The Believing Thomas

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Most of what I write below are ideas culled from an inspiring homily by Fr. Stephen Placente, SDB tonight. I was simply amazed after reading today's Office of Readings from St. Pope Gregory the Great and after hearing tonight's homily that opened my horizons on St. Thomas the Apostle.

St. Thomas is often described as the doubting Thomas. As the Gospel account has it, after hearing proof of the Lord's resurrection, he demanded a physical experience of the Lord's resurrected body for him to believe the unbelievable. This view of St. Thomas has been used and misused for so long. It is too easy to miss the point that it was him who gave the highest profession of faith in Jesus Christ in the whole of the New Testament: "My Lord and my God!" (John 20:28).

This great apostle could not become the patron saint of unbelievers and doubters for how could such profession of faith emanate from so deep a doubt? It would be a too far a jump if there were no faith no matter how little to begin with. What is in St. Thomas the Apostle is a faith that sought to be reasonable. It is a faith that proved that the Resurrection is not just a spiritual event but a real one! The Lord really had risen! For if he simply believed what the other apostles had told him of the risen Christ, his own conviction about his faith would be shallow. He heard the news yet his own need for the experience got the better of him.

After all, things become more real for us the moment we experience them. It was so for St. Thomas. And according to Pope Gregory the Great, it was out of God's providential plan that he was absent and his intellectual nature demanded a real experience of the risen Christ. In the same way that Israel believed in the power of Yahweh in their Exodus experience, St. Thomas professed his faith in his physical experience of the risen Christ.

And here we are, receiving only what was once oral tradition of the risen Christ now written in the Scriptures. Can we then demand to experience the risen Christ in order to believe? To us is addressed Jesus words, "Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe.” (John 20:29) For while we have not seen the risen Christ with our own eyes, we have been receiving his Body and Blood in the Eucharist and have been part of His Mystical Body, the Church. The Gospel account is not so much about proofs that lead to faith, but faith that is strengthened by reason and experience.

Above all is faith. St. Thomas' faith was strengthened by that encounter which for him was indescribably real it gave him strength to witness to the faith with his life. By tradition, he was believed to be martyred after preaching the Gospel in the subcontinent of India. If that faith were not real because his experience of the risen Christ was not real, he couldn't have shared the glory of the Cross. And so for us is the task of remembering our real experience of the risen Christ. It need not be through seeing and touching. It could be an interior experience that we cannot explain. It could be an experience of love, of communion, or of faith. But whatever real experience grace has given us, let it lead to real faith, a faith that allows us to give our lives for Christ and to exclaim "My Lord and my God!"

The Primacy of God and a Case for Hospitality

Holy Gospel of Jesus Christ according to Saint Matthew 10:37-42.
Jesus said to his apostles:
"Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me,
and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me;
and whoever does not take up his cross
and follow after me is not worthy of me.
Whoever finds his life will lose it,
and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.

"Whoever receives you receives me,
and whoever receives me receives the one who sent me.
Whoever receives a prophet because he is a prophet
will receive a prophet's reward,
and whoever receives a righteous man
because he is a righteous man
will receive a righteous man's reward.
And whoever gives only a cup of cold water
to one of these little ones to drink
because the little one is a disciple—
amen, I say to you, he will surely not lose his reward."

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Reflection

Just before we were sent out to our respective weekend apostolate assignments, our formator-in-charge warned us: "Do not think that people come close to you and praise you and compliment you because you are handsome. No, they come to you because they see the goodness in you." It was a fitting warning to a millenial generation of ministers who are fond of using social media and taking selfies. This generation after all is described as obsessively narcissistic. But I would say that people approach the ministers at the altar because they believe God is with them.

A Vietnamese priest who got recently ordained and who grew up with me in the theologate is unsettled at the lavish concern that Filipino Catholics give to priests. It is a point of teasing between us but it does show the Catholic culture we have in the Philippines. It is indeed unsettling for us who chose to serve at the altar since we very well know of our own weaknesses and how much we do not deserve the honor. Yet by faith, we accept it for by faith we believe that the devotion the People of God lavish on priests and ordained ministers are not to the persons themselves but to Christ.

