Homily for Easter 3 - Not Seeing Is Believing

 

Homily for Easter 3

April 14, 2024

Not Seeing Is Believing

 

            Once when I was taking a final exam in college, I was shocked to see a huge spider climb up right next to my hand. I screamed, leapt up from my chair, and threw my pen across the room. Imagine my chagrin when I realized that what I thought was a spider was just the shadow that my pen and fingers were making on the paper! Our senses can sometimes be wrong!

            Generally, we get to know the world through our five senses, and they’re usually pretty reliable. But it would be an error to believe that the only way to know the world is through our five senses.

            For example, I have never seen germs, or Saturn’s rings, or Julius Caesar. But I believe people who have seen these things, and who told me about them. Every day, we believe many things that we have not independently verified.

            So we believe in the Resurrection of Jesus Christ, not because we have seen it, but because the Apostles did see the Risen Flesh of Jesus. They saw Him eat fish, touched His wounds, and heard Him speak to them. And they were so confident that they actually saw Him and not an illusion that every single one of the Apostles was willing to die, professing that Jesus Christ is alive.

            Our faith is not based upon our five senses or us “feeling” Jesus’ presence, but upon the testimony of those who have experienced Him. This testimony has been written in the Scriptures – this is why, when Jesus rose, He explained “everything that referred to Him in Moses and the Prophets” – because the Scripture is the written testimony of people who have personally encountered the Lord or been inspired by His Holy Spirit. And Christ did not leave us only with the Scriptures, but left us a living interpreter of the Scriptures – the Church.

            Thus, it is far more important to base our faith on Scriptures and the unchanging teachings of the Church than to base it on our feelings or our senses. What does this mean for us?

            I speak with many people who tell me, “I just don’t feel God in prayer” or “I feel disconnected from God”. Perhaps you’ve had that experience. But our faith is not based upon what we “feel” in prayer. Many of the great saints felt very disconnected from God. For example, St. Therese of Lisieux said, “I remember that parents love their children as much when they are asleep as awake, so when my soul seems asleep, I trust that the Lord knows my weakness.” Another saint, St. Mary Rosello, was plagued with fears that she was damned to Hell, but she knew that these fears were not based in the truth. She persevered with the motto, “Cling to Jesus. There is God, the soul, and eternity – the rest is nothing.”

            So if you feel disconnected from God or you don’t feel God’s presence at all – a spiritual state known as desolation – do not give up! Faith and love are NOT feelings at all.

            Rather, faith is a firm conviction that what God has revealed in the Bible and the Church are true, and love is a choice to live for God. Our second reading teaches us that “to love God is to keep His commandments.” So whether or not we “feel” God’s presence, we know that we love Him because we make the choice to obey Him, develop a serious prayer life, read Scripture, and live for Him.

            Conversely, faith and love that is based on feelings is very transient. What good is it to “feel” connected to God if we choose to disobey His commandments? The person who skips Mass for a sports game, or live with someone outside of a Sacramental marriage, or refuses to forgive someone and thinks that they love God are fooling themselves. Love is proven in deeds and in obedience, not in ambiguous feelings of “connection” to God.

            The other important takeaway from faith not being based on feelings or senses is that there is so much more to our faith than meets the eyes. Like an iceberg where only ten percent of it is visible, most of what is really, truly going on in our Catholic Faith is beyond our ability to sense. For example, when a child is baptized, all we see and feel is water poured over our head. But in reality, that soul is being filled with the radiant divine life of God and adopted as His son or daughter. This past week, seventy of our eighth-graders received the Sacrament of Confirmation – to our five senses, we may have seen the chrism oil and smelled its pungent odor, but the unseen reality is that the souls of these seventy kids have changed, so that they are more conformed to Christ and entrusted with His mission to bring the world to salvation. We cannot see the soul, but our desires for God, our ability to appreciate beauty, our longing for Heaven is evidence that we truly have one. We cannot see Jesus Christ truly present in the Eucharist, but He told us that He is there, and as Jesus is Truth Himself, He cannot lie.

            At times, we must use our imagination to picture the unseen realities of our faith. Consider the Mass, for example. Listen to the words of St. John Chrysostom: “The angels surround the priest, the whole sanctuary and the space before the altar is filled with the heavenly Powers come to honor Him who is present upon the altar. Think now of what kind of choir you are going to enter. Although vested with a body, you have been judged worthy to join the Powers of heaven in singing the praises of Him who is Lord of all. Behold the royal table. The angels serve at it. The Lord Himself is present.” We do not see the tens of thousands of angels that surround this place; we do not see our Blessed Mother worshipping Her Son; we do not see the Sacrifice of the Cross being made present again in an unbloody manner, as Christ offers Himself once again to the Father for our salvation. We do not see it – but we believe it to be true, for this is what our Scriptures tell us and Christ’s Church teaches us. So do not allow yourself to be dependent upon your senses or your feelings – because Truth is firmer when it is based upon the testimony of those who have encountered the Risen Christ and wrote about it, rather than our senses and feelings.

            Because this is difficult, however, we have sacramentals to help us. It’s hard to believe in that which we cannot see. Hence, we have beautiful angels in our stained-glass windows to help remind us of what is truly present, yet invisible, in church every time we attend Mass. We have crucifixes in our home to remind us of the historical event of the Crucifixion, which has such an invisible but real effect of saving us from our sins. We light candles and use incense and dip our fingers in holy water to make clear to our senses that we are walking into the House of God, Whom we love and worship. These help direct our senses to that which is beyond our senses to the invisible realities that occur here.

            My friends, we get to know the physical world through our five senses. But we get to know the invisible world through what God has revealed to men and women through the Bible and the Holy-Spirit-inspired teachings of His Church. And that which we do not see is far more real than that which we see and touch.