Doubting Thomas & Me

Today the Church celebrates the Feast of St. Thomas the Apostle. I've always felt a kinship with Thomas because of his incredulity at the news of Christ's Resurrection, and I went through my own period of intense doubt regarding Christ's claims. I shared my conversion at greater length in the God Who is Love and at the Why I'm Catholic site, but with today's feast, I have to share at least a snippet. (Hard to comprehend that the moment described below happened 29 years ago.)
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...A few days later I passed by the kitchen and spied my dad sitting at the table working on a project. I decided to put him on the hot-seat one more time, "Dad, tell me again why you believe in Jesus." He didn't tell me to have faith, and he didn't reach for the Bible; instead he looked into my eyes and said, "Shane, Jesus loves you so much that He weeps for you. He wants you, but you won't come to Him." And then... 

I saw Him. 

In my mind's eye I saw Jesus sitting, His head pressed into His hands and His shoulders convulsing as He wept for me. 

It happened in an instant, a "flash" in my mind's eye. It wasn't the kind of evidence I had been searching for – objective, verifiable, free from emotion(1) – and yet it was personally undeniable. Over twenty years have passed since that day, and I'm still feeling the reverberations. I didn't know quite how to explain it to others until I came across this description years later from Caryll Houselander, a Catholic mystic: 

What do I mean by saying that I "saw"? Frankly, in the ordinary way I did not see anything at all; at least I did not see...with my eyes. I saw...with my mind...in a way that is unforgettable, though in fact it was something suddenly known, rather than seen. But it was known not as one knows something through learning about it, but simply by seeing it..."alive" and "unforgettable."(2) 

And what did I know in that moment? I knew that Jesus of Nazareth was alive, bodily and spiritually alive, and that He loved me with everything in Him. I knew that He was God the Father's outstretched hand to me, the Truth I had been seeking. I burst into tears right there at the kitchen table – tears of remorse for doubting, tears of gratitude for what I'd been shown. I can't tell you how my dad reacted to my tears or anything else he said to me that afternoon. I know that I really talked to Jesus though - for the first time in a long time. 

In the years since, I've come to feel a kinship with the "doubting" Apostle, Thomas. Appearing to him after the resurrection, Jesus said: "[Thomas] put your finger here, and see my hands; and put out your hand, and place it in my side; do not be faithless, but believing." Thomas answered him, "My Lord and my God!" (John 20:27-28). In the end, I've realized that it wasn't so much me seeking Jesus, as it was His seeking me. I will eternally thank Him for allowing me my "crisis of faith" because it brought me to my senses, woke me to the reality of being loved by the Living God. How about you, are you awake yet? 
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(1) In time, I encountered fantastic, objective reasons to believe in God's existence. I refer you to The God Who is Love: Explaining Christianity From Its Center, Appendix I. Reasons for giving Jesus' claims a fair hearing are explored in Appendix II. 
(2) Found in Patricia Treece's Apparitions of Modern Saints (Ann Arbor, MI: Servant Publications, 2001), p.35.
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If you are more of an audio-visual person, here is a video of my testimony, (I'd advance to 2 minutes.) And wow - look at that awesomely weird expression on my face!

TRINITY Sunday

This is one of my favorite days of the liturgical year – the Feast of the Most Holy Trinity!  I couldn’t resist sharing a short excerpt from The God Who is Love: Explaining Christianity From Its Center Enjoy your Trinity Sunday!

The Triune God [1]

Throughout elementary, and then high school, everything religion teachers and ministers taught me about the Trinity could be summed up in two points: It is a mystery, impossible to completely understand; and the best image for it is the shamrock.

Tragically, a vast number of us never progress further. Why is that a tragedy? Because without the understanding of God as a Trinity of Persons, the heart of Christianity will always be elusive. Everything progresses, everything comes into sharper focus, with the realization that God is interiorly a relationship of unfathomable, reciprocal Love. To arrive at this, however, we will have to get a bit “abstract” first. 

Like Judaism and Islam, Christianity begins with the conviction that God is infinite;[2] His intellect and power are inexhaustible. Saying that such a Being “knows everything in the universe” is a given.  A person of faith can go further and say that God knows all possible worlds – even different realms of creation, such as the angelic. But again, for a Being of infinite intelligence - not that spectacular. To say something truly breath-taking about God’s intelligence, you would have to say…“He knows Himself, His infinite Self.”

