Father Thomas Welbers' Homily	Jump back to Homily Index
Second Sunday of Easter, April 27, 2003 Acts 4:32-35 1 John 5:1-6 John 20:19-31	Listen to Audio

Well, my mother always did call me “Doubting Thomas”! So I guess this is a fitting Gospel to celebrate my 35th anniversary as a priest.

Actually, it is a good choice, because, like Thomas, for the past thirty-five years, I have been privileged to touch the wounded Christ. In presiding at the celebration of the Eucharist, I serve as God’s instrument to enable you, the people of God, to embrace the cross of Jesus Christ in your communion with the sacrificed body and poured out blood of our Savior. And in presiding within the life and mission of the Catholic Church community, I serve as God’s instrument to enable you, the people of God, to share in the priesthood of Jesus Christ, living with his life, and ministering to one another and to the world in his name.

The dominant theme of John’s Gospel is stated in the last sentence we heard: “ . . . that you may come to believe.” That phrase is repeated over and over again in John’s Gospel, and nearly every event that he narrates shows faith not as something given or acquired, but as a process – “coming to believe” is a process that continues throughout life, and never ends.

This process takes place first of all by the experience of Jesus, not by any intellectual argument or theological reasoning. God’s revelation can only be experienced, and can only be experienced by experiencing Jesus, in his depth and fullness, in his cross and resurrection, in the woundedness and in the joy of his members.

The second stage of the process of “coming to believe” is reflection on the experience. This is where both prayer and theology come in, a pondering in the heart, which enables us to begin to make sense of the experience of Jesus, to integrate it into our lives, to become one with him as the branches of a vine are one with the trunk.

Today is certainly an opportunity for me to reflect more and more deeply on the experience of Jesus in my life, an experience that comes only through you. If in any way I have touched your lives, please know that you have given me an ever-deepening awareness of the power and presence of Jesus, which has deeply touched my life. If in any way, I have clouded the image of Jesus among us by my own hurtful words or actions, I deeply apologize and ask your forgiveness. If we are to believe Jesus, it is in the act of forgiving that we become most like God.

Finally, I ask, particularly in these times characterized by so much that is obviously the work of Satan rather than the work of God, that we not fail to remain joined and deeply committed in our common faith in the Lordship of Jesus, our hope in the fulfillment of God’s promises, and our love of one another as sisters and brothers in him. I ask that we continue to pray for one another, daily, for the power of God’s Holy Spirit to bring to completion the work that God has begun among us.

© Thomas Welbers, 2003