Sunday Homily, 12 April 2026 - Fr Paul Rowse, OP

Saint Thomas has spent the past week in the misery of Good Friday.  You will remember what that is like.  It may have been Good Friday for you when a relative or friend died.  Certainly, last week we were there all together.  We were quiet, but in that stunned sort of way.  And it was gloomy too, not just because of the weather, but because of the general mood of the day.  We all went into it, into the quiet and the gloom of Good Friday, not because it's the way we want to live but because it is the way that Christ died.  And Thomas spent the past week and more like that.  Well might we wonder whether he was prepared to spend the rest of his life in Good Friday-mode.  In a word, Thomas is stuck.

But he helps us to recognise two kinds of doubt.  There is questioning and there is quibbling.  We might have had an experience of both of these.  Perhaps you have brought one or the other with you today.  At some point, often as teenagers or young adults, we all have to contend with the fact that we have no direct evidence available to us about the resurrection of Jesus.  Each of us must say: “I have not seen the risen Jesus yet.”  But what we do about that fact, about that lack of access to direct evidence, will determine what our faith is made of, what kind of person we are.

If the whole sentence goes, “I have not seen the risen Jesus yet, and so I withhold faith,” then we are stuck in Good Friday-mode like Thomas.  Life is and will remain quiet and gloomy.  There will still be all the natural highs and lows of ordinary life, but life remains closed to all that we cannot remember or directly sense.  I can hardly see out of my eyes, until I remember that my glasses are on my head!  We have to ask ourselves is how much faith should anyone put in what we and we alone can remember or sense: some faith, perhaps a lot of faith, but not all-faith.

If the whole sentence goes, “I have not seen the risen Jesus yet, but I know people who have,” then we have the kind of trust in one another that Christians need.  Thomas spent the whole of last week in the misery of Good Friday.  We have spent the whole of the last week in the joy of Easter day.

Today is the Eighth Day of the Resurrection.  We are on two cycles at the same time: there is the annual cycle (so this is Easter again like it was last year) and there is the more-ancient weekly cycle (it’s Easter again this Sunday).  The Eighth Day functions in our life and liturgy a bit like an anniversary: it’s our opportunity and responsibility to celebrate all that has happened.  This is why it's a grave sin to miss Sunday Mass: it is the refusal to take up the joy of Easter each week.  So, next Sunday will be the Eighth Day of this Sunday, just as today is the Eighth Day of Easter Sunday.  And when you think that this chain of Eighth Days stretches back to the very first Easter Sunday, perhaps we get to see how our faith is both personal and communal.

We may not rely solely on our own memories and on our own senses to get by.  We have to rely also on the communal memory and the apostles’ senses: their catechumens heard them say that they saw the Lord and believed them.  And we, who have the apostles’ testimony and the faith of the ages see the risen Lord with their eyes, and remember that he is risen with their flawless memory.

There will be questions about our faith.  Those questions must be put and taken seriously.  I assure you, there are good answers for each one of them.  But there need not be quibbles about the faith; we may not withhold what others have given simply because we reject the only evidence available to us.  For we are called not into a life of long-term misery, but into the joy of Christ’s eternal life in the glory of God the Father, who with their Holy Spirit is blessed for ever and ever.  Amen.  Alleluia!

Fr Paul Rowse, OP

Parish Priest