During last Lent two groups of people were gathering once a week at St Peter’s and St Mary’s for a series of meetings pretentiously called biblical studies. Week by week, meeting by meeting I tried to deprive the participants of their faith; in this regard I was apparently unsuccessful. I missed ten football matches of the Champions League as they were broadcast at the same time as the meetings, and I gained nothing.
The story of Thomas the Apostle, the one waiting a whole week to meet the Risen Lord is so well known that his approach to the resurrection has become a proverb. In some ways his doubtful statement might be adapted by most atheists as their motto. The common and well-established perception of Thomas has rather a negative hint as the one stubbornly refusing to believe. I think it’s a completely undeserved opinion. I’d say he is a patron saint of the modern Christian, or even broadly speaking, all modern believers.
Thomas refuses to accept blindly everything told him by the other Apostles about the resurrection of Christ. I believe he has good grounds to be sceptical. He spent a lot of time with them while all of them were following Jesus. Regardless of our romantic and idealistic vision of that community they were as ordinary people as we are. Each one of them was unique – not necessarily in an interesting and admiring way; they had their own expectations, plans and goals. Rivalry, tensions and selfishness were rather standard features of each. Thomas’ experience of that time spent together has made him rather sceptical about his friends’ abilities.
It’s easy to despise or to mock someone’s doubts concerning faith. It’s easy to label other people as unfaithful or unbelievers just because they don’t share blindly our own beliefs. I’d say that doubts and questions about my faith are its essence and its fundamental requirement. My understanding of faith can mature along with my personal development only when I look for answers and explanations. Sometimes I meet grownups whose practice of faith stopped at the level of their first communion.
Modern atheism is a very loud, but pretty marginal factor of the crisis of faith. In the last 50 years the world has drastically changed. In too many instances the Church as a whole and many individuals more often have reacted defiantly to the changing culture rather than trying for dialogue. Uneasy questions and challenges addressed to the Church and its teachings have been perceived as direct attacks, undermining its position. As a consequence Christianity is being perceived by its opponents as old-fashioned, contemporarily inadequate and a completely redundant aspect of modern life; at the same time Christians barricade their besieged strongholds, or desperately conform to the world in the chase for its acceptance at the cost of their spiritual and moral choices. Both approaches are wrong.
Christianity still has a lot to offer to modern people; our spiritual needs have not changed much. While preserving timeless values of our faith, we have to learn new language, new ways of passing them to new generations. But to be able to do it, we have to understand our faith better; we have to think about it not as a set of rigid rules, duties and obligations, but as a way of life in and within the modern world as part of it. Saint Thomas, patron saint of difficult questions and seeking deep answers – pray for us.