Below are three of Fr. Abbot's homilies: for the Sunday of St. Thomas, the Sunday of the Parlytic, and the Fifth Sunday After Pascha, 2008.

Christ is risen! We continue to celebrate the Resurrection of Christ, proclaiming the Gospel of his appearance to his disciples after He rose from the dead. We call today "Thomas Sunday" because this Gospel (Jn 20:19-31) includes the account of St Thomas' doubt and his profession of faith. But there's still more to this Gospel, and we'll try to look at the whole thing.

Jesus rose from the dead on the first day of the week, that is, Sunday, and on the evening of that same day the disciples were still hiding in fear, even though they had already heard from Mary Magdalen that Jesus had risen, and two of them had actually seen the empty tomb. They must have been having some rather interesting discussions at that time, trying to interpret the meaning of these unprecedented events. Yet they were all too aware of the tense political situation following the execution of Jesus, and they had reason to fear that they too might be sought and arrested because of Jesus. The reading from the Acts of the Apostles (5:12-20) shows that they were justified in this concern, for after Pentecost they indeed were arrested, imprisoned, one by one, and most were eventually martyred as well. But on the evening of this first day of the week, the day of the resurrection, they were not yet filled with the Holy Spirit, and they had not yet even seen the risen Lord. So they remained in their fear.

Therefore when Jesus did appear to them, not bothering to open the locked door but simply passing through it in his glorified body, the first thing He said to them was, "Peace be with you." Just in case they weren't sure it was really Jesus, He showed them the wounds in his hands and his side. The disciples then rejoiced, realizing that Mary Magdalen's testimony was true and seeing it now with their own eyes. Jesus did not engage in small talk with them or disclose any information about the mystery of his death and resurrection. He immediately got to the point and gave them a mission: "As the Father sent Me, so I send you." At this point He hadn't told them what the mission was or how they were to accomplish it. But then He gave them all they needed: "Receive the Holy Spirit." He breathed on them as He said this. As you know, the Greek term pneuma means both "breath" and "spirit." Sometimes the Holy Spirit is called the "Breath of God."

The Holy Spirit was given them at this point for a very specific mission, which Jesus then explained: "If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained." (If we put this into modern terms, we could say that the apostles were ordained at the Last Supper and were given faculties to hear confessions on Easter Sunday!) In another resurrection account, Jesus told them to preach repentance and forgiveness of sins, but here He completes it by actually communicating to them the power to forgive sins. This is central to the mission of Christ Himself, so it would have to be also for those who would continue his mission to the ends of the earth. At the Last Supper Jesus said He gave his body and blood for the forgiveness of sins, and now He is giving his Spirit to the apostles for the same purpose.

This little post-resurrection Pentecost is for the apostles only, for it confers upon them a charism and a ministry that is not given to all disciples of Christ. When the Holy Spirit came on Pentecost, the apostles as well as other disciples, men and women, were present and received gifts from the Holy Spirit appropriate to their vocations. But at the Last Supper, when Jesus said, "Do this in memory of Me," and at this first giving of the Holy Spirit, when He said, "If you forgive sins they are forgiven," only his chosen few were present, those who would be the bishops and leaders of the Church, and who would be able to lay hands on successors to this sacramental ministry, handing on the same Spirit, the same power that they had received directly from Jesus.

But let's get back to the resurrection. The apostles were too dumbfounded at that moment to be reflecting on sacramental ministry. Their Lord and Master had just been killed, and now He was standing before them, alive! They could hardly take it all in. It was too good to be true. Luke gives us the paradoxical expression, "they disbelieved for joy and wonder." We can understand that expression when we consider that at some fantastic news, even with the evidence before us, we might say, "I can't believe it!" But this really means we are utterly astounded that something wholly unexpected has come to pass.

Well, when Thomas the Tardy finally showed up, he also said he couldn't believe it, but not as an expression of ecstatic astonishment. Perhaps it was more like sour grapes. I don't think he really discounted the testimony of the whole group of disciples, but was probably so crestfallen at having missed what—for all they knew—might have been a once-in-a-lifetime experience, that he retreated to the refuge of doubt in his distress, even offering a kind of challenge. "I won't believe unless I see, unless I feel the very wounds in his hands and side."

