“QUASIMODOGENITI 2024”
Saint John 30: 19-41
Quasimodogeniti: 7 April Anno Domini 2024
Fr Jay Watson, SSP
And that should be enough. Faith comes by hearing; and hearing by The Word of God. That is enough. If one does not believe, I am sorry to say, that is their fault, their sin, their rebellion. No proofs are needed nor should we spend inordinate amounts of time on so-called apologetics. What the early Church did, what The Fathers did, that we call apologetics was actually referred to by them as “proleptics.” A bold, straight, and forward speaking of the truth with the full anticipation that, that “truth” would bring the results of its reality. It is not that what C.S. Lewis, Josh McDowell, Norman Geisler, or “Answers in Genesis,” are wrong, but rather that The Lord will come to His own, through the locked doors of resistance, with or without your attempts to use science, archeology, mathematics, court-room evidentiary syllogisms, or media shows, to soften up your intended target. Look at dear Saint Thomas.
As stated in past Quasimodo homilies, do not, ever, refer to him in an even slightly disparaging way as “doubting Thomas.” He was a Disciple, he was an Apostle of Messias, he preached the living Word of God and administered its reception in The Eucharist, he + Baptized, and he was martyred. We should have a statue to him and the others of the “12” in a “great cloud of witnesses” grove in the church yard. His sin was that he wanted physical proof. He got it, hardly no one, NO ONE else ever gets it. You are not Abraham or Moses. You will not have The Lord appearing to you in a theophany. You are not Gideon, Samson’s parents, or Elias, where you can talk and bargain with God, with Him giving you signs and wonders. The Apostolic Age has ended and our pastors today do not raise people from the dead like Saints Peter and Paul.
John, who was in the upper room both on Easter eve and a week later as the Octave culminated. The same John who would write: “in the beginning, in Arche, was The Word, (the Speech of God The Father), and The Speech (ha Logos) was with (pros) God and was God.”
You know this eternally begotten reality (begotten not “born” because The Son has no mother but only God The Father) by your own incorporation, your own birth into the Trinity in Holy + Baptism by God The Holy Ghost (Spirit). What a mystery, a Sacramental explosion of ontological truth to blow the stone off the cave sepulchre and to make a locked door immaterial for Christ to be in the middle of them. To know the Hebrew Scriptures—which the “12” did know should have been sufficient. To hear the words of The Resurrection from Mary Magdalene, and the other women should have been sufficient. To hear the confirming words of Cleophas and the other Emmaus Road disciple should have been sufficient. But no, not just Thomas, but the other 10 doubted. I guess they either wanted the Magdalene to use logical word play or to bring audio/video proof.
What made them believe is what a week later made Thomas believe. God. The God/Man. The Christ Jesus came into their midst. He was heard, handled, and was part of their meal (a piece of fish and some honey). He breathed on them. So too to all of you this morning. They did visually see Him and corporally touched His actual, true, real, bodily, Body, to be sure. This no longer occurs. But He is risen with His glorified Body whether you get to handle it like James, like Thomas, or not. He was risen the entire week between Easter and Quasimodogeniti whether Thomas “believed it” or not.
The same day at about 9:40 am at morning, being the first day of the week, when the doors were locked by the usher, where the Augsburgers were assembled for fear of crazed “church shooters,” comes Jesus. He stands in the midst, and through His under-shepherd said/says unto you “Peace to you.”
And when He had said so, when the sermon has ended, He shows you His hands and His side. He shows and gives you His precious Body and sacred Blood. As he has breathed on me in my ordination, as He has breathed on all of us, all of you, in your Holy + Washings, as He breathed on the Disciples in the upper room—breathed The Holy Spirit that they might in turn breathe it out on all the faithful, until He returns in glory, so too it is breathed on you at this table, this rail, which is no separation rail, no ordinary table, but rather part of the high altar of the Crucified and Risen God—that you might participate in the sacrifice, the Holy and Gracious and Merciful and eternal Work of The Son, by receiving That Sacrifice, That Fruit.
The Word is now all you have, because The Word is enough. That Word is Christ—for you. That Jesus is, yes, in Holy Scripture, but OH YES, in The Sacramental Word of His Holy Supper. Be not faithless, but believing.
“And many other signs truly did Jesus…but these are written, and preached to you today, that ye might believe that Jesus is The Christ, The Son of God; and that believing ye might have life through His + Name.”
In The + Name of Jesus
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