The Science of Encounter

 

One of my favorite subjects in grade school and high school was science. In fact, I represented my school in a few science competitions.  I never won, but I enjoyed competing.  I’ve always been fascinated by experiments, mixing stuff, and how and why things are the way they are.  A while back, I was able to briefly join our 6th graders at science camp.  That brought back some good memories.  

 

Contrary to what some people might think, I tell you, the Church is not opposed to science. Maybe once upon a time, a long time ago, but today, the Church is not opposed to science.  As a matter of fact, the Church finds it to be a wonderful discipline to helps us understand God’s mind and how God has put everything together to make it all work.  We find evidence for God’s existence in the organization of the universe. 

 

The Church does struggle, however, with what Bishop Robert Barron once called scientism – defined as the belief that the only way we can know truth and come to some understanding of things is scientifically – things proven with an empirical formula and/or with experiments.  The Church struggles with and doesn’t agree with this thinking because there are other ways to discover truth, be it though philosophy, or theology, or poetry, art, or music.  All of these reveal truths to us in ways different from science and along with that, we believe faith does the same thing.   It reveals something true to us although different from doing an experiment.  

 

When I look at today’s gospel, I can’t help but think that Thomas would have been a scientist.  Listen to what he says: “I am not going to believe this until I have empirical evidence.  Let me do my experiment.   Let me stick my finger in his hand and my hand in his side.”   Poor Thomas, always called “doubting” when I actually find that one of his remarkable characteristics is he’s not going to believe just what people tell him.  He is not going to stand up and recite some creed, full of beliefs, that he has not come to understand in some way.  He would do the prayer and research and study to understand what he is professing.  And that is why the other characteristic of Thomas is when he believed he was all the way in.  

 

Keep in mind that in John’s Gospel everything that Jesus says and does including the seven signs he performs are all for one purpose – to get people to believe. Thomas is the only one in the gospel that makes the declaration that John hopes everyone will make, “My Lord and My God!”   He is not doubting Thomas; he is the believing, Thomas. He is the one who gets it right.  Thomas is amazing. Jesus says: “You believe because you have seen, but blessed are those who have not seen and yet believe.  Those who have other ways of knowing truth and who embrace it through faith, this reality we call resurrection.”  

 

This is the reality that started the Church.   Christianity exists because a group of people encountered Jesus of Nazareth, Jesus the Risen One and their lives were changed forever.   He changed how they understood themselves and what they saw themselves doing in their life, He invited them to a new way of being.  In fact, you may have had that same experience in your life – when you meet someone whose ideas, whose enthusiasm make you think, “I can do this!”  How many times have I worked with wedding couples who have said: “I never thought I would get married. I never saw myself as husband or wife, but then I met this person, and everything changed.”  

 

I’ve shared with you before when my grandma would tell her friends that I would be a priest and I said, “Who me?  Come on!”  But that changed when I met someone in faith, and it changed my understanding of myself and what could be possible and set me on a new path.  

 

Have you encountered the Risen Lord in your life? How big of an impact has that had?  Has it helped you see yourself in new ways? Maybe you choose new paths, new ways of existing in the world.    That’s what this faith is about.  This faith allows the experience of the risen Christ, however we find Him, change how we understand ourselves and who we are in this world.  Watch for Him between now and the next five weeks. Watch for the Risen Lord in your life.  Where does He show up?  How does He show up?   See who and what you are called to be.   

 

Here today, the Risen One appears – in each member of the community, in the Word we hear proclaimed, in the simple bread and wine offered that become His Body and Blood.  He is here!   But are we allowing ourselves to be transformed by that encounter today? What empirical evidence can we provide for the resurrection? Is there one? I believe the evidence of the resurrection lies in each one of us and how we allow the Risen Lord to change us to be witnesses of His resurrection.  Through us, people can see, smell, touch, hear, and feel the Risen Christ!