A whole week passed in this uneasy situation. The other apostles must have been constantly trying to convince Thomas that they had in fact seen Jesus risen from the dead. And he was probably stubbornly refusing to accept it, issuing the same challenge. Jesus was probably invisibly looking on these exchanges with a combination of amusement and pity, while He awaited the moment chosen for his next appearance.

Eight days after his first appearance, He came to them again (which is why we read this Gospel eight days after Easter). He made sure Thomas would be there this time. Again He blessed them with peace and again He didn't waste any time but got right to the point: "Come here, Thomas, see my hands, and touch my wounds…" Now it was Thomas' turn to be flabbergasted. He didn't go up to Jesus and say, "All right, let's check out those wounds just to make sure." He saw and believed and exclaimed from the depths of his soul: "My Lord and my God!" One is reminded of Nathanael, who, at the first sight and words of Jesus immediately cried out: "You are the Son of God!"

So Thomas finally joined the ranks of those who saw the risen Lord, and he would be a witness of Him until the day he died. But Jesus wasn't finished with Thomas yet, for He had something to teach him, and especially to teach us, the ones who would eventually be hearing or reading this account: "Blessed are those who have not seen and yet believe." To see the risen Lord was a gift given only to a privileged few. The countless millions who would receive the testimony handed down by the apostles would have to believe without seeing. For, as Jesus said to the blind man whom He had healed, it is possible for those who don't see to see, and it is also possible for those who do see to become blind. Judas, for example, saw Jesus work miracles and even raise the dead, but he was blind to the meaning of it all, and to the love and the will of God manifested in Jesus life, and he ended up killing himself in despair. Therefore seeing is no guarantee of remaining faithful to the end. But faith itself is a kind of seeing, a kind of knowing, and that is what Jesus encourages and blesses. For if you believe whether you see or not, then nothing can shake your faith. If your faith is not dependent upon some sort of satisfying verification, then the absence or delay of such verification will not shake your faith.

It is obviously not God's will that the risen Jesus would appear to everyone in all times and places, so that they would believe. For this vision would not necessarily amount to true faith, but for many might merely be an experience to be documented along with other interesting experiences. But faith is about relationship and commitment, it is a reaching toward something that we are not fully able to grasp, yet even in the reaching there is a kind of rest, a security based on hope. For Jesus does come to us, invisibly, passing through the locked doors of our senses, and saying to us: "Peace be with you." So if you believe without insisting on seeing, blessed are you, says the Lord.

According to St Paul, faith comes through hearing, not seeing, that is, receiving and believing the testimony of those who did see. Someone had to see for the rest of us to believe, and God has seen to it that we have this eyewitness testimony. The whole point of believing, though, is not just a test to see if we can do it, but faith is the means by which we gain eternal life, and this is what the Lord earnestly wishes to give us. St John concludes his Gospel, and I will conclude this homily, by saying that he has written these things "that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing you may have life in his name." Christ is risen!

We have come to a sort of turning point in our Easter celebrations. In a few days we will be celebrating what is called "mid-Pentecost," that is, the midpoint in the paschal season. On this third Sunday after Pascha we begin a new series of Sunday Gospels, which do not recount the events surrounding the resurrection of Christ. These Sundays are meant to begin what was known in the early Church as the "mystagogical catechesis," that is, the ongoing teachings concerning the mysteries of initiation into the Church, which the newly-enlightened received at Easter. So these three Sunday Gospels have some sort of baptismal imagery: today the healing pool at Bethesda, next Sunday the living water at Jacob's Well, and the following Sunday the waters of Siloam which enabled the blind man to see. Each has its own special message for the Christian community.

Today's Gospel is about healing, but there is much more to this Gospel than the physical healing of paralysis—as astounding as that is in itself. The dialogue of Jesus with the paralytic is at least as important as the healing itself. We're given a little warm-up in the reading from Acts (9:32-42), in which St Peter also heals a paralytic in the name of Jesus. By the grace of the Holy Spirit, through the instrumentality of his chosen and faithful disciples, Jesus continued to heal long after his ascension to the Father, and He still does so today, at least where he finds sufficient faith. Peter evidently found faith in the paralytic Aeneas, for without any sort of introduction or questioning, he simply said, "Jesus Christ heals you," and the man arose and walked.

