Robert Barron - Do You Struggle to Believe?
Peace be with you. Friends, on the second Sunday of Easter, we have this marvelous inexhaustible reading from the 20th chapter of John. It's one of the accounts of the resurrection appearances of Jesus, and I've been preaching on this matter for 38 years, and I just find year after year you come back and something fresh emerges. These are in many ways the core texts of our Christian faith. Paul says if Christ is not raised, our faith is in vain. I mean, everything hinges upon the resurrection.
So it behooves us to spend some careful time looking at these texts. So we hear that the doors were locked where the disciples were for fear of the Jews. This is the day of the resurrection. But keep in mind their friend, their master has been put to death. They were in danger. I mean like serious danger. I'm sure many of the authorities, both Roman and Jewish thought, "Let's go after these guys. Let's find and track down His followers". So of course they were terrified. But despite that, Jesus, who had died on the cross and they knew it, Jesus came and stood in their midst and said to them, "Peace be with you".
This is the moment that no philosopher could have guessed. We couldn't deduce this truth from things that we know from other sources. This came as a sheer grace. I mean, despite the locked doors, they weren't ready for this. They were in some ways trying to block the world out. But nevertheless, Jesus as a grace, the risen Christ comes and says to them, "Shalom". Now, no one will miss this, if you're reading this in the first century, this is what Israel has wanted all throughout the biblical narrative. When Israel cries out to God, "Lord, how long? How long? When will you come? Lord, when will you send the anointed? Lord, when will you act"?
hat they were longing for was shalom, was peace. And the risen Christ says precisely that to them, "Shalom". And then this detail, everybody, which is massively important. "When He had said this, He showed them His hands and His side". The risen Jesus in appearance after appearance always shows His wounds. One of the signs, by the way that you're not dealing with the true risen Lord, is if He doesn't have wounds. The wounds of Jesus are a reminder of the world's opposition to Him.
So St. Peter says that in one of his early kerygmatic sermons, "The author of life came and you killed Him". That's why the wounds of Jesus in His hands and His feet and His side are a clear reminder of our sin. Whenever we're tempted to say everything's fine with us, no, no, the Church holds up the wounded Jesus. It's such a salutary move because what we all love to do, all of us sinners, is to run away from our sin to deny it. No, no. The author of life came, and let's be honest, if he came today in this physical form, we'd do the same thing to Him. Read Dostoevsky and The Grand Inquisitor for the details on that. In the wounds of Jesus, we understand that we're sinners. But then what? Listen.
"The disciples rejoiced when they saw the Lord and He said to them, again, 'Peace be with you.'" Yes, they're sinners and they see their sin in the wounds of Christ. No one's playing games of hiding here. But despite their sin, the risen Lord says, again, "Shalom". With this, everybody, the Christian faith really is born. Nothing can separate us from the love of Christ. Paul said that, right? "Neither angels or principalities, neither height nor depth," nothing in the creative realm could ever separate us from God's love because we killed God. We killed God. We see our own sin in His wounds and nevertheless, He returns in forgiving love offering Shalom to us.
Whenever you're tempted to say, "I've done things that are just beyond the pale, I mean God could never forgive me for that," that's simply false because we killed God and God returned in forgiving love. See, and that's why at this, He can breathe on them and say, "Receive the Holy Spirit". Who's the Holy Spirit? The love shared by the Father and the Son. In that love, the Father sends the Son. In that love, the son accepts his mission. And so having shown his wounds and said, "Shalom," now the love that connects the Father and the Son can be breathed on them. This is the moment when the Church is born. That's what it means to be a baptized member of Christ's Church, is that He's breathed into us the Holy Spirit.
And so we can become, listen now, ourselves, a source of Shalom and forgiveness. Beautiful, beautiful. Now after we see this, the second part of this has to do with Thomas. I found in all my years of preaching, people love the story of St. Thomas. Thomas the doubter, Thomas the one that had a hard time accepting this. You could say we live in a skeptical age. I think up and down the Christian centuries, there's been an undercurrent of skepticism. That's why people have always identified with St.Thomas.
In my own diocese here, Winona-Rochester, we have a number of priests from India who serve here, and whenever I see them, I think of St.Thomas, who according to the historical record, made his way to India to evangelize. I was with a number of Indian priests just last week I was in Rome, and whenever I see them I think of Thomas, this man who went to evangelize India. Well, what is it about his story that's so compelling? Well, listen, "Thomas called Didymus, one of the 12, was not with them when Jesus came".
