Are You Kidding Me?

Homily for the Feast of St. Thomas the Apostle

When someone tells us something out of our ordinary experience, we have developed a number of responses to express our incredulity. “No way,” “Get out of town,” “You’re pulling my leg,” “You’re talking through your hat, or – my personal favorite - “Don’t talk like a sausage!” Throughout St. John’s Gospel, the sacred author reminds us that he writes so that we may come to believe. Interestingly enough, the Greek words used here can also be translated “continue to believe.” Consequently, this Gospel is not simply written to prompt others to believe. It is also written so that those of us who do believe will find St. John’s words helpful in bolstering our faith.

St. John’s Gospel also was written to define the difference between faith and knowledge. Knowledge is gained through observation. Our senses invite us to grasp a thing and figure it out. Puzzles need to be solved, be they jigsaw puzzles or logic problems. We employ our senses to solve puzzles each and every day. As we grow older, it may become more difficult for us to solve puzzles. Our technological world has put many of today’s conveniences out of our reach. For instance, I have a Bose compact disc player that has the ability to act as an alarm clock. Every evening, the alarm goes off. I have never been able to figure out how to stop the alarm from ringing at the same time every night. Consequently, I cannot control this appliance because I am not able to solve the puzzle.

God is not a thing or a puzzle to be solved. Once a puzzle is solved, we can control it. God will never succumb to our control because God is not a thing but a spirit, a divine subject – not an object. Subjects are mysterious mysteries which are not for complete understanding nor control. God is not for total understanding, though our minds long for that. Consequently, when we hear the story of St. Thomas coming to believe in the resurrection, his belief does not imply that he understands. When St. Thomas utters those faithful words, “My Lord and my God,” the sacred writer is using St. Thomas’s experience to bring us back to the very first words of this Gospel, “And the Word was God.”

The Apostles never did quite figure Jesus out, never did get quick and easy answers, but they learned to live by the sight of faith and not the sight of comforting, total assurance. Today we celebrate our encouragement from just how Thomas was sent into the mystery of his life, because he surrendered to the mystery of God-Made-Flesh, Jesus our Sender into our own mysteries and those of God. This is our faith, and we are proud to confess it, to which others might say, “Are you kidding me?”