By Father Rich Tomkosky
Many of the saints have pointed out that in God’s holy Providence, the apostle Thomas not being present at the initial appearances of the Risen Lord Jesus, was a grace to help all of Jesus’ followers going forward because so many would have doubts and difficulties at different times in relation to the Lord and His Resurrection and various parts of the holy Catholic faith. What does this all mean, and how does the Lord try to reach us through our reason, faith and our Lady to help us turn away from sin and embrace the narrow path that leads to holiness and Heaven?
Reason is the human mind’s ability to use our five senses to gather information to draw distinctions and cause and effect dynamics and conclusions which is a good thing to help us understand our world and hopefully grow in our knowledge and love for what is real and truthful. The problem comes in when we rely exclusively on our reason to the detriment of the Faith and the supernatural realities that go beyond our senses and the rational part of our intellect. This is the error Thomas fell into – as he would not believe without seeing and touching and feeling the Lord’s wounds in His body as the real marks of His Passion and Death.
We see this a lot in our world today where people live only by their senses and emotions and sometimes their reason, but do not allow room for the deeper knowledge that comes from the divine gift of Faith. This is the error of rationalism – and sadly far too many of our young people fall into this error when they go off to college and are taught by humanly smart but unbelieving professors who draw others into their rationalistic errors, which is why we must work daily to grow in our knowledge of our Catholic faith to be able to “give a reason for our hope in God” when we are challenged by non-believers as Saint Peter points out in 1 Peter 3:15.
Faith is the infused supernatural virtue given in our Baptism and renewed and strengthened in our Confirmation that enables us to believe what God has revealed to us through the Bible and the handed down Catholic faith even when it goes beyond our human reasoning ability. Thomas was lacking in this virtue when he doubted the Lord’s Bodily Resurrection.
Jesus in His mercy and kindness gave Thomas a new chance to grow in Faith when He re-appeared and gave Thomas the opportunity to affirm his belief in Jesus’ Resurrection; and then said for all of us who will come later, “Blessed are those who have not seen, but have believed.” But even then, we need to be on guard though, because there is a more subtle error called fideism which those who have faith can fall into, which is believing everything by faith instead of using one’s reason as well and/or erroneously thinking faith and reason are in opposition by nature, when they are not (see the games people play when it comes to the evil of abortion, especially politicians – it doesn’t take the supernatural gift of faith to know abortion is the taking of an innocent human life – see the sciences of embryology, biology, and ultrasound – yet politicians as a cop-out say I believe abortion is wrong by my faith but I can’t prove it by reason. Yes, you can – but you’ve convinced yourself otherwise because it is not a popular position to hold in our morally corrupt time).
So, God expects us to use our reasoning ability in everyday life, with the human tasks at hand, with work, with the fields of medicine and technology, and with the hard sciences of biology and chemistry and astronomy and so on. As Christian believers we don’t ignore the truths of the natural world because we have the supernatural gift of faith but rather use our Faith to give our rational endeavors a clear direction and ultimate purpose of glorifying God and helping others grow in love for the truth whatever its source – natural or supernatural. The primary focus of our gift of faith through is to embrace and grow in our sacred understanding of the realm of God and the eternal truths given to us by God’s Revelation in Sacred Scripture and tradition — the revealed truths necessary for man’s salvation. In the end, both Faith and reason help us to fulfill our destiny to grow in holiness which is to become more a reflection of Jesus in all ways.
Sin, or doing our own will vs. God’s will in areas big and small, is what ultimately clouds/darkens both our reason and our faith, to keep us from becoming the holy persons God wants us to be. It is not an accident that this is the Gospel passage in which Jesus both gives Thomas a chance to undo his doubts, but also where Jesus established the Sacrament of Confession when Jesus breathes the Holy Spirit on the Apostles, the first bishops and priests of the Church, and says “whose sins you forgive are forgive, and whose sins you retain are retained.” This is the Sacrament where we receive Divine forgiveness and healing from our sins; and there is no other way or place in the world that can give us these special graces, just like Holy Mass is the only place on earth we can receive Jesus’ Body and Blood in Holy Communion.
Let’s always ask the Lord to give us the humility and courage to receive the Sacrament of Confession on regular basis and to get back to it, if we’ve been away a while. Just as when coming up to Holy Communion, if we are in the state of grace, we should pray a Hail Mary to ask Mary to give us her heart and dispositions to receive Jesus with pure faith and love, to truly benefit from that special gift, we should do the same before going to the Sacrament of Confession- pray a Hail Mary while in line, or even better a Rosary, beforehand for the intention to make a good honest Confession of all our sins.
In daily prayer also, especially in the Rosary, let’s ask our Lady to help us be more faithful to the Lord and to help us call others to the Lord’s mercy and truth while there is still time, before the Justice of God is upon us. Take advantage of all the special graces of Divine Mercy Sunday, which the Church just celebrated this past weekend. Jesus offers to both forgive us all our sins and take away the temporal punishment due to them if we go and make a good Confession 20 days before or after and through the daily praying of the Chaplet of Divine Mercy for the conversion of hardened sinners, spiritual assistance for the dying, relief for the souls in Purgatory, and our own growth in holiness. God bless you.
