HOMILIES PREACHED BY FATHER ALTIER ON THE FEAST OF SAINT THOMAS THE APOSTLE

As we celebrate today this feast of Saint Thomas, we tend to equate Thomas with a doubter. We think of Thomas often in a negative way. Yet, we can think about how many people throughout history have been positively influenced by Saint Thomas because of this particular story. He was able to say, "My Lord and my God," when he saw Jesus. Many have been able to say the exact same thing. The reason why they can say it is because Thomas doubted and Saint John wrote that story down for us so we can see that it was not some fairy tale the disciples made up saying, "Let us start this little myth and see if we can fool some people by telling them that Jesus rose from the dead." Rather, it was real.

It was so real that it did not make sense. When Thomas did not see it himself, even though all the other disciples were telling him, he would not believe.

Tuesday July 3, 2001

Thirteenth Week in Ordinary Time

Reading (Ephesians 2:19-22)

Gospel (St. John 20:24-29)

When we think about that, we can say, "Well, didn't Jesus tell him he was going to rise from the dead? Didn't they have this idea?" Of course, we also know from the Scriptures that they did not understand what it meant to "rise from the dead." But also what we have to see in this and apply to ourselves is that it is precisely the people who struggle the most who are going to make the greatest saints. When you deal with the spiritual life, we will be on the opposite end if we do the opposite of what we are doing now. In other words, if we are just sort of blasé and mediocre in the spiritual life, we really do not care a lot, and then we have a conversion, we will just be lukewarm Catholics. But if we really struggle and we do not really believe and then we have a conversion, we are going to go the other way.

The same is true on the other side. If the holiest people in the world would decide that they did not want to serve God anymore they would become the worst sinners the world has ever known. So when you see Saint Thomas who is adamant in his unbelief, it means that when he reached that conversion point, he became adamant in his belief. So adamant, in fact, that he would travel all over the place and finally suffer a martyr's death, being thrust through from behind with a spear in India, where he met his death.

We can look at Thomas and his unbelief and apply this to ourselves. When we can say, "My Lord and my God," and we have that faith, then we can see what Saint Paul is talking about in the first reading. We are strangers and aliens no longer, but rather we are fellow citizens and members of the household of God because of the faith that we have in Christ. But we also need to look at ourselves and ask ourselves very seriously, "Am I a lukewarm type? Am I going through the motions and living it out but not really zealous for the Lord? Or am I going to be the type that, once I really embrace this, there is not going to be any stopping me? If I am going to consider myself a fellow citizen and a member of the household of God, am I living that? Am I telling others about it? Am I going out to the world and telling the Good News? Or am I hiding it, pulled back, and fearfully saying, "Yes, I believe," but not being confident in that belief, not being zealous in that belief?"

The Lord wants us to be saints and He wants us to be zealous in our belief. That means to live the faith that we profess. It does not mean we have to go and set up a soapbox on the street corner and preach, but it means we have to live it. It means that we cannot back down when others do not live it because we want to fit in with others or because it is too difficult for us. If, like Thomas, we come to that point of belief and we say, "Yes, I believe. My Lord and my God," then if He is Lord, He is Master. We should never ever be embarrassed of Our Lord and Master. We should never be embarrassed of our God. If we are embarrassed by Jesus Christ, then we need to look very seriously at ourselves and ask, "What is wrong with me? Why am I embarrassed of the One whom I proclaim to be my Lord and my God? If I am a member of this family, then I need to proclaim it. I should never be embarrassed of the Lord, but rather go out to the whole world and tell the Good News."

Note: Father Altier does not write his homilies in advance, but relies solely upon the inspiration of the Holy Spirit.

This text was transcribed from the audio recording with minimal editing.

Wednesday July 3, 2002

Thirteenth Week in Ordinary Time

Reading (Ephesians 2:19-22)

Gospel (St. John 20:24-29)

As we celebrate this feast of Saint Thomas the Apostle, we need to think about the words of Saint Paul when he says, "You are members of the household of God, built upon the foundation of the apostles and the prophets." Now, here we have an apostle who is denying the Resurrection of the Lord: "I will not believe it. Until I can put my finger in the nail marks and put my hand in His side, I'm not going to believe it." It is not that we are built upon his doubt, but it is the act of faith when he was able to look at Our Lord and say, "My Lord and my God." When we look at the other apostles we are going to see their weaknesses very clearly as well. Then all we need to do is look back at ourselves and realize that we are no different.

But how much Thomas has done for probably millions and millions of people over the centuries who have read this story and have been able, then, to look at Our Lord in the Eucharist and to struggle with their doubts of whether He is really there. "It only looks like a piece of bread. Unless I see something, I'm not going to believe. Unless I can feel something inside when I receive Holy Communion, I'm not going to believe." And as they struggle with it and Our Lord gives to them the grace, not to see, not to feel, but to believe because it is based on His Word, they can look at the Blessed Sacrament and say, 'My Lord and my God,' just as Thomas did.

Then we realize we truly are built upon the foundation of the apostles and the prophets. We are no different than they are. How many people will be able to look at Peter walking on the waves and sinking and say, "I'm just like that"? How many people can look at what Saint Paul did and say, "I'm just like that"? How many can look at Simon the Zealot, who wanted to charge off and do all these extraordinary things and take the world by force, and say, "We're just like that"? We are just like all the apostles. We are weak human beings like James and John, who want to call fire down from the sky and destroy the people when it does not go our way. And we are all like Thomas at one time or another - or, for many of us, time after time after time - we doubt and we struggle with the faith. Yet we can look at him and we can have great hope because Thomas, after this event, was willing to go out to the furthest corners of the known world at that point and brought himself to India to preach the Gospel of Jesus Christ. He was willing to die a martyr for the faith in the Person and the Resurrection that he had doubted and even denied.

