience doubt in our faith life it may well mean that we are really engaging in and wrestling with the deepest realities of the Christian mystery. So, it is not necessarily a bad thing. I believe that most all of us, at some time, have doubts about some aspects of our faith, just like the father of the young boy possessed by a daemon, in the Gospel of Mark, who cried out to Jesus, “I do believe, help my unbelief.” And like so many of the saints who have gone before us, who wrote about their doubts, their unbelief, and yet persisted in the faith they had -- however small, however strained -- and are held up today as examples for us to follow.
So, St. Thomas gets a bit of a bad rap, remembered down through the centuries as “Doubting Thomas.” I say “a bad rap” because we forget that Thomas is one of the very first human beings to ever hear of the resurrection of Christ! How would
you have responded to the very first stories of those who claimed to have seen Jesus, alive? Risen from the dead?
Imagine what it must have been like for the first disciples. They had pinned all their hopes and dreams for a new and different future on this one person, Jesus, and then they saw him executed by the Romans, die on the cross and laid to rest in a tomb. All their hopes hung on that cross and seemed to die with him.
Then, in the midst of their sorrow, fear and trembling, Jesus appears to them and imparts to them “his peace” -- the peace of the Risen Christ! This deep and abiding peace was to calm and fill the space of their fear and trembling. And then he breaths on them and gives them the gift of the Holy Spirit.
This gift was to embolden them as he sent them out into the world to proclaim the Good News that death had been defeated, our sins will be forgiven and even though our bodies die we will live in Christ forever!
The peace of Christ is an integral part of Christian life and of the Easter story. This peace is like no other peace…it is Christ’s peace…it is a transformative peace that flows forth directly from the Risen Christ to us.
In this Easter season let us open our hearts and minds ever more fully to the presence of the Holy Spirit, dwelling within each one of us. Knowing that this Spirit is calling us and emboldening us to proclaim the peace of the Risen Christ to a broken and suffering world.
Have I embraced the fact that the Holy Spirit dwells within me, in a real and powerful way? How can I show forth Christ’s peace in my daily life, in the midst of the chaos and suffering that is all around us?
May the peace of the Risen Christ be with you always,
Fr. Tim
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