St. Thomas is famously referred to as “Doubting Thomas.” And his doubt was all about the resurrection of Jesus. Remember how he protests that he must stick his finger in the side of Jesus in order to believe he has risen from the dead? When Jesus finally appears to him, he tells Thomas in Luke’s Gospel, “Come here, and see for yourself that I am real and not a ghost.” Our verse from John’s Gospel highlights how Jesus realizes the challenge that lies ahead for many who will never be with him in his human form. But Fr. Rolheiser writes that the nature of believing in Christ has and will be a challenge for many – not simply because they can’t “put our hand into his side,” but because it requires faith. Skepticism and agnosticism, even atheism, are not a problem as long as one is honest, non-rationalizing, non-lying, ready to efface oneself before reality as it appears, and generous in giving his or her life away in service. If these conditions are met, God, the author, and source of all reality, will eventually become evident, even to those who need physical proof. The story of Thomas assures us that God is neither angered nor threatened by honest agnosticism. Faith is never certainty. Neither it is the sure feeling that God exists. Conversely, unbelief is not to be confused with the absence of the felt assurance that God exists. There are, for every one of us, dark nights of the soul, silences of God, cold lonely seasons, and bitter times when God’s appearances to us cannot be truly grasped or recognized. The history of faith, as witnessed by the life of Jesus and the lives of the saints, shows us that God often seems dead and, at those times, the reality of the empirical world can so overpower us that nothing seems real except what we can see and feel right now, namely our own pain. God does not ask us to have a faith that is certain but a service that is sure. We have the assurance that should we faithfully help carry others without first thinking of ourselves; we will one day find ourselves before the person of Christ who will gently say to us: “See for yourself that I am real, and not a ghost.”