Unless I see the mark of the nails in His hands and put my finger into the nail marks and put my hand into His side, I will not believe.
These are the words of St. Thomas when his fellow disciples told him of the Resurrection. It shows that Thomas’ faith was conditional. It was based on his experiences and conditions. He would believe if only he sees, touches, and feels the signs of Resurrection.
The risen Christ then appeared to the group a second time just to invite Thomas to have an unconditional faith in Him; “Blessed are those who have not seen and have believed.” The truly blessed are those who believe in God in all the conditions and experiences of their lives.
How can we too believe in God when our experiences in life make us question His presence, love, power, and wisdom in our lives? How can we believe in an invisible God when our prayers are not answered and evil and sin seem more visible and prevailing around us? How can we believe in God when our lives are out of control and our future seems bleak with sickness, worries, trials, wars, etc.? Can we still believe in God when evil persists and failure and woe seem imminent?
We can only have an unconditional faith in God when we believe in His merciful love for us. The mercy of God is much more than God forgiving us our sins and giving us a new beginning. Divine mercy is God making Himself present in all our conditions and experiences to bring a greater good out of evil and to offer us gifts that we do not deserve or merit.
The greatest act of the divine mercy is God bringing to us unmeritable goods from the evil, unjust, and brutal death of His Son on the cross. Jesus, the innocent Son of God, died for our sins on the cross so that we can have unhindered access to the amazing gifts that we just cannot merit. It is the essence of divine mercy to labor in all things so that “[in] everything God works for good with those who love Him” (Rom. 8:28).
St. Peter reminds us of the power of believing in a merciful God, writing, “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who in His great mercy gave us a new birth to a living hope through the Resurrection, to an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading” (1 Pet. 1:3-4). The message is clear: if God can bring about such spiritual goods from the death of His Son on the cross, there is no human experience or condition that God cannot use to bring good and communicate to us His gifts, if only we believe and trust in His merciful love.
What are some of those good things that our merciful God can bring out of our conditions and experiences in life? He can bring us peace in our fears and infidelities, as He did with the disciples after His Resurrection: “Peace be with you.” He can bring us the power of the Spirit when we feel overwhelmed by our sins and are giving in to our hurts and discouragement: “Receive the Holy Spirit. Whose sins you forgive are forgiven them, and whose sins you retain are retained.” He can give us a sense of mission as God’s beloved children even in our past failures: “Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you” (Jn. 20:19-31).
There are so many other good things that our merciful Lord graciously brings out of our many unfavorable conditions and experiences in life if we believe and trust in His mercy.
- He also brings out a joyous and genuine faith from our trials in this life. “In this you rejoice, although now for a little while you may have to suffer through various trials, so that the genuineness of your faith…may prove to be for praise, glory, and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ.”
- He brings out a persistent love in us even when we cannot see the Lord present in our lives: “Although you have not seen Him you love Him.”
- He brings out an enduring joy even when our faith is being tested, for “Even though you do not see Him now yet believe in Him, you rejoice with an indescribable and glorious joy.”
- He brings out in us a saving faith through our trials: “You attain the goal of your faith, the salvation of your souls” (1 Pet. 1:3-9).
My dear brothers and sisters in Christ, we must never allow our faith in God to depend on our experiences, conditions, or performance in this life. So many of us believe in God only when things are favorable and predictable, only when we feel we are in control of our lives. But when trials, sickness, temptations, hardships, addictions, persecutions, failures, disappointments, rejections, and other unfavorable things occur, we begin to give many conditions for us to believe in Him.
We just cannot experience the power of Divine mercy to bring any good out of our conditions if we remain with a conditional faith. God, in His infinite mercy, wants to enter into all our conditions and experiences and manifest the power of His love to bring greater good from evil.
We can rise above such conditional faith by sharing in that blessed faith of our Mother, the Blessed Virgin Mary. She was once praised for her condition and experience as Jesus’ mother when someone said to Jesus, “Blessed is the womb that bore you, and the breasts that you sucked.” Jesus chose to praise Mary instead for her unconditional faith in Him and His words, “Blessed rather are those who hear the word and keep it” (Lk. 11:27).
Mary is the first one to hear and respond to Jesus’ invitation to an unconditional faith in Him and be grounded in His merciful love for her. She believed in Him in the silence of her home in Nazareth as well as in the darkest moments of Calvary. She believed that He would bring life to us through His death and Resurrection as the angel had told her, “He will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of His kingdom, there will be no end” (Lk. 1:33).
Divine Mercy Incarnate, Jesus Christ, is always present to us in each Eucharist. He also wants to be present and active in all our conditions and experiences in life through the Eucharist. He may change our conditions or deliver us from our experiences. He can, and He sometimes does so. That remains His prerogative, and we should never stop begging for this with trust in His merciful love.
But one thing that He will surely do is invite us to that blessedness that comes from an unconditional faith in Him. “Blessed are those who have not seen and have believed.” If we have such a blessed faith in Him and perseveringly trust in His merciful love, He will surely bring greater good out of all our experiences, a good that we cannot merit or deserve.
Glory to Jesus!!! Honor to Mary!!!
Photo by Ivana Cajina on Unsplash
