Christ meets us in our doubts

THE story of the doubting Thomas brings to light the phenomenon about doubts in our Christian faith. We should not be surprised by it. We know that doubts about our faith can easily rise in our mind for a number of reasons. 

 Why do we doubt sometimes? Because our capacity to know things well is hampered by a number of limitations and factors. We tend to depend too much on our senses, we can commit mistakes in our reasoning, we can have biases that color the way we see things, we are dealing with things spiritual and supernatural that are beyond our natural powers of knowing, etc. 

 We cannot deny that we can have some doubts, for example, about who Christ is and what he is to us. These days in the world in general, we can see strong evidence of a culture of skepticism, agnosticism, religious indifferentism, if not, outright atheism. 

 This should come as no surprise to us because even during the time of Christ, many of the supposedly religious leaders were skeptical of him and were often suspicious of him, always trying to find fault in him. 

 The quick reason for that phenomenon is that the person of Christ is largely shrouded by mysteries that are difficult if not impossible for us to understand fully. That he is both God and man, that he was brought to earth through a virgin birth, are just some of the mysteries many people do not even bother to consider. 

 There are, of course, many other reasons. Many people are lazy and do not bother to know Christ, let alone, study the gospels. And even the Bible is considered by many people as a mere collection of myths and legends. And we can go on and on with reasons for the lack of interest in Christ. 

 But what we can do is first of all really to pray, to humble ourselves, realizing that the question about Christ is a matter of faith which is a supernatural gift that can only be appreciated by us if we are humble enough to accept and correspond to that gift. Of course, Christ can strike a most powerful grace to convert a person instantly into a man of faith, much like what happened to St. Paul also. 

 What we should do is to be humble to acknowledge these limitations and be guarded against them. Specifically, we should be humble enough to ask God for that gift of faith which he is all too willing to give us. And from there, we should just have to make many acts of faith in God and in things related him, even as we study the doctrine of our faith, trying to assimilate them in our life. 

 This way we would be imitating the attitude of many of the Biblical characters, especially like Our Lady who, in spite of not fully understanding how she was going to be the Mother of God, simply said “Be it done to me according to your word.” 

 But let’s remember that Christ is not scandalized by our doubts. He may reproach us for them, but he will not remain indifferent to that wounded condition of ours. Like in the case of St. Thomas, Christ would be willing to clarify them for us in his own mysterious ways. 

 In short, our doubts should spur us some more to get closer to God rather than to run away from him. That’s why we need to be humble.

Christ cares and heals both our body and soul

THAT’S what we can learn from that gospel episode about some people presenting a paralytic to Christ, asking for healing. (cfr. Mt 9,1-8) Taking note of their faith in him, Christ did not delay in responding to their plea. But instead of curing the body immediately, Christ cured first the soul by saying: “Courage, child, your sins are forgiven.” 

 Of course, the usual villains took issue with what Christ did, accusing him of blasphemy. That’s when Christ, to show his divine authority, asked the paralytic to stand up and walk. And when the paralytic managed to stand up and walk, the crowd was completely left awe-struck and could not help but glorify God. 

 In this moment, Christ wanted to show that reconciling the soul is a more profound healing than repairing the body, that spiritual restoration—forgiveness—is the ultimate healing. As a corollary, he wanted to show that it is sin that is the deepest paralysis, making forgiveness the most necessary healing. He wanted to make it clear that healing the inner person is paramount, and that a restored soul is greater than a cured body. 

 Christ, of course, is also interested in giving our body its ideal condition. And we should also be. But we should make sure that our concern for the health of our body, which can make use of whatever human means are available, should never compromise our complete reliance first on God’s grace and mercy. 

 We have to remember that our body cannot achieve its distinction as being human if it is not animated by our spiritual soul that in turn should channel the very spirit of God. Without the spirit of God, our body would not be much different from the body of an animal. 

 Our body and soul should be properly united. This is how the Catechism describes this unity: “The unity of soul and body is so profound that one has to consider the soul to be the ‘form’ of the body, i.e., it is because of its spiritual soul that the body made of matter becomes a living, human body; spirit and matter, in man, are not two natures united, but rather their union forms a single nature.” (CCC 365) 

 This clarification is significant for it would show us that somehow the condition of the body is determined to some extent by the condition of the soul, and vice-versa. There is some kind of correlation between the two, though not in a strictly one-to-one mathematical kind of correlation. 

 To put it bluntly, we cannot say that just because one has an ugly face or a frail body, he too has an ugly soul or a weak soul. That is absolutely foul. In the lives of saints and holy men and women, we can see a beautiful soul in ugly faces and sickly bodies. 

 In fact, we have these prophetic words from the Book of Isaiah that described the future Christ: “He had no stately form or majesty to attract us, no beauty that we should desire him.” (53,2) 

 So, we have to be careful with making judgments based on looks alone and other external things. Just the same, we have to say that when the body is sick, especially of the mental, emotional, psychological kind, we cannot say that the illness is due exclusively to some organic malfunction. The condition of the soul has something to do with it also. 

 The main point to learn here is that the unity of our body and soul should have Christ as its living principle.

From knowing to believing

WE somehow can get that idea of how we can shift from simply knowing to what is more important, which is to believe, after considering that gospel episode about Christ meeting two men possessed by devils. (cfr. Mt 8,28-34) The devils, upon meeting Christ, said: “What have we to do with thee, Jesus Son of God? Are thou come hither to torment us before the time?” To be sure, the devils knew who Christ was, and yet they could not bring themselves to believe in him. In fact, all they do is to disobey and go against God. This is where we are reminded that we should not remain only in the level of knowing God. Of course, we have to know God as much as we can. In this regard, we cannot overemphasize the need to study as deeply and thoroughly as possible all that we can know about him. But we have to see to it that we truly believe in God, giving our all to him, and not only our intelligence. While we have to know God as much as we can, we have to see to it that our knowledge filters down to our whole being to such an extent that we truly give our whole selves to him. That’s what believing is. We go from knowing to believing to loving and to serving. When we believe we turn knowledge into life itself. And we also have to consider that in believing, while it depends on our human understanding about God and things in general, it actually depends first of all on that supernatural gift of faith which God himself gives us, especially through the sacraments. We should continually ask for this grace, nourish it by constant acts of faith, and let it bloom into deeds. We have to always remember that given the fact that we are not meant to remain only in the natural level, relying simply on our human powers, but rather are meant to enter and share the supernatural life of God since we are his image and likeness, we have to be clear that we have to be guided by faith rather than simply by our own reasoning and our other human ways of knowing. Faith is God sharing his knowledge with us. It is how we begin to share the life of God. And he gives it to us very willingly. It just depends on us on whether we receive it or not, and to respond to it or not. Faith contains truths that go beyond the natural realities of our life. Thus, it has supernatural truths or mysteries which we have to learn to feel at home with. This means we have to learn not to stick to our natural reasoning alone, but to go beyond it. To be sure, faith does not supplant our reasoning or intelligence. Rather, it makes full use of it, although its scope is far wider and deeper than what our intelligence can fully know and understand. As the Catechism puts it, faith is first of all a gratuitous gift of God, it is grace. But it also requires the correspondence of our intelligence. It is also a human act. It asks us to do our best to understand it as much as we can. It seeks understanding. We have to remember that since the reality that governs us transcends the natural order, our human faculty of intelligence and reasoning just cannot depend on the data provided by our senses and our own understanding of things.