OVERCOMING THE WORLD

A REFLECTION FOR LOW SUNDAY

 

The Sunday after Easter is chiefly concerned with the virtue of faith.  We see the story of our Lord’s Resurrection unfold in today’s Gospel, as the Apostle Thomas, not present at one of the first apparitions of Jesus, refuses to believe his brethren when they tell him.  His sad lack of faith is removed once and for all when our blessed Lord appears again among them, and shows the wounds of his Passion to St. Thomas, proving beyond any reasonable doubt that he was the risen Christ.

Rather than reprimand Thomas in front of the other apostles, our Lord is content to remind them all that “Blessed are they who have not seen, and yet believe.”  This is the essence of the virtue of faith, to believe simply because we trust God and that he can neither deceive nor be deceived.  We should not look for signs, miracles, “proof” that there is a God, that he is who he says he is.  We should simply trust our Father in heaven to provide us with what we need when we really need it.  We shouldn’t seek miracles, and yet, in his mercy, he allows super-natural phenomena and visions when he deems it beneficial for us.  But blessed are they who can do without them.

Probably the main aspect of our faith is that we believe that Jesus is the Son of God.  It is what separates Christianity from all other religions.  And in today’s Epistle, St. John the Apostle tells us that it is our belief in the divine nature of Jesus that allows us to overcome the world.  That is no small benefit, if you think about it.  The world is a constant source of tribulation for us, and in so many ways.  We live under a cloud of threats—from foreign adversaries, terrorists, Democrats, modernists, even viruses and vaccines.  It’s enough to make us quake in our shoes as we shift from one panic attack to another thinking about all the ways we’re in trouble.  We can’t possibly overcome all the terrible things menacing us and our families.  In fact we can’t overcome even one of them.  That is, unless we keep the faith.

With the faith, we have the ability to live calmly through whatever the world throws at us, confident in our own Resurrection at the end of our life.

“This is the victory that overcometh the world, even our faith.  Who is he that overcometh the world, but he that believeth that Jesus is the Son of God?”  I wonder if St. John had been thinking about doubting Thomas as he wrote his epistle.  It was a scene he himself had witnessed, after all.  You’ll notice that not only today’s Epistle is written by St. John, but the Gospel also.  He was there.  He had tried in vain to convince St. Thomas that the Lord had risen, and was present again when our Lord returned and offered the physical proof of his Resurrection.  St. John hadn’t needed these proofs, he already believed.  He hadn’t asked for signs, he merely observed the signs sent to others.  But what he tells us in the Gospel should be enough for us, as it was for St. Thomas and the others.  Ironically, it is the very doubts of St. Thomas that ended up reinforcing the faith of St. John and the other apostles.  Now, their joint witnessing to this event should strengthen our own faith also.

But to be honest, comforting though it may be, even the witness of the apostles shouldn’t be necessary to us.  As St. John points out, “If we receive the witness of men, the witness of God is greater.”  Say your Act of Faith every day!