So too, for ourselves, when we look at our own struggles and our own weaknesses, and as we can work with those and pray our way through it and trust in the grace of the Lord, we too are going to be able to use those very things that were the stumbling blocks in our lives, the very things that were the greatest weaknesses for us. Those will become the very things that will propel us into great sanctity. They will become the very things that we will be able to preach to all the world. So here we have Thomas, who denied the Resurrection, and went out and preached the Resurrection to countless people and brought about their conversion to the Lord on the very point that he had doubted. And so it will be for each one of us: The very things that were often the biggest struggle for us, they become the very means of the greatest conversion within our lives. When we can finally accept that, it becomes the very point that is the stronghold for us.

If there are any struggles, if there are any doubts in our mind, if there are any difficulties as you think about all the teachings of the Church, the thing is not to get worried, but to pray and to trust and to look at Thomas and to ask for his prayers so that like him you will be able to believe, not because you have seen but because it is the teaching of Jesus Christ. Our Lord says, "Blessed are those who have not seen and have believed." That is what faith is all about, not seeing, not being able to experience anything extraordinary, but rather, accepting blindly in the darkness and to be able to say "yes" even without seeing. The Lord pronounces those people blessed.

In the midst of our doubts, we must trust that God will use those doubts to bring about great good. For our part, it is to continue to pray, to continue to trust, and just wait, because when the Lord's grace descends upon us we are going to be filled with a faith that is going to be firm and solid, truly built on bedrock, on the rock which is Peter, the rock of the apostles and the prophets, with Christ Jesus Himself as the cornerstone and the capstone. We become members of that living temple of the Lord, members of the very household of God, only when we have that faith - not a superficial faith but a deep and profound faith - to say absolutely and unswervingly "yes" to Jesus Christ, even to the point of death.

*This text was transcribed from the audio recording with minimal editing.

Thursday July 3, 2003

St. Thomas the Apostle

Reading (Ephesians 2:19-22)

Gospel (St. John 20:24-29)

In the first reading from Saint Paul’s Letter to the Ephesians, he tells us that we are fellow citizens with the holy ones and members of the household of God. And that household, he tells us, is built on the foundation of the apostles and the prophets. Now that means we are built on the foundation of all of the apostles. So we have the faith of someone like Saint John, for instance, who was the beloved disciple of the Lord and willing to stand at the foot of the Cross and willing to be killed with Christ if that is what it required. We are founded on Saint Peter, whose faith waffled every once in a while and who did some impetuous things; yet when push came to shove he was going to be faithful to the Lord.

We are also, of course, built on the foundation of Saint Thomas, whose faith and example has inspired perhaps more people than most of the other apostles because Thomas is perhaps the one we are most often like, that is, we doubt, we question, we wonder. We cannot really accept this because we cannot see it. “Unless I put my hands into the nailmarks, unless I put my finger into his hands, I will not believe.” We look at the Blessed Sacrament and we do not see Jesus there. We do not feel Him; we do not taste Him. And so we wonder and we doubt and we question. And the Lord in so many ways proves over and over again to us His true presence in the Blessed Sacrament. He proves to us the reality of His presence in His Church, because the Church is Jesus Christ. But because it is difficult for us to see, we do not believe. And even though we have 2,000 years’ of saints who have all told us pretty much the same thing, we still look at it and say, “But I haven’t seen it personally. I haven’t personally experienced these things so I can’t believe.”

So we test the Lord; we doubt; we question; we wonder. And the Lord in His mercy, age after age and generation after generation, continues in His kindness to demonstrate the reality of the things that He taught and the Person Who He is. He is God. Even though He has hidden Himself in such a sublime way in the Blessed Sacrament, even though He seems to have pulled way back away from us – and especially when we look around the world today and we see evil nearing its completion and we wonder how, if God really exists, He could allow something as hideous as all the things going on in the world today –we wonder and we doubt. We are no different than Saint Thomas.

But remember, in Saint John’s Gospel there are only two apostles that he explains to us who they are: Saint John, whom he calls “the Beloved Disciple”; and Saint Thomas, whom he calls “Didymus” or “the Twin”. The reason Saint John makes those distinctions is because you are the beloved disciple but you are also the twin. Just like Saint Thomas, you are going to question and wonder and doubt at times, and you will find yourself in the personality of Saint Thomas. But Saint John also goes out of his way to give us the great hope that we also are the beloved disciple, the one whom Jesus loves, and the one whom He favors in so many ways.

One could look and wonder why Saint Thomas was not present or why Jesus did not appear when all of the disciples were present in the Upper Room. But all of us need to be so grateful that Saint Thomas was not there because I think all of us would have to admit that his questions and doubts and finally his faith and the comment of Jesus – “Blessed are those who have not seen and believed” – has probably inspired countless billions of Christians over the years, over the centuries, so that they would be able to believe without seeing, experiencing the love of Jesus in many ways but yet not having absolute proof because there never will be absolute proof in this life. It is a question of faith, and we need to be able to look with Saint Thomas, not with the eyes of the body but with the eyes of the soul, and see Jesus Christ truly present in His Church, in the Blessed Sacrament, and be able to acknowledge with Saint Thomas Who He is as we cry out with hearts filled with faith, “My Lord and My God!”

*This text was transcribed from the audio recording with minimal editing.

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