Some of you right now maybe feeling imprisoned due to the quarantine. This brings to mind the story of a certain prisoner. One cold December morning in Russia in 1849, 20 political prisoners were lined up to be shot by a firing squad. Just before the order was given, an officer arrived on the scene with the news that the czar had commuted their death sentence to ten years of hard labor in Siberia. One of the prisoners was a young man named Feodor Dostoevsky.
When Feodor arrived in Siberia, he began to read the New Testament and by the time he had finished, he was a firm believer in Jesus Christ. He wrote to a friend, “No one is more beautiful and more perfect than Christ. If anyone proved to me that Christ was outside the truth, I would prefer to remain outside with Christ than inside with the truth.”
After being released from prison, Feodor began writing novels. Perhaps you have read some of them: The Brothers Karamazov or Crime and Punishment. Success as an author soon went to his head and he began to drink and gamble heavily. Worse yet, he set aside his faith in Christ.
Shortly before he died however, Dostoevsky returned to the faith. His atheistic friends ridiculed him, regarding his return to the faith as a sick act of a sick man. In response, he wrote in his diary. “These fools could not even conceive so strong a denial of God as the one to which I gave expression. It is not like a child that I believe in Christ and confess him. My hosanna has come forth from the crucible of doubt.”
Dostoevsky’s story is like that of Thomas. Both men once placed their faith in Jesus Christ. Both men abandoned their faith in Jesus, then both returned to their faith in Christ. We can relate to their stories, especially in this trying time when the trial of this pandemic is compelling some of us to look at our faith in Christ differently. Now when we are being denied the chance to worship at Mass together, some people may be tempted to abandon their faith in the Lord just as Thomas and other disciples did, or if we haven’t abandon him, we aren’t following Jesus as closely as we should.
Anyone who has traveled the road of faith knows that it is not a widely paved highway. Rather, faith is a narrow bumpy dirt road that is paved with three things: loving trust in God, constant struggle, and times of darkness and doubt.
First, faith involves a loving trust in God. Contrary to what some people may argue, faith is not totally intellectual. Belief in God is not a matter of the head; belief in God is a matter of the heart. Faith is accepting the possibility that God loves us unconditionally.
Faith is not something purely intellectual, like seeing the solution to a math problem. Rather, faith is much more personal and profound. Even when the intellect is confused, faith enables us to have trust in God.
One of the earliest bible stories I learned as a kid was the story of Abraham when he was asked to sacrifice his son Isaac. Sacrificing his son made little sense. That meant killing the person through whom God promised him descendants. Had Abraham relied on his own reason, he would have set aside his trust in God but he didn’t. He chose to trust God and as a result, God blessed him richly.
Secondly, faith involves a constant struggle on our part. Again, recall the story of Abraham. When God promised to give Abraham descendants thru his son Isaac, Abraham believed, despite his age. He never doubted, but when God asked him to sacrifice his son, he had good reason then to doubt God. That episode taught Abraham an important truth about faith. Faith involves much more than a one-time decision to believe. Faith involves a series of ongoing decisions to continually believe. This struggle will go on until we actually see God face to face. Let’s not kid ourselves; the devil is always trying to persuade us to renounce our faith.
Third, faith involves times of darkness. By this I mean times when our faith seems to go behind a cloud like a full moon does at times. Granted, there are times when we find it hard to believe, times like now, when the world is besieged by a pandemic that has disrupted our way of life. Our daily routine has been altered. We can’t mingle with friends, shop in our usual stores, attend Mass, gather together and socialize, leaving us wondering if and when life will get back to normal.
Yes, there are times when God tests our faith, just as God tested the faith of Abraham. But God also offers us peace just as he did to the apostles. When times of testing arise, I remember these lines a fugitive from the Nazis wrote on the wall of a basement where he was hiding. “I believe in the sun even when it is not shining. I believe in love even when I do not feel it. I believe in God even when he is silent.”
Thomas’ story is about believing, not doubting. His story is our story. As I said, traveling the road of faith involves three things: having a loving trust in God, constant struggle, and times of darkness. Feodor Dostoevsky experienced them as did Thomas the apostle, who is best remembered for saying, “My Lord and my God!” Thomas came to believe because he could see the risen Lord, but as Jesus said to him, “Blessed are those who have not seen and have believed.”