Mass readings for the 2nd Sunday of Easter (Divine Mercy):
Acts 5.12-16 Psalm 118.2-4, 22-27a Revelation 1.9-11a, 12-13, 17-19 John 20.19-31
Today we hear the familiar story of doubting Thomas. Perhaps, an overfamiliar story. I’ve spoken of the inclination to cast ourselves in the great story, ask ourselves, “who would I be, were I there?” I wonder if anyone here would see themselves as the famous doubter. Probably not. Indeed, I don’t think anyone claiming the name “Catholic” would. Yet, there are so many who make that claim of religious identity, check the “Catholic” box on census forms, who never darken the door of a church from one year to the next, save for weddings, funerals, baptism, first communions – things connected with duty to family. They don’t even do the Christmas and Easter thing anymore. And yet, I don’t think we can say those non-attending Catholics have moved into the camp of atheism or agnosticism or that of the growing category of religious affiliation of “none.”
Ironically, these “cradle catholics” are staying away, as we are seeing a surge in young adults coming into the Church on a global scale. Both the United Kingdom and France, witnessed records in baptisms this Easter and in attendance. In England, Catholic numbers in pews eclipsed the state church, the Church of England; in France, home of secularism, thousands came to the font. Africa, despite horrific levels of murderous persecution – there was another massacre in Nigeria on Palm Sunday; 54 Christians murdered – despite such ongoing persecution, the African Church continues to grow. While it’s hard to get accurate numbers from China, for all the efforts of the communist government, the Catholic population keeps getting bigger.
And yet, we have this stubborn demographic in the West, in Canada, the States, France and Germany, of Catholics in their 30s and older, who will not come to worship yet strangely maintain they are nonetheless “Catholic.”
Well, in the great drama of Christian salvation history, I think we’ve found today’s Thomas – there are so many of our brothers and sisters in Christ who are filled with doubt. They doubt; not that Jesus Christ is the Son of God, but doubt that the body of Christ, that palpable, tangible manifestation of Christ in the world is here, in their parish, in the Catholic Church. Indeed, anywhere.
Think on it: who in their right mind would believe that God is actually present, and willing to share of himself with us, who would then stay away for years at a time?
Like Thomas in the story, the sight of the risen Lord is not enough. They need to touch the body, to test its physicality, to know if it’s really him, or indeed, it’s just a ghost of our Lord – a mere memory, and a faded one at that, that is commemorated here.
The great Catholic writer, Flannery O’Connor, observed we do live in a Christ-haunted landscape, and that is how he is encountered by the vast majority of people, Catholic or otherwise. That is, it’s either an intellectual thing: Jesus’s teachings, or his very historical reality argued over by experts – it’s dry stuff in the end, arguing the merits of the evidence, or the relevance of his teaching today. There’s also the emotional experience, had in exuberant praise services offered by non-Catholic Christian communities, that either avoid offering Christ’s teaching with any specificity so as to not scare anyone off, or paradoxically offer a highly rigoristic version of the faith, a kind of semi-Calvinism, these attract some Catholics for a time. But in these experiences, there is more an absence than a presence, they come to realize that too often the elation is a product more of the longing after God than in the experience of him; exhausted by the effort, you might say they experience a “runner’s high” having covered some emotional distance, collapsing from the effort but still earthbound. In the end it’s unsatisfying, unconvincing.
I fear that this has been the experience of today’s Thomas, from their Catholic upbringing into their spiritual wanderings. They’ve never really known Christ, experienced him, and in any way really understood him. And so, all of this Sunday stuff, the mass, etc. is a kind of empty show, a lot of esoteric symbolism presented ritually. O’Connor famously said of those Christians who regard the Eucharist as just a symbol, “well, to hell with that!” I think a great many of the lapsed Catholic population is saying that inwardly. O’Connor understood what gives the Catholic faith its power: it manifests itself physically in the world. Yes, sacramentally; but also, in the community that gathers to celebrate the Eucharist, and is sustained by it. The body of Christ in the Eucharist, the body of Christ that is us, the Church.
