(For the audio version of this blog, please visit: https://brothersinchristcmf.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/Mass-Blog-for-Divine-Mercyr-Sunday-2025.mp3)
Thomas gets a bad rap as THE most famous doubter. But like all of us, he wasn’t there when Jesus appeared to the other apostles. Up to that point they ALL had doubts about their Master. After Jesus’ crucifixion and burial, all they knew was what Mary Magdalene told them upon returning from an empty tomb. “They took the Master’s body.”
Peter and John ran to the tomb and saw what Mary saw: emptiness—except for neatly wrapped burial garments. John joined Peter in the tomb, saw, and believed. Believed what? That their Master rose from the dead or Mary’s news that someone took his body? The next line of scripture tells us:
“For they did not yet understand the Scripture that he had to rise from the dead.”
St. Augustine believed that they didn’t believe in the resurrection just yet, according to author Jason C. Paone’s “Thomas Aquinas—Selected Commentaries on the New Testament.” And in Sunday’s gospel reading (John 20:19-31) we see a group of frightened disciples who’ve locked themselves away from the same people who killed their Master. Nevertheless, Jesus enters and…
“The disciples rejoiced when they saw the Lord.”
NOW they believed. But Thomas wasn’t with them, and their word wasn’t good enough to overcome his doubt about what they said they saw. Jesus was conceived despite even his own mother’s flash of doubt that this could happen (“How can this be, since I have no relations with a man?,” (Luke 1:34).
But Mary added, “Let it be done to me according to your word.” Then the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us—and with the institution of the Eucharist, WITHIN us. After receiving Christ in the Eucharist, we are then called to give birth to the Word among us, just as the apostles did.
As Sunday’s first reading shows (Acts 5:12-16), the Non-Doubting Peter’s shadow falling upon anyone offered just the right environment for that person to grow the seed of faith into the living word of God for others to feast upon—and to plant in others. Such a geometrically growing food chain supports eternal life.
When Jesus was among us physically, a doubting scholar asked Jesus how such an eternal existence could be achieved. He turned the tables, asking the scholar what the law tells him.
“You shall love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, with all your being, with all your strength, and with all your mind, and your neighbor as yourself.” (Luke 10:25)
Do this and you will live, Jesus tells him and us.
Today Jewish men of faith tie little boxes (phylacteries) to their foreheads. These contain a printed miniature version of that law, so it stays on their mind. Many Christians wear scapulars around their shoulders and across their hearts, symbolizing the light burden this yoke of commitment to God’s law represents. The only other thing believers need is the faith to help others give flesh to God’s word, as Mother Mary did. Thomas would do that for the rest of his life—without a doubt.
–Tom Andel
The following comment comes from Rev. Skip Wilson:
Thomas was a skeptic more than a doubter. I see him wanting to believe but he wanted evidence to go with his hope/faith. Are we any different? I believe, or should I say theorize, that God built into us a drive to discover and a desire to believe. To seek answers. To seek truth. The enemy warps that more into doubt/suspicion. I believe there was a sincere and earnest drive in Thomas that said- ” I WANT TO BELIEVE. . After all I have seen Him do and say in the three years with the Master, I so, so, so want to believe. BUT I need the proof to aid my faith.”
Our response:
Thanks, Skip. Our modern age has given us technology to justify what we believe and DON’T believe. Artificial Intelligence threatens to replace the God seeking our belief with a God that does our believing for us. You’re right. We were made to be truth seekers. THIS Thomas will NOT believe in a god that does our seeking for us.
The following comment comes from Jerry Veres:
I heard a beautiful reflection on the Eucharist from Fr. Mike Schmitz. It’s simple yet profound….like our Savior.
Fr. Mike doubted in the real presence while studying in the seminary. He prayed, “Jesus this doesn’t look like you, it looks like a wafer.” He then heard Jesus speak to him, “I AM hidden, so you don’t have to hide.”
Fr. Mike still doubted, like Thomas…. So, Jesus continued, “When I walked the earth, was I not hidden? Did I appear with rays of light shooting out of my head? No, I appeared as one of us.
Again, he repeated, “I AM hidden, so you don’t have to hide. If you were to see me in my Eternal Glory and Radiant Burning Love, you would hide.”
So come close and open to receive just as the Bride opens to receive her Bridegroom.
Our response:
Thanks Jerry. We modern humans cling to the proof our technologies afford. I feel bad for seminarians whose education depends in part on outside information as readily available as a McDonald’s cheeseburger. Contemplation and meditation put us closer to the God we take into ourselves–the same one Jesus gave us at the Last Supper. To paraphrase another Thomas–Aquinas, “If we don’t believe, no evidence is sufficient; if we do believe, no evidence is necessary.”
Believing without seeing is Faith. One who believes in what he can’t see and often what can’t be described must be a gift of the Holy Spirit. For some people, they just know, and believe.
As I sit at this moment in front of Jesus exposed in the Luna in the adoration chapel at 5am, I often ask myself why I drag myself out of bed in the wee hours of the morning to enter an empty room in an empty church. I like my sleep, and I never seem to get enough of it, yet for more than 30 years I just get up like I’m going to miss something big if I don’t show. Why?
Because, I just know.
We just know His room is not empty–unlike His tomb.