We have a different situation in the Gospel (Jn. 5:1-15). The paralytic had been sick for decades but was unable to get into the healing pool in time to receive the gift. Jesus came to him and asked him a question which would seem to be a no-brainer: "Do you want to be healed?" In fact it is a profound question, one which Jesus also asks of us, as we'll see in a minute. But first let us get back to the paralytic. He was probably a bit miffed, though he did manage to restrain himself from saying, "Of course I want to be healed! Why do you think I've been lying here all these years by this pool?" Still, he did not give a simple, "Yes, Lord," as did others of whom Jesus asked similar questions. He responded with a complaint: "I have no one to put me into the water, so another goes in before me."

I think that perhaps we are like the paralytic in this. We instinctively (or perhaps unconsciously) dodge the deeper issue by bringing complaints or other issues to the fore. Maybe we have an inkling as to the real meaning of the question, and we don't want to face it or are afraid to give the honest answer. When Jesus asks, "Do you want to be healed?" He is not merely saying, "Do you want me to fix this problem?" Jesus is addressing a question to our whole being, our whole life, our whole future. "Do you want to be healed?" means: "Are you ready to bear the responsibilities of life? Are you ready to abandon whatever excuses your sickness has afforded you up till now? Are you ready at last to take up your cross and follow Me, holding nothing back but being willing to sacrifice your life for My sake and that of the Gospel?" It is at this point that we avoid the simple "Yes, Lord," and start with complaints and with reasons why we in fact cannot be healed.

For the better part of the past two weeks I was something of a paralytic myself, enduring an illness that kept me confined to bed much of the time and unable to work or even pray as I usually do. While sickness is always unpleasant (especially when it keeps you awake at night), it is true that it does, depending upon the severity of it, prevent one from meeting one's responsibilities. So, sickness became for me an excuse not to work or to pray all of the Offices. I did not find this to be any particular advantage, since I tend to get a little nervous when my work piles up, though I confess I didn't mind not setting the alarm in the morning and just getting up when my body finally got some rest. But for some people sickness can be the grounds for a terminal avoidance of the responsibilities of life. Sometimes people even manage to get sick precisely at those moments when something is demanded of them, and their fear of failure or simply of exerting a sustained effort triggers a psychosomatic reaction which leaves them, alas, unable to meet the challenge of the cross.

Others may be on a permanent search for healing. They never quite attain it, for in fact they secretly don't want it. They would rather simply attend endless healing conferences, at which they can endlessly make their woes known. What would happen if they actually were healed? There would be no more need for healing conferences! They would actually have to get on with the business of living life, and there would be no further opportunity to seek sympathy from others. How unhappy they would be if they were thus healed! Well, in that case I suppose they would go to a healing conference to deal with their heartbreak over not needing to be healed anymore.

It is that fear, which is at the root of our refusal simply to say "Yes, Lord, I do want my heart and soul to be healed so I can give my whole life unreservedly in your service"—it is that fear that the Lord wishes to address and to overcome. For He knows that we seek refuge in our own woundedness; it's a good place to hide from the demands of life; it's a good way to avoid responsibilities; it's a good opportunity to indulge in self-pity and to criticize life and everyone in it for being indifferent to our feelings.

So we really have to listen carefully, and prepare our answer well, when Jesus asks us: "Do you want to be healed?" Let us at least be honest and, if we fall into any of the categories I just mentioned, say to Him: "No, Lord, I do not wish to be healed, for I do not wish to make the effort to carry my cross after you as a whole person." Well, the Lord may be somewhat grieved at that, but He will accept that answer more readily than a phony, "Oh, yes, Lord!" when we have no intention of following through and meeting the demands of life by the power of his grace. He can work with honesty but not with pious façades. The Gospels make it very clear that it was easier for prostitutes to accept Christ than it was for those who professed religion. The sinners knew just who they were, and in the searching light of Christ they decided that they didn't like who they were and resolved to change, resolved to follow Jesus and be like Him. The professional religious however, were quite comfortable with their own piety. But in the light of Christ their self-righteousness was like darkness and, as John's Gospel testifies, they fled the light, preferring not to be exposed by it.

The Lord knew that the paralytic wasn't really ready for a full healing, but for his own reasons He granted him a partial, that is, a physical healing. But Jesus knew the character of his soul, so he warned him: "Sin no more, lest something worse befall you." And the man predictably became something of a traitor as he immediately pointed out Jesus as the Sabbath-breaker that the authorities straightway began to persecute.