Allow that statement to sink in. As persons, you and I have an idea of who we are – a picture in our mind of our appearance, a record of our past, and judgments as to strengths and weaknesses. We can flip on the television and hear what a high priority people place on “finding themselves,” discovering what they want out of life. I am sure you have found through experience, however, that our self-images are often in error.

If we acknowledge that God is perfect though, then the same has to be said for His idea of Himself. It would have to be a perfect reflection – and more: there would be nothing in the Thinker that was not also present in His thought of Himself. All of God’s attributes must be shared in by His idea: His infinite power, intelligence, will, divine life - even Personhood. Now I realize that is a lot to take in; I would recommend rereading the paragraph a few times before continuing. 

Alright, lets go one step farther now. Because God stands outside of space and time, He has no beginning. He did not develop, did not grow; He, and He alone, simply IS. There could never have been a time when He was without this knowledge of Himself. So we have God and this living Thought always dwelling within Him. I suggest taking another pause. 

Now, let me come at this from a different direction, the personalist: from eternity there is one divine Person coming forth from Another. One divine Person, a Son, being generated by Another, His Father. All that the Father is, He gives; all that the Son is He receives. The Son cannot be apart from the Father. The Son is the One Who eternally comes forth from Him. And this is what we find when we turn to the New Testament. There is a slight change in terminology though. When the Son entered the human race, He was not called the Father’s Idea, but His Word - exactly what we call an idea that has entered the world![3]
 

The Father’s sharing of Himself with the Son is mirrored in the Son’s return of love. As perfect Lovers, Each pours Himself out to the Other, holding nothing of Themselves back. Their love shares in Their very being; it is all that They are - infinitely powerful, filled with Their intelligence, will, life. Their Love, precisely because it is Theirs, is divinely alive, is Person – Their Holy Spirit.[4]
 

 “Three Persons in one God,” is the statement traditionally used by Christianity to define “Trinity.” We can see something of this three-in-one when we look at ourselves; for as Judaism first taught, humanity is made in the “image and likeness of God” (Genesis 1:27). Our existence could be said to image the Father; our thought within us, the Son; and our capacity to demonstrate love, proceeding as it does from both our existence and thought, the Spirit. I am an individual being and yet these three aspects coexist in me, flow out of one another, and complete one another. Take any one of these away and I cease to be me. I am but a pale reflection of the Triune God – infinite Existence, Knowledge, and Love intertwined, flowing to and from One Another.  

When the New Testament says, “God is Love,” (1 John 4:8) it is not describing one of His traits, but defining His very Being! The One God is an exchange of Love - The Father and Son giving themselves to Each Other in the Person of the Holy Spirit.

 

God the Creator

This brings us to a very interesting point: if God is so complete, then why did He create other beings? What can an angel or a human give Him that He does not already have, and to an infinite degree? Nothing, absolutely nothing; He could not have created us because of anything we could give Him. The only logical alternative is that He created to give to us, to allow us to share in the Love that He is! That kind of generosity is beyond our human power to express. No wonder we call the Trinity mystery!

Hebrew Scripture begins with God’s act of creation. Pregnant within those first pages is the later recognition of God’s Trinitarian nature: while “the Spirit of God was moving over the face of the waters,” God (the Father) spoke His Word,[5] “Let there be…” (Genesis 1:2-3). But perhaps the most pregnant words in the Old Testament are heard when God crowned His creation with man and woman:“Let us make man in our image, after our likeness”…So God created man in his own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female he created them. And God blessed them, and God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply” (Genesis 1:26-28).

God, Who is a bond of Love, created us to live in His image as a bond of love! Man and woman reflect the very Oneness of God when they “become one flesh” (Gen.2:24). Their Oneness is so real, so complete, that oftentimes after nine months you have to give their love his or her own name![6] Man, woman, and child, living as a family, give us a glimpse of God’s inner life.

There is a second aspect of what it means to be created in God’s “image and likeness.” The phrase carries with it the revelation that we were created as God’s sons and daughters.[7] God’s act of creation is described as forming man from the clay of the earth and “breath[ing] into his nostrils the breath of life,” making man a “living being” (Gen.2:7). 

