For anyone who has ever been troubled by unbelief or doubt, today’s feast serves to call to mind the blessedness of the faith that believes without having seen. Moreover it reminds us, in our day and age, of the blessedness of believing when faced with claims against truth.
In our times the obstacles to believing seem to multiply daily. We are up against cultural phenomena that compete with the faith for the claim of truth. Wherever we look the alternative to belief, if not even a spirit of the times, makes its claim against believing the faith handed to us by the apostles.
Contrariwise, the modern era has handed us the impasse of demanding empirical evidence for all claims of truth. Such a view blocks out the qualitative aspects of life as we live it, creating the false view that truth exists only where there is objective reality.
Sometimes, I have heard views expressed such as “I can believe in a God, but not in Jesus.” I think this is symptomatic of a world that has lost its relation to ultimate truth but still realizes its inadequacy to provide satisfactory answers to questions even deeper than those concerned with the origin of the material universe -- questions that call to mind the meaning of the human being in the world.
Furthermore, the postmodern worldview is easily accepted in naivety by the unreflective mind and by those who seek an alternative to faith. By demanding objectivity those who hold such views ignore the immediacy of the inner life of the human being, the very place where faith and belief become culturally and objectively relevant.
Still, I think there is even a more subtle enemy of faith. It is an imitation of the Christian faith: one that refuses to plunge into the depths of life in order to tackle problems that will not easily or clearly be resolved.
The imitation is a surface dweller, looking toward merely objective realities that serve to divert from the true focus of faith. Often we see it as being concerned almost solely with either legalistic or political positions, denying the faith both scope and depth. Again, the focus is taken away from the experience of the human being in the world and placed on an objectively mediated reality that more often than not fails to see real human need.
The Feast of St. Thomas the Apostle calls on us to embark upon a deep faith, exploring the ultimate truths that look beyond externals, and thus to grapple with the more complex issues of our world. Furthermore, it calls on us also to present the faith as an ultimate answer to the obstacles of disbelief.
As Pope St. Gregory the Great tells us in a reflection on St. Thomas, in today's Office of Readings, the true believer practices what he or she believes. Often, in our world today, objections to true faith are based on a misunderstanding of what faith is. Believers must be more than unreflective followers; they must be more than ideologues, and they must be more than fideistic and fanatic adherents to religion.
Believers must, in a real way, share a living and dynamic truth that is clearly and unmistakably evident in the immediacy of the life world.
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