How do we give witness to what we believe?
Sunday’s gospel reading from John reminds us of the story of
the disciple Thomas, who is not present when Jesus first visits the apostles, and whose doubt is manifest: Unless I see the mark of the nails in his
hands and put my fingers into the nailmarks and put my hand into his side, I
will not believe. As it happens,
Thomas has only to see the Lord one week later and his conversion is
immediate: My Lord and my God! he exclaims.
God revealed before him elicits a profound statement of faith, and
Jesus’ reflection on this moment is telling:
Blessed are those who have not
seen and have believed.
After the first generation of disciples has passed, of
course, this will be the situation of all those (including us) in the Church: they will not see, yet they will believe. In our reading from the Acts of the Apostles, it
is the great power of the witness of the apostles that helps them
to strive for peaceful community, where everyone is of one heart and mind. All
is shared in a just distribution of
goods; they had everything in common.
In the words of Psalm 118, this is cause for rejoicing, the joyful shout of victory in the tents of the just, the tents of
those who do God’s work.
Like the apostles, we are charged with a mission: As the
Father has sent me, so I send you, Jesus says. We are called, in other
words, to give witness; it is part of our identity as baptized believers in
Christ. We are called to bring the love
God has to bear for us upon the world, to transform it, giving witness to his
love with our lives. With the help of
the Spirit – the one that testifies,
according to the First Letter of John – we are called to plant ourselves
squarely within the domain of God’s love, a position from which we can give
open witness to our belief that Jesus is
indeed the Christ, and to the ways
our lives are transformed, daily, by faith in his love.
This post is based on Fr. Pat's Scripture class.
Image source: Wordle
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