Many nominal Catholics have children, and as many do send them to the publicly-funded schools for Catholics. And it’s through my encounters with these children that I get insight into what’s going on in these ostensibly Catholic Christian homes. They are my little unwitting spies that help me know what the Thomases are up to.
When the disciples had gathered back in the upper room following the seeming disaster of Jesus’ crucifixion, emotionally crushed, but also living in fear of the authorities, contemplating the real possibility that they were next for the cross; how is it that Thomas wasn’t there? What was he doing? Wandering the streets of Jerusalem in daze of bewilderment, of disappointment, of fear. But most important to note, he was alone, cut off from the community of disciples who were just as devastated, but who nonetheless gathered. And being gathered, in the name of their seemingly dead Lord, it’s there that Christ appears to all, except Thomas.
At our Easter liturgies with the schools, at the homily, I grab the mic and I wander around asking the kids questions, these “children” of Thomas.
“So, what did you do Easter Sunday?”
Their hands shoot up. The younger ones are so eager to share. What were the many happily offered answers? “My mommy and daddy took me to an Easter Egg hunt.” “We went to my grandma’s and she hid candy in her house for us.” One of the kids offered rather bitterly, “I was stuck in the car for four hours driving to see my cousins…” And on and on, in a similar vein. For the most part one had a sense that this was a “family” occasion.
And then, a child, whose arm I was sure was going to pop out of its socket, she was straining so hard, I called on. She said, “we went to church.” Warms the heart; that gave me my opening to ask, “who else went to church Sunday, the most important day in the whole of the calendar of our faith?” I saw maybe one in a dozen raised their hands.
For so many, Easter has ceased to be about Jesus Christ, and is instead about family. And so, it’s hard for me to argue against such a priority, isn’t it. Yet our Lord did just that. Now, he didn’t call for an end to family. God shows us through the Holy Family, the indispensability of family, and yet, Jesus is quite clear in saying it isn’t enough.
Family is a fragile thing, and it is something we can lose, that can go away. We know this; and such a prospect makes us afraid, because absent Christ, it’s all we really have. It’s given to us, unlike any of life’s other compensations like wealth, celebrity, professional acclaim, political power – those we have to really work at. And yet, Jesus tells us that through him we can have so much more that all these things, and family in the bargain.
Without God we become lost even in the midst of family, and frankly, on some level without hope. We can sit at the Easter table surrounded by family, and yet be anxious for ourselves, for our children, and so on.
Family can be the one thing we accomplish and leave behind. But is that really all one’s life is about? What we leave behind with rare exception is very quickly forgotten. I have a picture of my great-grandfather, Peter Whitfield. I don’t look at it with any particular affection. I never knew him. Is this all that is left of him?
I do have a sense of knowing Christ; and not just because I read the scriptures, have studied theology, have been impressed by the Shroud of Turin, have prayed at times in desperation and found relief, in joy and felt God’s pleasure in that. It’s been in the Church, not as an institution, not as historical artifact, not as a collection of buildings, and art work, not as a player in the world of politics, but rather as a place of encounter with God’s love manifest in the worship, the study, the prayer and the service of brothers and sisters in Christ, and that has been something I have been able to reach out and touch… and in an appropriate way, I might add! Through it, I am in touch with something more than ancient, but eternal, whose communion is everlasting, and so, this is where I want to be.
We have an election this week; I think that no matter the outcome we’ve some difficult times ahead. Like the dark, threatening streets of Jerusalem on that first Easter Eve, many a Thomas is going to be out there in our community; and they may think to stop in here. And when we tell them, Christ is risen… for all our conviction don’t be surprised if they scoff. We might wonder why they bothered coming. Probably like Thomas, finding themselves in a hostile place, they know at least that in the upper room they’ll find people as afraid as he was, but also no threat.
Will these Thomases find a Christ they can touch and see; a Christ who is no mere shadow of the Lord, not a ghost, but a living body that truly incarnates the Resurrection with all the hope that it embodies? That is the Easter challenge for us, to be Christ’s palpable body, to be at work in the world, to be a true presence, every bit as much as the Eucharist is, to those who are in need of him. We want the Thomas of today to come to that glorious moment of confession, and to say without doubt, “My Lord, and my God!”
Amen.