We still must be aware that even if we are honestly open to the healing grace of the risen Christ, and in fact receive it, we will not be transformed into angelic beings. We will always be human, and as long as we walk this earth we will be in some ways incomplete, unfinished, perhaps limping a bit. But our response to Christ makes the crucial difference. Our wounds can be sources of self-pity, self-absorption, or of endless excuses—or they can be, like Christ's, powerful testimonies to the extent to which we are willing to sacrifice everything for the love of Christ. To get up and walk, despite our wounds, is the sign of a healed soul. To follow Jesus, even when it is demanding, painful, costly, is to testify that we answered "yes" when Jesus asked us if we wanted to be healed. I recently read this saying: "We should not ask God for a lighter load but for a stronger back!"

It's easy to think we're willing to give all for love of Christ as long as "give all" remains in the abstract. Sure, we'll do anything for Him. But will we give up this particular grudge, this pet peeve, this annoyance, this complaint, this bit of self-indulgence—for love of Him? No, that's way too hard! Well, let us begin to be honest with ourselves and with our Lord. He wants to heal us so that we are fully equipped to do his will and to live for Him without counting the cost. And He warns us that if we lazily remain in our sins or uncorrected faults, worse things will happen to us.

So let us rise and walk; let us know that healing grace and divine power and new life and inner cleansing and spiritual renewal are readily available to us, if only we will throw down own excuses like some dirty pallet upon which we've been nursing our wounds for decades—for Christ is risen!

There are several healings of blind men in the Gospels, but today's is unique (Jn. 9:1-38). It is much more elaborate than the others, and the whole event and the accompanying dialogues are points of departure for theological reflection. We are offered here not simply the fact of a divine healing, but the deeper meaning of Jesus' giving sight to the blind.

For our point of departure, let us look at the first few verses. Jesus and his disciples came upon the blind man, and immediately the disciples began their own theological reflection: "Who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?" It was commonly assumed that physical infirmities were a punishment for sin, either one's own or that of one's ancestors. Jesus immediately challenged that assumption by saying: "It was not that this man sinned, or his parents, but that the works of God might be made manifest in him." The Lord does not deny in principle that there is no relation between sin and suffering—for this relation will certainly be manifested on Judgment Day!—but that in this case, the man was afflicted not because of sin but in order that God's glory and power would be revealed in him at the hands of Jesus. We cannot assume that a physical infirmity has a spiritual cause, but we cannot categorically deny it, either. We have to be in the grace of the Holy Spirit to know the difference.

The next question might be whether or not spiritual infirmities have a spiritual cause, and this must usually be answered in the affirmative. If we are spiritually blind—and this relates more directly to us that physical blindness—then, yes, most likely it is because of our sin that we are thus afflicted. So we ought to take a closer look, if the glory of God is to be manifested in us as well.

I read something recently that sheds some light on this issue, from the Dominican Father Simon Tugwell's book on the Beatitudes. The Beatitude in question is, of course, "Blessed are the pure of heart," because to be healed of spiritual blindness is to be given the capacity to see God. And to see God is the ultimate goal of our existence, yet we are called to discover his presence in this life as well, for if our souls are so blinded by selfishness and sin that we cannot recognize his presence in faith here and now, we will not be granted the eternal, unhindered vision of Him when all the veils are finally removed. To acquire a pure heart is to be healed from spiritual blindness.

Tugwell says that to have a pure heart is to have an interior life that is "unmuddied" by sin, which clouds our spiritual perception. He writes: "A very important factor here is what we may call Christian spontaneity. It does not, perhaps, in the last analysis, matter all that much what you do with forethought; what really matters, what is really revealing, is what you do without thinking… what you do when you do not have time to work out how to respond. It is this that will reveal what kind of person you are, and that is what is important. After all, the kingdom of heaven comes like a thief in the night (1Thess. 5:2), with a suddenness which will not allow us to work out how we are going to react."

