3 July 2024 - Homily for Feast of St Thomas the Apostle - Ephesians 2:19-22 - John 20:24-29

Paul tells us today in the letter to the Ephesians that we are no longer strangers or sojourners, but rather citizens, holy ones, members of God’s family. We all want a sense of belonging in life, whether it be in our family, our school, our work, our community.  Hopefully we feel that sense of belonging as followers of Jesus, a belonging that fills some of the emptiness that exist in our lives. 

Thomas wanted proof in order to believe.  Yet, sometimes we don’t get the tangible proof we want. Instead, we receive different signs and graces from God. Sometimes they are not the signs or the proof that we asking for, but that is what God gives us on our journey. Tradition has it that Thomas, the one who is known as the doubter, went to India to bring the Good News of the Lord to the people there. We have many priests from India working as missionaries here in our Diocese of Jackson, part of the tradition that Thomas brought to that country.  

We observed Religious Freedom Week here in the United States from June 22 to June 29. Unfortunately, here in our own country, we often see a government and a society that is becoming hostile to the message of Christ and to the way we are called to live out our faith. During the pandemic, we saw people trying to tear down Catholic statues without them really knowing much about those saints.  We had a congresswoman call Father Damien a symbol of white supremacy, even though he served the lepers of Hawaii in great simplicity and poverty and died a leper himself. As Christ’s disciples, we receive a mandate: "Go out to all the world and tell the Good News" as it says in the psalm. Proclaiming that Good News is not easy, especially in our modern world. But that is what we are called to do. That is what St Thomas the Apostle did. 

“Blessed are those who have not seen and who believe.” We hear this statement made in our Gospel today in conjunction with Thomas. May we thank God for the grace to believe, even in the midst of the challenges and struggles that we go through in life.