It simply amazes me that the Spanish missionaries were able to inculcate in our society this instinct for Christ in the ministers. The danger these days however is to forget the faith that underlies the devotion. In fact, other sects deride Catholics for this seemingly unrealistic practice. Jesus in today's Gospel invites His believers to a culture of hospitality for those He has sent. It is not about the person sent but the message that the apostle (apostolos in Greek means "sent") bears for the Christian community. That is the reward for hospitality and devotion promised by the Lord.

The message or Good News is none other than Christ. So the reward for accepting the messenger into one's home and one's heart is certainly greater than that of the prophet or the righteous one. We ordained ministers bring Christ to the people of God. There is no proof for this other than our witnessing and preaching and only the eyes of faith can see Christ in the minister. The minister for his part has to believe this in a greater degree since the pull of doubts can sometimes douse the flame of the Gospel.

All in all, everything revolves around Christ and it is Christ who holds everything together. Thus our love for Him must transcend everything else even familial ties. For all other loves exist because of the Love of Christ. Only Christ gives meaning to everything.

The Face of the Father

Holy Gospel of Jesus Christ according to Saint John 14:1-12.
Jesus said to his disciples: "Do not let your hearts be troubled. You have faith in God; have faith also in me.
In my Father's house there are many dwelling places. If there were not, would I have told you that I am going to prepare a place for you?
And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back again and take you to myself, so that where I am you also may be.
Where (I) am going you know the way."
Thomas said to him, "Master, we do not know where you are going; how can we know the way?"
Jesus said to him, "I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me."
If you know me, then you will also know my Father. From now on you do know him and have seen him."
Philip said to him, "Master, show us the Father, and that will be enough for us."
Jesus said to him, "Have I been with you for so long a time and you still do not know me, Philip? Whoever has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, 'Show us the Father'?
Do you not believe that I am in the Father and the Father is in me? The words that I speak to you I do not speak on my own. The Father who dwells in me is doing his works.
Believe me that I am in the Father and the Father is in me, or else, believe because of the works themselves.
Amen, amen, I say to you, whoever believes in me will do the works that I do, and will do greater ones than these, because I am going to the Father.

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Reflection

Pope Francis writes in Misericordiae Vultus that Jesus is the face of the Father's Mercy. Like Philip, we are ignorant of the Father without Jesus. The Father, the first Person of the Trinity, is the Great Lover. Human as we are, we cannot feel that love if not shared by the Beloved, the Only Son, Jesus Christ. Jesus makes concrete for us the love of the Father. This is why Jesus is called the Mediator of the Father's love, He is love Incarnate, that is, love-made-flesh.

The love between the Father and the Son is bountiful and unmeasurable. Jesus was not exaggerating when he said that, "In my Father's house there are many dwelling places." The eternal plan of the Trinity was to include us into that loving embrace of the Father and the Son, in the Holy Spirit. We are to dwell in them as they are to dwell in our humanity.

This, I believe, is the continuing mission of all Christians: to perpetuate the incarnation of God's love. That we become for others the concrete manifestation of the Father's love in the same way that Jesus was the love-made-flesh for us. And this is the Spirit of the Easter season - to introduce us to a future where everyone can claim that God's love for them is real.

God's love becomes real in the love of mothers for their children - in the way they touch, the way the soothe, the way they cradle us in their arms. It becomes real in the sweat of fathers who sacrifice themselves for their families. It becomes real to people whose friends remained in the journey through thick and thin. It becomes real to the world that witnesses Christians living out their Baptism through service and joy.

No one can come to the Father except through Jesus. This highlights the role of the Sacrifice of the Eucharist for us. Since in the bread and wine we have the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ, made food for our bodies and our souls. Blest and broken for us, it is the tangible and sensible sacrament of the Father's love. It is Jesus Christ himself who makes present in the Mass the unchanging promise of Easter. It is right then that we join Him in his Thanksgiving.

Are we then as Christians the face of Jesus to others?