St.Thomas shares his thoughts on the eve of his feast day. (July 3rd) See: John’s Gospel Ch20. v. 24-29
I was not there when the Lord in Risen Glory broke the locked door of the upper Room. Brilliantly alive and carrying joy. Resurrection Joy!
Full of a renewed sense of their call by God my friends loved telling me what I had missed. Had they made it up as a way of dealing with their grief? Mourning takes interesting forms sometimes. They were quite smug though so was it a but of one-upmanship?
Yet I wanted to believe them! It was too good to be true, so I was filled with uncertainty. That is when I doubted what they told me and that moment was to define me not just then but for all time. I gave my name to all doubters. Even those who did not share faith.
I don’t know what made me do it. I really wanted to believe what my friends told me. “Unless I see the marks of the nails in his hands… I will not believe!” My longing was so deep. But with those words, I had missed the chance. My heart was heavy, my soul seemingly cast adrift.
Eight days later we gathered again, to pray; to break bread; to find in each other’s company, a kind of solace.
Then, like a whirlwind of sheer light, HE came again. He looked at me, not with sadness, or anger or in a dismissive way. “Thomas”, he said, “my dear delightful Thomas. Always loyal, always a bit too eager, always sure. Come here.” He beckoned me to his side.
Gently, lovingly, he invited me to inspect his wounds. “Don’t doubt Thomas. Believe!”
My inner spirit burst with joy, my soul reached out to heaven. From the seed-bed of my praying I placed words around a thought I had long been praying silently in my heart. A praying which became so strong because I had wrestled with doubt.
It was a prayer that flowed from the deepest faith possible. “MY LORD AND MY GOD!”
There! I had prayed it! Aloud!
People may still use my doubting to justify their unbelief but I had reached beyond that into the very depth of my soul and I said that word which is all Jesus needs to lift us up into the beauteous light of eternal life. Here, Now and Always! Yes, Lord!
Jesus, our Risen Master, our Lord, Our God held me in his radiant smile and looked around at all of us gathered there. “I am indeed your Lord. I am indeed your God, but never forget to tell people what I tell you now, I love you. I am your most loving friend!
I trace the Rainbow through the rain (George Matheson) photo taken by Gill Henwood of a rainbow archingover the Lakeland fells – a sign of God’s Glory.
My Lord & My God
Much prayer is often confined to asking God for things or seeking to change his mind about things – this of course assumes that we actually know God’s mind.
Louis Evely in his wonderfully challenging book, Teach us how to pray, says that too often people march into church, notify God what they want and leave without bothering to listen to him; without consulting him or taking him into account. They leave without giving God time to act in the way he needs to act which may be to answer our prayer by changing us who pray. Praying for others and casting our anxiety about people onto God is not a bad thing. It is a very good thing but it isn’t the heart of prayer. My understanding is that to travel to the heart of prayer we need to develop a personal relationship with God. In this praying we seek to place ourselves before God in quietness as we travel into a still centre of our very being where we find God waiting to meet and greet us. It is prayer which develops into a sense of God’s nearness as well as otherness and which finds expression in praise, thanksgiving and love for God Himself.
This kind of prayer is what we find at the centre of today’s Gospel (John 20: 22-29)– the prayer of Thomas, whose feast day we keep today, July 3rd.
My Lord And my God!
This is sheer prayer. It asks for nothing and it gives everything. It is a confession of faith; it is total devotion; it is absolutely God-centred. It also recognizes the Divinity of Jesus – He is our Lord and our God.
My Lord and My God. There’s a wealth of theology in those five words and to pray them and mean what we pray could take a lifetime. It would be a lifetime’s work worth doing for it is a prayer which contains the love, devotion and absolute and pure worship as this prayer does. I do wonder if God prevented Thomas from being with the other disciples on Easter Day just so that he could have this intimate moment with this loyal and utterly devoted disciple. It wasn’t just because Thomas needed the reassurance (which he did), nor that he was a natural sceptic. He really, really wanted to believe!
But this incident is bigger than what we see at face value. In the prayer of Thomas we have the picture of where our lives, our witness, our deeds, our words, our very action, and – our souls – are being led – right to the heart of God – and this prayer takes us there and only there.
There is nothing about us or our concerns in this prayer. It is totally centred on God. There are no superfluous babblings here. No manipulation. No bargaining or pleading – if you do this God, I’ll do that. Just simply and profoundly, My Lord and My God! Blessed Thomas, so-called doubter, shows us the way of sheer faith. However we have to make time for God if we are to become close and in the kind of loving, self-giving relationship whereby our hearts and not just our mouths proclaim the prayer of Thomas.
Last month, my Soul Friend, Sister Rosemary of the Sisters of the Love of God, gave me some advice. It was in response to a question she posed about when I just sat down to be still with God. Because she knows that I am a keen gardener, she suggested that I sit quietly in the garden. I was to engage in a sitting which had no agenda save being in God’s Presence.
On one hand, a Garden is quite a good place for quiet contemplation and stillness though, if you are a keen gardener, it may be a distraction. I was reading in the current Royal Horticultural Society Garden Magazine an article by Rachel de Thame, one of the regular contributors. She was writing about time spent just being in the garden She confessed to finding it “impossible to just sit in my garden.” For her, as for many active gardeners, it is a place to be doing – “and the doing is what we enjoy most.” She came to the conclusion that real gardeners simply couldn’t just sit without jumping up immediately to do things. So she decided to find a better balance between “activity and admiration.” She perches on some stone steps which aren’t too comfortable that she might be tempted to linger. Short pauses, she says are just perfect. “for a short time, resting and looking is lovely.” But spotting a stray tendril, she’s off!
I know what that feels like, so on Sister Rosemary’s advice, I have been trying hard to just sit and contemplate the plants and flowers, resisting the temptation to do anything. It is starting to work, though the physical stray tendrils are so often replaced with inner ones as the mind tries to tidy up my life. It’s all too easy to concentrate on oneself and other preoccupations. Becoming still can be hard. I find having a notebook handy. When I realize that I have forgotten to buy the bread or phone a friend, I write it down. I can then forget it for this short time.
Repeating slowly the short mantra of St Thomas’s prayer helps to keep me focused on God. It’s power lies in this. Other short prayers which are your favourites may work just as well, such as the Jesus Prayer. For me, My Lord and My God, addressed by Thomas to Jesus is a kind of version of that though it is totally concentrated on God and it is enough to bring us into the presence of God. If, that is, we ignore the roses which need dead-heading. That’s what your notebook is for!
Mr G's Ponderings 