That “breath of life” is what we today call the soul, spirit, or heart. To bridge the gap between His transcendence and material creation, God created man and woman with an immaterial component. Like all animal life, we are equipped with strong instincts and drives (self-preservation, fight-or-flight, sex).  Unlike the rest of nature, however, we have been given a spiritual soul to integrate these drives and channel them so as to give ourselves in love in imitation of God’s Love. Where does the human soul receive that kind of strength? From God dwelling in it, filling it with His Own divine Life!

The first man and woman were created as God’s son and daughter, and as such bore a special likeness to God the Son. Like Him, we have received all we are from the Father and are blessed with the capacity to give ourselves back to Him. We can allow God to make a gift of Himself to us in the Person of the Spirit (Love), and then cooperate with the Spirit as He moves us in a return of love to the Father and a sharing of that love with our brothers and sisters. Man and woman shared in the Life, the Love, of the Trinity! It was that state that Scripture called Eden, Paradise – and rightly so.

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[1] I owe a tremendous debt of gratitude for the thoughts shared here to Frank Sheed, Theology and Sanity (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1986); Gerald O’Collins, The Tripersonal God (New York: Paulist Press, 1984); and Scott Hahn, The Catholic Gospel (Audiocassette Series by St. Joseph Communications).

[2] To make such a claim for God is not really a matter of faith, but of reason. Appendix I illustrates how a fair-minded, scientific observer can conclude that our universe is the product of design, the work of a Creator. Logically, therefore, the Creator would have to exist both “before” and “outside” of it. His existence, intellect, and power would thus transcend the universe – be infinite.

[3] Consider the following passages: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God” (John 1:1). “In this, the final age, God has spoken to us through his Son…This Son is the reflection of the Father’s glory, the exact representation of the Father’s being” (Hebrews 1:2-3, NIV). In John’s Gospel we hear Jesus say, “He who has seen me has seen the Father…I am in the Father and the Father in me” (14:9-10). “The Son can do nothing by himself; he can do only what he sees his Father doing, because whatever the Father does the Son also does” (John 5:19, NIV).

     This is also what we find in the Nicene Creed, professed by Christians for the past 1600 years: “We believe in one Lord, Jesus Christ, the only Son of God eternally begotten of the Father, God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God, begotten, not made, one in Being with the Father.

[4] In the New Testament the Spirit is spoken of as a distinct Person, but always proceeding from the Father and the Son: “exalted at the right hand of God, and having received from the Father the promise of the Holy Spirit, [Jesus] has poured out this which you see and hear” (Acts 2:33); The Apostle Paul and his companions were “forbidden by the Holy Spirit to speak the word in Asia…they attempted to go into Bithynia, but the Spirit of Jesus did not allow them” (Acts 16:6-7); according to Paul it was God the Holy Spirit Who spoke in the Old Testament’s Psalm 95 , “Therefore, as the Holy Spirit says, ‘Today, when you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts’…” (Epistle to the Hebrews 3:7-8).

     This again, is what we see reflected in Christianity’s Nicene Creed: “We believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the giver of life, who proceeds from the Father and the Son. With the Father and the Son he is worshiped and glorified. He has spoken through the prophets.”

[5]The New Testament will bear witness that Jesus, the Son, was the Word “through Whom [God] made the universe” (Heb.1:2). “In the beginning was the Word…Through him all things were made” (John 1:1,3); “He is the image of the invisible God…For by him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible” (Colossians 1:15-16).

[6] Hahn, Scott. First Comes Love: Finding Your Family in the Church and the Trinity (New York: Doubleday, 2000) p.46.

[7] Genesis makes this clear when, just a few chapters later it tells us, “When God created man, he made him in the likeness of God. Male and female he created them…When Adam had lived a hundred and thirty years, he became the father of a son in his likeness, after his image” (Gen.5:1,3).

Annulment - Answers to a Couple of Miscellaneous Questions

Answers to a couple of questions that came up in connection with my last post:

"Does an annulment say that my first marriage never existed?"  No, a marriage took place - a civil marriage - but not the Sacrament of Marriage. 

