The Holy Apostle Thomas can be considered the patron saint of those who want to inform themselves directly from the source, the bishop of Husi said on Sunday during his sermon which focused on the personality of Christ’s doubting apostle.
St Thomas wanted to dispel any doubt through direct interaction with Christ himself. He tried to convince himself of the veracity of the Resurrection straight from the source.
“Thomas was not an unbeliever,” Bishop Ignatie said at Floresti Monastery on April 26.
“We could rather call him Thomas the Confused, who dared to tell the other apostles that he would not believe that the Lord has really risen until he saw Him in the flesh. He needed empirical, tangible evidence.”
“He needed to see the Lord with his own eyes so that faith could be born from this sight. To let faith be born from his doubt. Doubt should be called the midwife of faith.”
The bishop stressed that in the Church of Christ, we are not required to exclude reason from the process of faith.
“Thomas’ encounter with the risen Christ dispels one of the prejudices of those who are not extremely familiar with the teaching of the Church. They tell us that to be a believer is to accept the truths of faith without going through the filter of reason, without an effort of understanding. According to them, faith would be nothing but a rejection of everything we call knowledge.”
We are not asked to accept the truths of faith without any effort to understand what Christ left us as an inheritance in His gospel, the bishop explained.
“If God wanted us to be bigots, locked in our minds, there would certainly have been no event of Thomas’ encounter with the risen Christ.”
Bishop Ignatie explained that God expects each of us, first of all, to be sincere, to seek Him, and to confess to Him even our doubts.
“Every honest believer admits to having had moments of doubt as regards the faith. God does not want us to be false and hypocrites to prove that we have a monolithic, intangible faith. He wants us to be honest with ourselves. If we have doubts, let us have the courage to confess them. Only in this way, if we confess our doubt about the faith, can we receive its certainty.”
Source: Basilica.ro