This, I think, is an important point. Our spontaneous reactions to other persons and situations reveal to us, and to others, who we really are. If we spontaneously react to people and events with anger, fear, suspicion, hatred, defensiveness, unkindness, criticism, or merely irritation, then we are in fact angry, fearful, suspicious, hateful, defensive, unkind, critical, and irritable people. The evidence is uncontestable. This is the measure of our actual purity of heart (or rather, lack of it), even though we may be struggling to overcome these things. It is in fact the present state of affairs, even if we are working to correct it, and we ought to honestly and humbly admit it. This issue of Christian spontaneity is something like saying actions speak louder than words, but it is more to the point. It's more like saying unrehearsed actions and words speak louder that rehearsed ones. St Thomas Aquinas says that as long as we have wrong desires (that is, if our interior is not yet pure), even if we do not give in to them, we are not yet virtuous. We may be on the way to becoming virtuous, but we're not there yet. There may not be prayers in liturgical books that say, "O God, re-create my spontaneity!" But the reality to which this points is essential for our spiritual growth and hence the healing of our blindness.

Tugwell goes on to say: "We must unmuddy the very source of our reactions, so that our spontaneity itself is transformed. This can only come about through the Holy Spirit. He is given to us by God to be in us a source of living water, welling up from our own hearts… But purity of heart is not just a matter of our own interiority… If we have a clean heart, it is because God has given us a clean heart… It is God dwelling in us who gives us a true interiority that is genuinely ours, but is not simply our own… Western man…does not feel secure about his identity, and feels that as a grievance. In response to this, he generally tries to find ways of bolstering up his 'Ego', to reassure himself that he is something…" We ought rather embrace the "no longer I, but Christ," which is one of St Paul's most profound insights.

"If we can unmuddy the source of life in us, if we can allow God to re-create us from deep within, so that there is a pure life in us, Christ's life as well as our own, then this must inevitably affect the way that we are and the way that we see. There is an interaction between seeing and being. The kind of person you are affects the kind of world that you see… And conversely what you see affects what you are. If you see the world as a rather grim affair, you will become a grim person. If you see the world as a place where there are butterflies, you will probably be a rather more light-hearted kind of person. If our life is rooted in God, so that the wellspring of life in us is God, then we shall see as God sees… If we have a pure heart, a source of life welling up from the eternity of God, then what we shall see is God."

This is a very important teaching. Attaining purity of heart is the healing of our spiritual blindness. Purity is not merely a matter of trying to avoid impure thoughts or actions. It is a much more thoroughgoing inner transformation. It determines how we see the world and other people, and hence how we will spontaneously react to them. And if the life of Christ through the grace of the Holy Spirit really is the source and driving power of our whole inner life, then we will see as God sees, and our unrehearsed words and acts will reveal that we are in fact Christ-like people, both inside and out, and we will bear the fruit of the Holy Spirit in all our actions and relationships.

When Jesus healed the blind man, the first thing the man saw was the face of God, that is, the face of God incarnate in Christ. This is symbolic of the movement from darkness to light, from inner blindness to sight, from a muddy interior to purity of heart. The Gospel makes it clear, however, that it was not only a physical healing of blindness. For when the man saw Jesus the second time, he fell down and worshiped Him, recognizing, with his newfound spiritual vision, the presence of God in Jesus.

We must begin with the humble admission that we are still spiritually blind, still not pure of heart. Even a quick examination of our spontaneous reactions (whether external or internal) will give us plenty of evidence for that. The greatest error that could be made here is to claim that we can see when in fact we are still blind. Jesus made that clear to the Pharisees, who resented the fact that He implied they were still blind, when He said to them: "Now that you say, 'we see,' your guilt remains."

Let us also realize that, unlike the blind man in the Gospel, it is our sin that is the cause of our spiritual blindness, because only sin can destroy purity of heart. If we do not yet see everything as God sees it, if we do not yet recognize the presence of God everywhere, if we spontaneously react in unkind or self-centered ways, then we are still suffering from a sin-induced spiritual blindness, a lack of purity of heart.

So let us pray fervently—and not mechanically as we may do every day as we pray psalm 50(51)—"Create in me a pure heart, O God!" Let this be our constant entreaty to the Holy Spirit as we prepare for his coming at Pentecost. This matter is too important to be tossed in the mental dustbin with hundreds of other long-forgotten Sunday homilies. We need the grace of the Holy Spirit to effect a radical change in our inner lives—we can't afford to remain how we are! It is crucial for our own salvation and our beneficial influence upon others that our inner life is free from all the darkness that is all too often revealed in our spontaneous reactions. The Lord can heal us, can enlighten us, but we must want it with all our hearts, and diligently strive to co-operate with his grace. For our goal is nothing less than complete purity of heart—nothing less than to see God.

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