Episode Transcript  

One

Story of Thomas

Most of you probably remember the story of Doubting Thomas, the apostle who wasn’t there the first time Jesus appeared to the other apostles after His resurrection. They assured him that they’d seen the Lord, but Thomas wanted proof. He said that unless he saw for himself, unless he himself touched the places where the nails had pierced, he would not believe. So the Lord gave Thomas that chance. He appeared again, in the same place, and this time, Thomas was there. And Jesus showed him His wounds. He invited him to touch His wounds. And he said, “Doubt no longer but believe!”

And Thomas switches on a dime. Then and there, he gives the most explicit affirmation of Our Lord’s divinity expressed by any character in the Gospels. He says, “My Lord and My God!” Then Jesus says these words, “Have you come to believe because you have seen? Blessed are those who have not seen, and have believed” (John 20:29). 

Two

The Benefits To Us

Thomas’s doubt is one of the clearest cases of God bringing good out of human weakness. It’s incredibly consoling to us, thousands of years later, to realize that the Apostles weren’t a bunch of gullible superstitious people ready to believe any random supernatural report.

In fact, as St. Gregory the Great says, we owe the strength of our belief more to Thomas’s doubt than to the other apostles’ faith. It was precisely Thomas’s doubt that did the most to put our doubts to rest. Thomas proves that the people who witnessed Christ’s miracles and His resurrection were just as skeptical and slow to believe without proof as we are. So if even Thomas, even the most belief-resistant of the apostles, was convinced, then there’s no reason for us not to be.

Three

Thomas’ Loss

Nonetheless, Thomas’s doubt was a failing. God may have turned it to our benefit, but Jesus makes it clear that it would have been better for Thomas if he had believed before having seen. Thomas was less blessed because he only believed after having seen.

But that seems sort of strange, doesn’t it? After all, what’s wrong with seeing? What’s wrong with evidence? Isn’t it a virtue to refrain from judgment until you can consider the evidence for yourself? Actually, the point isn’t that vision is bad or that evidence is bad. Jesus’ point is that certain kinds of seeing and certain kinds of evidence are higher than others.

Four

A Less and More Perfect Vision

A lot of kids, for a long time, need to count on their fingers to do basic addition. You say to the kid, “What’s seven plus seven?” and then you wait while they do that little counting trick, and then eventually they look up at you and say, “Seven plus seven is fourteen!” And you might say to that little kid, “You believe that seven plus seven is fourteen because you have counted on your fingers? Blessed are they who believe that seven plus seven is fourteen without counting on their fingers.” (And the kid would say, “Huh?”) Because if you still need to count on your fingers to have sufficient evidence to know what seven plus seven is, it means your knowledge of addition is still pretty imperfect.

There’s a more perfect vision, a way of just seeing, instantly, that seven plus seven equals fourteen and you don’t need “empirical” proof. you don’t need to go around adding up fingers or anything else. You just see that it’s true. That’s what faith is. 

It’s a more perfect knowledge, one that doesn’t always have to test things by running experiments: it’s a knowledge that sees the ultimate truths directly, immediately. Those with that kind of faith are the ones Jesus says are blessed. So, how can we cultivate that kind of faith?

Five

Cultivating Faith

The gift of faith, of that higher vision, that clearer, more mature perception into the ultimate truths, that vision, that belief, is ultimately the gift of God. It’s a way of seeing that what is most beautiful and most good is also what is most true. It’s a way of recognizing that God has spoken, and that God is trustworthy, and so God must be believed.

This is God’s gift, and only He can give it and only He can cause it to grow within us. But step one is to recognize our own limitations. It’s to not grow too proud in our own opinions and our own views. It’s to recognize that other people are often right and we’re often wrong. When we recognize our own tendency to error and confusion, we will be that much more desirous of God’s grace of truth and clarity.

And we will ask God for the gift of faith, and He will give it. And then we will be truly blessed, because we will see, we will see the whole spiritual panorama of God’s program, we will see as God Himself sees because we believe.

Suggested Resolutions:

Choose one resolution for today to help you grow closer to God, or create your own. Here are some ideas to inspire you.

• Commit to trusting God even when you don’t have full clarity and resist the urge to delay belief until you feel completely certain.

• Read a saint’s conversion story (like St. Augustine or St. Edith Stein) to see how others have found faith through both reason and grace.

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