“Doubting Thomas”... We are all aware of this common saying and must have called someone else a doubting Thomas at one time or the other.
Having doubts is second nature to us as human beings. We easily lose trust in other people and our capabilities. The greatest doubt we have to contend with is the one we all like to conceal and pretend does not exist...our doubt in God and his promises.
We have all experiences situations when we feel God has abandoned us to our situations in unpleasant circumstances. We have prayed but received no answers or the answers are taking too long in coming. We begin to try explaining why and the doubt gradually creeps in.
Naturally, doubt in God occurs when things don’t go the way we want. How many of us have ever doubted when we want to sit on a chair that it will give way and we will fall. Never, unless it is visible through the chair’s frailty or we notice that one leg of the chair is broken.
Our minds have been conditioned based on experience with people and circumstances to expect the worst. This conditioning therefore manifests itself when we doubt God. Having doubts once in a while and requiring some form of reassurance from God may not necessarily be sinful, but when this craving for reassurance becomes persistent and influences our relationship with God, it becomes a sin.
In the Old Testament, there are numerous examples of God giving signs of reassurance to prophets and the people when doubt sets in. This is the evidence of doubt being a part of our humanness and that God understands our feeling.
Saint Thomas “the doubter” was best known for doubting the resurrection of Jesus asking to put his finger into the holes made by the nails on his palms and the wound from the spear on his side before he will believe. He was reassured when given the opportunity by Jesus and he exclaimed “My Lord and my God” which became a very important response in our liturgical celebration.
Several times our doubts of God’s promises and understanding of our situations have led us into spiritual blindness. We abandon time tested faith issues and practices to look for “quick action” solutions that have neither been tested nor really exist. What do we get as results, the real disappointment we wanted to avoid by presuming God might not keep his part of the bargain? No wonder Saint Thomas is named the patron saint of the blind.
God’s ways are not our ways. Therefore we will not be able to understand or accept in totality some of what is expected of us as Christians. Neither will we be able to understand why we are inflicted with certain calamities and seemingly insurmountable problems despite our great effort at holiness. This is no reason to doubt the power of God.
The children of Israel would have been wondering how God would give them food as they passed through the desert where neither they nor their leaders and prophets have planted nothing. True to God’s promise, they had Manna from heaven and had more than their fill.
What doubts about getting some of the food do you think that those who were farthest away from Jesus when he wanted to feed the five thousand people would have had running in their minds? Slim chance if you ask me.
Despite our doubts, do we remember times we have had things we never asked for that was bestowed upon us by grace? We never refuse these blessings doubting that they might be taken back from us.
It is therefore evident that we all share the same characteristics that Saint Thomas had. He wanted evidence, he needed reassurance, and he kept on asking questions that required convincing answers. This earned him the nickname “doubter”. Thank God for these characteristics, without which we would not have had a confirmation of the true nature of Jesus Christ.
When he said to Jesus “Master, we do not know where you are going. How can we know the way?” In reply, he got the greatest assurance mankind and Christendom ever needed. Jesus replied, “I am the way, and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me”.
Our God knows our desires before we request for them. He will surely provide.
The greatest evidence of God’s unfailing promise is better understood when we look at religion as it is practiced today. If the gods and founders of all the religions existing today are dead and long gone, except Christianity, why then should we doubt the ever present nature of our God in all circumstances?
I have been thinking a great deal about my experience at Reconciliation this past Saturday. I felt an intense and unexplainable urge to go and confess my sins when I woke up that morning. I try to go every six weeks or so, but this was no routine visit to the priest for me. I needed to unburden myself of the numerous venial sins I had committed since I last participated in this Sacrament.
Purest Gold: God's Refining Fire in our Lives »
After salvation, many young Christians wonder if there's anything more to their newfound faith than just the security blanket of "being a Christian." Time and time again, God shows himself as a "refiner," and our lives are as gold. God started leading me in this study to understand what He was doing in my life, as well as in the lives of others.
Picking up my pen to write this column, I couldn’t imagine how time flies. Since the last publication of this column I have gone through a lot, especially the loss of my dear mother to whom I dedicate this article. Not only her, but seems I lost a whole generation of my close family.
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Most of us youth in today's fast moving world are easily thrown off by difficulties and worries.
The theme of conversion is a thread that runs all through Lent, but conversion takes on different aspects throughout the phases of Lent. The first two and a half weeks focused on the interior turning of hearts; the liturgy urges the faithful to reflect and examine consciences thoroughly.
Saint Josephine Bakhita »
Feast Day: February 8
Patron Saint Of: Sudan
Saint Josephine Margaret Bakhita was born around 1869 in the village of Olgossa in the Darfur region of Sudan. She was a member of the Daju people and her uncle was a tribal chief. Due to her family lineage, she grew up happy and relatively prosperous, saying that as a child, she did not know suffering.
Catholics Must Fast More Intensely This Lent»
The Norbertine Canons of St. Michael's Abbey have created this digital Lenten retreat so that you can journey through this holy season alongside them. If you want to have one of your best Lenten seasons yet, join us in our Lenten Program "The Great Fast" - https://theabbotscircle.com/the-great-fast-join
When Your Faith Is Put to the Test - Bishop Barron's Sunday Sermon»
Friends, we come now to the Second Sunday of Lent, and we’re on both dangerous and very holy ground with the first reading from the twenty-second chapter of Genesis. The ancient Israelites referred to it as the “Akedah,” which means the “binding”: Abraham binds and is ready to sacrifice Isaac at God’s command.
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