HW: Living doubts and dead certainties. Learning from St Thomas.

A reflection on John 20:19-31, written and spoken by Kieran J. O'Mahony OSA. 

Gentle piano music to close the meditation

Transcript

John’s Lane
D08 F8NW
12 April 2026
Doubting Thomas (John 20:19-31)

Welcome
In Dublin city centre, there is a Unitarian Church, on St Stephen’s Green. Once, they had a poster which said simply: I prefer living doubts to dead certainties. A nice play on words, because a dead certainty seems to be something desirable, especially in sports and betting. But in this case, living doubts are better than dead certainties. It is an arresting thought — today’s Gospel reading reminded me of the poster.

Topic
So, what do we do with our doubts — the lingering or maybe malingering feelings of uncertainty when it comes to faith?  Is here anything to be said in favour of doubts?

Steps
Our Gospel today is remembered as the story of doubting Thomas — this in spite of the fact that Thomas makes the most resounding act of faith in Jesus in the whole Gospel of John. It should really be remembered as a story of faith — believing Thomas. But that will never catch on, simply because we identify more readily with the figure of doubt — just a bit nearer to our experience.

On the journey of faith, we encounter two trajectories or forces. The first is what we have received, usually in childhood, from parents, family, school and church. It is a combination of beliefs, practices and ethics, which can stand us in good stead. Unfortunately, it is often the case that while we continue to grow in understanding in other areas of life, our adult understanding of what we believe often lags behind. A simple example might be familiarity with the Bible — what have I picked up or not picked up over time. Another example might be my faith in Jesus, his teaching, destiny, death and resurrection. How I do I make that my own? Some things from childhood are to be treasured throughout our lives, of course, and we can still enjoy a childlike trust in God. But a childish grasp of the faith helps no-one. A tenuous, underdeveloped understanding of what we/I believe makes faith vulnerable to present-day pressures.

And pressures there are in plenty! There is in the wider cultural the phenomenon of “evangelical” atheism — the keenness of some people to dispel the darkness of faith could put us to shame! In our own country, societal attitudes have evolved to a greater acceptance of different ethical/social perspectives. To give a few examples: divorce and remarriage, same sex couples, assisted fertility, end of life care and so on. It is also evident enough that intolerance is not confined one side!

For a raft of reasons, a lot people have walked away from the faith project — often, to my surprise, without regret. Edith Piaf comes to mind: je ne regrette rien! I shouldn’t really be surprised because more often than not people have no inkling of the extraordinary riches — spiritual, intellectual and social — with the Christian tradition, especially in its Catholic form. And often people have no grown-up grasp to support the what and the why and the wherefore of faith.

We find ourselves caught in a kind of existential dilemma: people of faith, honouring what we have received, and yet socially and personally under pressure. A first step, then, is simply to acknowledge that this is the real world in which we try to live out our faith. But what to do? I think we have a few steps forward, further faith trajectories if you will.

The first is always to be true to ourselves, our convictions and our experience. We can acknowledge the hungers of the hearts,  the inner voice of conscience, and our register our clear dissatisfaction with a purely materialist account of life. Dennis O’Driscoll’s ironic poem Missing God, can help us here. Let me quote one verse:

Miss Him when the TV scientist


explains the cosmos through equations,


leaving our planet to revolve on its axis


aimlessly, a wheel skidding in snow.

That hunger of the heart is the foundation of the spiritual quest: opening ourselves to a spiritual journey of prayer, conversion and what St Paul calls newness of life. It will surely include reading the Word of God. But, even with all that, more is needed.

What is needed is a kind of grown-up integration of life and faith. All our lives, our goal is to become whole and wholly ourselves. We admire integrity in a person: the quality of someone who is really the same person in themselves, as spouse and parent, as friend and colleague, guided by an inner vision of goodness. As believers too, we are called to integrity — not just moral integrity but the integration of my whole life and my faith. This calls for a grown-up familiarity with the faith and a grown-up grasp of what I believe and why it matters.

Into the future, what is needed is a grasp of the faith which is both critical and faithful, evolving and real. As someone acerbically put: simply to repeat the past is to falsify it.

Conclusion
So, when it comes to faith and doubt, it is not either/or. We are not either doubting Thomas or believing Thomas. Instead, we inhabit both realities, within ourselves, in a living tension. To put it in other words, it is not that we believe in spite of doubts but rather because of our living doubts that we take the leap of faith.