DOUBT AS A STEP TOWARD FAITH

DOUBT AS A STEP TOWARD FAITH

Fr Luke A Veronis

"My Lord and my God."

Five words. That is all Thomas says in response to the risen Christ. Five words, and they contain perhaps the most complete confession of faith in all of Holy Scripture. Not a creed composed by a council, not a sermon polished over years. A cry torn from the heart of a man who had refused to believe, who had doubted openly, who had demanded to place his fingers in the wounds — and who, when the Lord stood before him, needed nothing more than to behold Him. “My Lord and my God.”

We sometimes call him "Doubting Thomas" but perhaps we should call him "Thomas the Honest." For Thomas didn’t pretend. He didn’t smile and nod along with the others while quietly nursing his confusion. He said plainly, “Unless I see, I will not believe.” There is a kind of integrity in that; even a kind of courage.

"Yet, the Lord often reveals Himself to those who sincerely doubt His existence,” confessed Metropolitan Nikolaos Hatzinikolaou of Mesogaia, “My best teachers in the faith were not 'savvy' theologians and clergymen, but those who underwent the novitiate of unbelief."

Metropolitan Nikolaos who was an astrophysicist from Harvard and a mechanical and biomedical engineer from MIT speaks from his own experience. During his college days, he spent five years as a self-declared atheist. That is before he became a monk on the Holy Mountain. He knows both worlds, of unbelief and of faith. And he warns us about something we do not often hear from a hierarch: that it can be spiritually more dangerous to wear the costume of faith without possessing it than to stand honestly outside and say, I do not yet believe.

Archbishop Anastasios echoed this thought when he said, “Sometimes those who claim not to believe may actually be closer to God than many who confidently claim they do believe.”

Why? Because God is not impressed by performance. Our Lord seeks the sincere of heart. The Apostle Thomas, in his refusal to accept secondhand testimony about the Resurrection, was in his own way seeking the living God. He wasn’t interested in a rumor about Him, nor a tradition about Him. Thomas was interested in Christ, Himself. And the Lord, in His boundless compassion, came back specifically for Thomas. He appeared again, on the eighth day — the day of the new creation — and came with His wounds still visible. Put your finger here and see My hands.”

This is the character of our God. He does not reject or abandon those who struggle. He comes for them. He invites them to discover a deeper faith. Thus, Thomas Sunday is not merely about doubt. It is more so about what comes after doubt — what happens after we encounter the Risen Christ and what He then demands of us.

Metropolitan Nikolaos, drawing on the Athonite tradition, gives us four Greek words that describe this journey of faith, this upward journey in the spiritual life. These words are not abstract theology but a map for the soul's ascent. This is the same journey the Apostle Thomas took in the space of a single moment.

Aνάβασις — ASCENT. Let us lift up our hearts. We say these words at every Divine Liturgy, and perhaps we don’t understand how radical they are. The soul has a capacity for heights we cannot imagine from where we stand. There are human beings — the saints — whose interior life is more consistent with the Kingdom of Heaven than with this fallen world. They don’t need to argue for God's existence. Their very presence silences arguments because something of the uncreated light shines through them. They reflect our potential. They remind us for what we are created. Thomas, in the moment of his confession, was lifted up precisely to such a height. When he stated, “My Lord and my God,” he didn’t merely acknowledge the Risen Christ was alive, but he was raised into sublime adoration.

Next, we have Έκστασις — ECSTASY. Not the shallow ecstasy of emotion, but the deeper movement of going beyond and above ourselves, of doing all things for God's sake, not our own. We trust science. We trust our reason. We trust our own logic. How is it, Metropolitan Nikolaos asks, that we cannot trust God? Ecstasy means allowing every action to be ordered toward the Eternal One, stepping beyond the small enclosure of our habits and self-interests into the vast open country of Divine Love.

Third, we have Έντασις — TENSION. “The kingdom of heaven suffers violence, and the violent take it by force.” There is no cheap grace here. The spiritual life requires struggle, a sincere laboring with perseverance against our passions, our distractions, and our attachments to comfort. The Apostle Thomas himself had to sit with his doubt for a full week. He didn’t abandon the community of disciples. He remained. He held the tension of not-yet-believing while staying in the place where belief could find him.

Finally, we have Έκτασις — STRETCHING. The resolution of tension isn’t release, but it’s expansion. We are called to stretch beyond what fallen human nature considers its limits. We don’t try to destroy what we are, but strive to become more fully what we were created to be - bearers of the divine image. When Thomas was stretched by his encounter with Christ, he didn’t merely update his intellectual belief. He allowed himself to be changed, transformed, and even transfigured.

ASCENT that leads to ECSTASY that guides us through the TENSION so that we can be STRETCHED and expanded, becoming what we are called to become – bearers of the Divine Image!

This is our word for those who may hold on to doubts today. Maybe some of us here can relate more to Thomas before the Resurrection than after it. Perhaps faith feels distant, or the events of our lives have made it difficult to say with full confidence, “Christ is risen.”

Well, remember this. The Lord consciously came back for doubting Thomas. And He comes back for you.

Honest doubt, held in humility, is not the opposite of faith. It is often the beginning of it. What God asks is not that we pretend, but that we remain open to discover, and that we stay with the community of faith. We need to keep showing up, keep our minds open, maintain a humble spirit, and if we do this, our Lord will find us. He will come. He always does.

And when our moment of recognition comes, whether quietly in prayer or suddenly like a lightning flash, let us be ready to confess with Thomas –  My Lord and my God.