April 27: The Day of the Lord

St. Thomas was an Apostle, a close and faithful follower of Jesus. He was a believer before he was a doubter and his doubt led him to even deeper belief. In the whole of the New Testament, he is the only person to address Jesus with the words, “My Lord and my God!”

So what happened? What caused St. Thomas to doubt? Was it the painful, inglorious death of Jesus, who had been condemned and crucified as a common criminal? Can we imagine him saying, “It wasn’t supposed to come to this, it wasn’t supposed to end this way?”

When it comes to questions of faith, aren’t there many of us, today, who are very much like St. Thomas? Aren’t there many of us today who have a history of strong faith and belief but who, like St. Thomas, find ourselves saying, for one reason or another, “It wasn’t supposed to come to this… It wasn’t supposed to end this way…?”

As surely as Jesus returned to the upper room to strengthen St. Thomas and the others in faith, so He comes today to our lives – looking for each of us, to strengthen our faith, in order to make it even stronger than it was yesterday.

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For our reflection into the coming week: Pope Francis often told bishops and priests that they should be “shepherds with the smell of their sheep, in the midst of their people – like Jesus, the Good Shepherd....” The rite of Christian burial was celebrated for the Holy Father Saturday morning at St. Peter’s in Rome. Our prayer for the coming days is a simple one:

“Good Shepherd of us all, gently lead Francis, our shepherd into your eternal fold. He comes with our smell, the smell of his sheep, your people, whom he loved with all of his heart. Shepherd him, Lord, beyond all fears, beyond all pain, from death into life forever. Amen.”