"Does an annulment mean that my children are illegitimate?"  Absolutely not.  Again, your children sprang from your marital union; but it wasn't a sacramental, supernatural, marital union.  Even though the marriage ended in divorce, children demonstrate God's power to bring eternal blessings out of our imperfect choices.  He used that imperfect marriage to bring forth new human beings to enrich the world and know and love Him for eternity!

"But didn't Jesus say that people could divorce if one of them had committed adultery?"
Great question.  Let me copy and paste from The God Who is Love to answer this one.
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There are Christian churches that allow divorce and remarriage, citing the parallel passage in Matthew :

And Pharisees came up to him and tested him by asking, “Is it lawful to divorce one’s wife for any cause?…Why then did Moses command one to give a certificate of divorce, and to put her away?”

[Jesus] said to them “For your hardness of heart Moses allowed you to divorce your wives, but from the beginning it was not so. And I say to you: whoever divorces his wife, except for unchastity, and marries another, commits adultery; and he who marries a divorced woman, commits adultery”

The disciples said to him, “If such is the case of a man with his wife, it is not expedient to marry.” But he said to them, “Not all men can receive this precept, but only those to whom it has been given…for there are eunuchs who have made themselves eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven. He who is able to receive this, let him receive it” (Matt.19:3,7-12).

Doesn’t this passage offer an exception to what seemed like the absolute prohibition on divorce in Mark’s Gospel?  Wouldn’t an act of adultery, unchastity in this passage, break the marriage bond? I maintain that it does not – not when analyzed linguistically and contextually. 

The term translated here as “unchastity” is porneia in Greek. At the time of Jesus one usage of the term was in reference to incestuous marriages. While such unions did not occur in Judaism (Leviticus 18:18-29), they did in the surrounding Gentile cultures – the very cultures that the Christian Church was expanding into when Mark and Matthew wrote. With these people’s acceptance of the Gospel would have come the recognition that their “marriages” were not valid before God. Matthew’s “exception” needs to be taken in context too; look at the conclusion the disciples drew from Jesus’ words, “If such is the case of a man with his wife, it is not expedient to marry.” The bond between husband and wife is so unalterable, and marriage therefore requires so much work, that the disciples concluded it was better to just never take the plunge! Jesus reminded them however that it is only by God’s grace, that a husband and wife can live out the marriage covenant. Now what sense would that exchange between the disciples and Jesus make if the marriage could be voided simply by one of the spouses cheating? It wouldn’t.  No, Jesus’ prohibition of divorce and remarriage, recorded in Mark, was an absolute prohibition and our English translations of Matthew faulty.

“Porneia” and this issue of the invalidity of certain marriages does bring up another topic however, what the Catholic Church calls an annulment – the recognition that the Sacrament of Marriage never took place. Taking its cue from Jesus, the Church distinguishes between sacramental and legal marriages. Two Christians could profess vows to one another, but if one of them interiorly had no intention of remaining faithful or of being open to children, then God did not unite the two  If one of the spouses were emotionally or physically coerced into marriage the same would be true. Without an investigation into the particulars, the Catholic Church operates under the assumption that a marriage between baptized Christians, Catholic or not, is sacramental. Before someone could “remarry” in the Catholic Church he/she would have to go through a process of showing why the first marriage was not a sacrament. The Church would then issue an annulment, a statement that the first marriage may have been binding legally, but not sacramentally.

 

Jesus' Baptism

Alright, I'm recycling material here; but as I said, I love thinking about the mysteries surrounding Jesus' baptism. Here's a link to an excerpt from Chapter 3 of The God Who is Love: Explaining Christianity From Its Center; just jump ahead to pages three and four.

New Website

Just wanted to put it out there that I'm in the process of creating a new website, Explaining Christianity.com. In a few months time my first book, The God Who is Love: Explaining Christianity From Its Center, will be published; and this is the site that will allow people to look at excerpts, read endorsements, and even download a free copy. The book will be offered in paperback through Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Borders, Books-A-Million, etc.; but I don't want price to stand in anyone's way. The site isn't ready to allow downloads yet, but please check out its layout and let me know what you think. And hey - MERRY CHRISTMAS!