So this first appearance, Thomas isn't there. The other disciples told them, "Hey, hey, we've seen the Lord. The best possible news we want to share with you". He says, "Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands, put my finger into the nail marks, put my hand into the side, I will not believe". Now, this is the attitude, as I say, of a lot of people across the ages, including today, skeptics who find the Christian claim a little hard to take. "How can you accept this? I'm not going to believe unless I can verify this". Well, then a week later, Jesus appears again, this time Thomas is with them, and He says, "Thomas, put your fingers in these wounds. Put your hand in my side. See and believe".
I want to talk a little bit everybody about the play of faith and reason because that's a great theme that undergirds this story, the play of faith and reason. First, this. Please do not believe the new atheists who flourished now like 25 years ago, who convinced sadly, a whole generation of young people that faith means credulity, it means superstition, it means accepting things on the basis of no evidence. "I'll just believe anything, any crazy claim that's made". That is not what the Church means by faith. All of that, you might say, is on the near side of reason. Do you know what I mean? Is things that are accepted without critical analysis, reason has not been engaged. And I just accept things on the basis of nothing.
Well, that is credulity. That is naivete, that is superstition. And listen, the Church is not interested in that. The Church has no interest in drawing people into a naive credulity. The faith that the Church talks about is a trust on the far side of reason. Let me say that again. Authentic faith is not infrarational, it's not prior to reason. It's suprarational, it's beyond the rational. It's reason having done its work, faith now trustingly accepts.
Now, I want to give you an example, which I think is very apt, this comparison. Think of the manner in which you come to know another human being. Maybe you're just interested in somebody and you've heard about him or her, and you say, "Well, look, I'm going to look that person up on Google". And Google can tell you a lot now, and you can discover when that person was born, where they grew up, where they went to school, what their views are, maybe controversies about them. You can discover kind of a lot. And then you can maybe watch that person on your own through TV or whatever it is, videos. And then let's say you got the opportunity actually to meet that person.
Well, fine, then your reason can continue working and you can learn more and more and more things about that person. Great, great. I want all of that. That's all good. We never want to put reason to sleep when you're coming to know someone. No, you should think it through. But now, imagine there comes a time when you are drawn into communion with that person. You've learned a lot on your own through reason. But now that person decides to disclose something that you could never have known otherwise, could never learn it through a Google search, could never have learned it from just watching the person behave. You could never have learned it from listening to other people. Something close to the heart of that person that only he or she could reveal.
When you say, "Okay, I trust you. I believe what you've told me". That's what the Church means by faith. Can we learn a lot of things about God and about Christ by using our reason? Yes. Nothing wrong with that. Nothing really wrong with Thomas in his desire to see, in his desire to know on his own terms. Nothing wrong with that in itself. What's the problem? Again, listen to him. "Unless I see the mark of the nails in His hands, and put my finger into the nail marks, put my hand into the side, I will not believe".
What's the problem with Thomas? Not that he's exercising reason, but that he's aggressively trying to dominate the situation on his own terms. Stay with my analogy. You're trying to come to know somebody and you've learned a lot through reason. Terrific. Now you start peppering that person with all kinds of intrusive questions. "Hey, there's so much more I want to know about you. Tell me about this". "Hey, you're keeping something from me. I want to know on my terms and my time".
What's that person going to do? Probably withdraw. I would. I'd run the other way. You'll never come to know the person's heart if you are in that aggressive stance. Rather, you have to enter into the stance of trust. Jesus appears to the disciples, not on their terms, but on His terms. Not in their timing, on His timing. Not in the way they want it, but the way He wants it. That's authentic faith, everybody. Not opposed to reason. But it goes beyond and then complements reason. Just a last thought here. I've always found this really fascinating.
So Thomas is gone when the Lord first comes. That's to say he's not with the Church. The second time Thomas is there, he's with the 11, he's with the Church. How do we come to see Jesus? "Well, by asking a lot of probing rationalistic questions on my own terms". No, no, you won't get Him that way. Rather you will come to see Him. You'll be invited into faith precisely in the Church. Does that make sense? In the liturgy, in the readings, in the community of fellow believers, that links you to the Church across the ages, in the thinking of the great theologians and philosophers, in the artwork of the great geniuses of our tradition, it's when we're inside the Church that Jesus more fully discloses Himself to us.
And then here's the last thing I want you to see. And those who maybe feel like Thomas and feel they got a difficult time with belief and they have a lot of questions, having seen the risen Lord, Thomas then says, "My Lord and my God". There's nobody in the New Testament who gives a more thorough and exalted attestation of Jesus than this. Nobody. All kinds of people get Him wrong. All kinds of people sort of see a little bit here and there.
It's Thomas the doubter is the one who was led finally through both reason and faith to come to the greatest confession anywhere in the New Testament. So spend a little time, maybe especially those who struggle with skepticism, move into the space of St.Thomas, this man who attested to the divinity of the Lord and carried the faith to the ends of the world. And God bless you.