Feast of St. Thomas, Apostle
Jesus said to Thomas, “Blessed are those who have not seen and have believed.”
We are blessed because we have been gifted with the blessing of our faith! It is a gift. We did not merit it or make it happen. Whether it was given to us as an infant through the faith of our parents or whether it came later in life in other ways, it remains God’s inscrutable gift.
So we do well to ponder this blessing for our lives.
St. Paul tells us in our reading today, that we are in Christ, “being built together into a dwelling place of God in the Spirit.” We are a temple of God! If we are willing to ponder this bottomless mystery, we will begin to experience a vision, a new way to see everything, both the good and the bad in our lives.
God dwells in us in his Spirit. We exercise our blessedness, and we gain this new vision, by asking the Holy Spirit to help us use it. Prayer is essential. In addition, we can school ourselves to learn to ‘use’ troubling events and thoughts. A spiritual writer, Fr. Lorenzo Scupoli, puts it this way:
If you wish to gain the habit of patience, you should not avoid the people, things and circumstances which particularly try your patience. Meet them with a good will and the resolve to submit to their unpleasant effect on you, but at the same time prepare yourself to suffer them with unshakeable calmness of spirit. I advise you to do the same in relation to the thoughts, which at times invade you and trouble your mind with memories of human injustices and other inappropriate things. Do not stifle them or drive them away, but let them leave you of their own accord, not through your opposition, but through the patience with which you endure them.
O Holy Spirit, I work in me “unshakeable calmness of spirit,” so that I know my blessedness.
Reflection by Fr. Xavier Nacke, OSB
Posted in Articles for Ordinary Time, Daily Reflections