Br. Jonathan Maury

Saint Thomas the Apostle

John 20:24-29

As this year’s Advent season draws to a close, we may well find ourselves  questioning where God is present or even if God is present in the frightening chaos of our time. Yes, the Word’s coming among us in human flesh at Christmas still promises the restoration of wholeness, abundant new life and the future of divine glory for all creation. But in the midst of a fearful, world apocalypse of injustice, violence, cruelty, oppression, untruth, and greed – we may have our doubts.

It seems apt then, fortuitous even, that we should celebrate the image of Christ in Saint Thomas, the so-called “doubting” apostle. For just when the eternal Light seemed to have been extinguished, Thomas found faith and hope to be rekindled in the midst of his doubts.

If we are honest, the path to faith of “doubting” Thomas is in some measure shared by us all.

By Jesus’ choice, Thomas was brought into community of the disciples as Twelve. It seems to me, that Thomas’s charism, his particular gift of the Spirit, was to ask the questions most of the others would not or could not ask.

The “doubt” which I believe is Thomas’s gift should be understood as a component of his coming to faith. This “doubt” plays a part in coming to fullness of belief and commitment for each of us.

The seeds of hope, of faith in things not yet seen, must be sown in the soil of just such questioning and doubt. The Greek word for this doubt connotes a wavering or hesitation in faith – of belief already here. Doubt is not the negation of faith – but an integral part of the way to its fulness.

Within the community of believers and seekers, we must question, even doubt, that the promises of God in Jesus can possibly be realized in our world – and the world to come. It is only in such wavering and hesitation together that we are freed from the fear which binds us corporately and individually.

There are two places in the gospel of John, where “doubting” Thomas’s rootedness in this common sharing of faith is highlighted:

When Jesus has decided to raise his friend Lazarus from the sleep of death, his purpose will take him again to Judea, where the authorities seek to arrest and try him. The disciples – likely including Thomas – try to dissuade Jesus, doubting or hesitating with the prudence of his intended course of action. Yet it is Thomas, perceiving that Jesus will go, who says to the others, “Let us go also, that we may die with him.” (John 11)

At the supper on the night of his betrayal, Jesus speaks of his leaving the disciples and going to prepare a place for them and of his coming back to take them with him. Amid the ensuing confusion and worried uncertainty, it is Thomas alone who asks the question, “Lord, we don’t know where you are going, so how can we know the way?” (John 14)

To this, Jesus replies, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. If you really know me, you will know my Father as well. From now on, you do know him and have seen him.” Though not fully in that moment, Thomas’s questioning doubt will at last open him to faith in the relationship which God will always share with us in Jesus.

When we hear of Thomas’s skepticism at the other disciples’ experience of the risen Christ, we would do well to remember the clear trauma and despair that that Thomas carried from Jesus’s condemnation, torture and execution. “Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands, and put my finger in the mark of the nails and my hand in his side, I will not believe.”

Yet it is faith, manifested in the midst of hesitant doubt, that brings Thomas back to the company of the disciples from whom he had previously absented himself. And this return becomes the occasion for the resurrected Jesus’ to show himself to Thomas in the only way this particular disciple can truly see the One for whom he has been watching.

The same applies for us in these last days of Advent: Jesus seeks to show and give himself to each of us and to all the world – to see and know in God fulness of faith, life and hope – as Christ is continually born anew in each moment. So I ask as I invite you to ask, What doubts, wavering, hesitation, resistance, or missteps are impeding, slowing down my readiness in following Jesus and the living of my life in God?

I pray that God will reveal these things and also the abiding presence of Jesus to us in the company of others in praying, worshipping, and serving in Christ’s name. May we welcome Jesus to show himself to the eyes of our faith.

It may perhaps be in the oppressed and needy stranger, in the child of refugee parents in exile from their homeland, in seekers who are seen as outsiders – or in sharing with another our doubts and thereby giving them leave to express their own.

All these may be channels leading from doubt into faith, so that may be made ready to see Christ Jesus when he shows himself, to cry aloud with blessed Thomas, “My Lord and my God!” Amen.