Second Sunday of Easter 2007

With his demand for scientific, verifiable, hands-on evidence of Jesus’ Resurrection – unless I can see the holes that the nails made and can put my finger into the holes they made – the Thomas we meet in today’s Gospel is every inch the modern man. In his 21st century form he is a product of what historians call The Enlightenment, and unless we can begin to understand what that means we will never appreciate the nature of the challenge facing people of faith in the world today. Last Tuesday I gave a short retreat to the students in Scotus College, the national seminary, and at the end of it one of the students, Philip Kitchen, gave me a book by Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canturbury, entitled Why Study the Past? And his answer, not suroprisingly, is that, unless we do so, we will never understand the present, something that concerns many of us today as young people study less and less history at school. So what is The Enlightenment. what does it have to do with Thomas and how does knowing the answer to these two questions help us today?

Well, The Enlightenment, is an intellectual movement of the late 17th and 18th centuries which emphasized reason over and against what its exponents saw, not unreasonably, as the irrationality and superstition of previous ages. It was part of the new scientific revolution going on at the time and, with its emphasis on reason, one of the things it did was bring many thinking individuals into conflict with the traditional religious ideas which had dominated Europe for centuries. It was heavily influenced by people like Descartes of I think therefore I am fame and Sir Isaac Newton on whose head the apple had fallen, one of its main exponents being the well known Scotsman, Adam Smith, along with people like Voltaire, Immanuel Kant and Jean Jacques Rousseau. And like all philosophers, their thinking has deeply influenced us without our realising it. My friend Eddie, for example will often say to me ‘There’s a scientific explanation for everything, Squire,’ making him, whether he realises it or not, the classic enlightenment man.

At the time, of course, many of the philosophers concerned were religious people, but gradually, as time passed, the new science came more and more into conflict with the Churches. Largely, this was because people in the Churches did what people in Churches always seem to do. They resisted the new ideas, thinking they were dangerous and would undermine the faith of ordinary people. There was, in fact, no need to do this. The very opposite was the case, the classic example being the reaction of some Church-going people later to the discoveries of Darwin. What Darwin and others were saying was not in conflict with faith - only with a limited and very often false understanding of it - but those who could see this were not listened to and the result in our day has been the perceived but actually non-existant conflict between science and faith which has led to mass-atheism. Like Thomas, millions today demand proof. Unless they can see the holes that the nails made and can put their fingers into the hole, then they refuse to believe. They see faith as a continuation of the irrationality and superstition which preceded the Enlightenment and it is our job to engage with them and help them move beyond this limited understanding of history into yet another new age, the Age of Mysticism.

Several times over Lent and Easter I quoted the Irish Jesuit, William Johnston, a man who has spent many years working in Japan exploring the links between the spiritualities of East and West. And speaking of the Church today, he says: ‘We must give the people mysticism or die,’ words which sum up my own deepest conviction after nearly forty years as a priest. Faced with The Enlightenment, the Churches failed the men and women of that time. We must not do the same now. Science and reason along with the technology they have given birth to are God’s gifts and they have brought great benefits to humanity. But they have brought problems, too; like global warming and the threat of nuclear destruction. And so we need a new way of thinking, a new form of knowledge which enables us to move beyond the limits and shortcomings of this latest in a long line of Ages. That new way is mature, adult faith and the way to reach is through mysticism. And on a day when we are quoting philosophers I’ll quote one more. He is the french mathematician, physicist and philosopher Blaise Pascal who, as I have mentioned many times before, wrote about faith as the highest form of knowledge available to humanity. Reason can go so far. It has achieved much and will continue to do so, but, since it is our reasoning and we are, by nature, limited, the fullness of truth will always be beyond it. Only through faith, the highest form of knowledge, can we leap beyond the limits of our own understanding and begin to see truths otherwise unknowable by us. And we do this through mysticism which is nothing more complicated than an openness to the truth that God reveals to us directly, not through our reason, but through moments of clarity and insight either in prayer or. as is more often the case, at times when we least expect it in daily life.

When this happens, it is to know God rather have have just heard about him. It is a deep interior knowledge which, unlike the knowledge that comes through reasoning, cannot be communicated directly to others. Each of us has to go to the well of our own life-experience and look for it and wait for it there. And the person who has done so, who knows God through personal experience and has met the Risen Jesus in the midst of daily life, in good times and in bad, no longer has any need to see the holes that the nails made. The knowledge they have now is of a much deeper kind than that. It lives, not in our heads, but in a much much deeper part of ourselves. It belongs to that place where our very deepest convictions lie, the place where we know things to be true in a way that goes far beyond reason, and I invite each one of you to visit that place this weekend and see what answer you find there to the question facing us this morning. Is Jesus risen or not? ……. And if your answer is ‘yes,’ then it is not flesh and blood that has revealed this to you but your Father in heaven.

BIDDING PRAYERS

Our world today is filled with signs that the men and women of our time are longing for the dawn of a new age. We can see that something is wrong with the world, that things need to change, and yet we either don’t know what to do about it or are unwilling to face the sacrifices that would be involved. And so we pray for the grace we need to be open to all that God is struggling to do in the world at this difficult moment in its history……...Lord hear us

Reason and intelligence are God’s great gifts to humanity, signs that we are indeed created in his own image and likeness. But we are also free and, as a result, have not always used well the things we have made. We are a very advanced society technologically and yet, like children playing with dangerous toys, we are in danger of destroying ourselves. And so we pray for the world of our time that it will have the maturity it needs to live with the fruits of its own inventiveness…………Lord hear us

As we stand on the threshold of a new age of mysticism, God is at work far beyond the limits of the traditional churches. We can discern his hand at work in what we call nowadays The New Age Movement, and many of us grew up in a pop culture which held out the promise of the Age of Aquarius, a time when all things would come together in harmony and peace. Many of these things are pagan in their origin, but we can discern the movement of God’s Spirit even there and pray that those involved will come to see that Jesus is the real answer to these longings…..Lord hear us

The longing for something new is part of our drug problem today. Disillusioned with a world trapped in the limitations of reason, many people experience a sense of despair from which drugs seem to offer an escape. But it is an illusion and the drugs only make things worse, pushing their victims into even more self-destruction. And so we pray for all who are caught in this trap that, with God’s help, they may escape from it…….Lord hear us

Even among Christians today faith in the Resurrection is under threat. Unable to see the holes that the nails made and touch the holes they made, many, like Thomas, doubt, a situation that is often complicated by serious misunderstandings of the what it is Christians actually believe. And so we ask God to lead us into an understanding of the Resurrection fit for our time….Lord hear us

We are all called to be mystics. Mysticism is not something reserved to a few saints living in monasteries and convents. God longs to reveal himself to each one of us in a deep and personal way. And so we pray for the openness we need to make ourselves available to him through prayer and regular reflection on whatever is going on in our lives……………….Lord hear us