Doubts, ancient and modern

On the feast of St Thomas

Nowadays, people have difficulty believing that Jesus is God. People think of him as perhaps a very good man, but even so, an ordinary man. Ancient people of Jesus’ time had the opposite problem. They saw the miracles that He did, all the healings and exorcisms of demons. They saw Him raise people from the dead, and some five hundred people saw Him risen from the dead. The ancients believed in miracles, and they believed in gods. For them, that was not the problem.

The Jews who followed Him knew from their Scriptures that God Himself appears to people — as well as “wrestles with God,” the name of Israel can be read as “sees God” — and they had no difficulty accepting that Jesus was God. The pagans had no difficulty thinking that Jesus was some kind of spiritual being. Like the Jews, the pagan philosophers believed in a principle of reason, a “Divine Word” which gives order to all things. The problem they had, and so many of the ancient Jews had, was believing that the Word could become flesh. While modern people find it hard to believe that Jesus is God, ancient people found it hard to believe that He was human.

That is why the New Testament writers keep stressing Jesus’ flesh. He was conceived in the flesh of Mary’s womb at the Annunciation on 25 March. He was born in the flesh as a baby on Christmas Day. His human body descended into the waters of the Jordan and blessed them when He was baptised by John. He ate and drank fleshy food with sinners. His flesh was real. He suffered in the flesh. His flesh bled on the Cross. He truly died in the flesh. St Thomas, celebrated today on the old Western Kalendar, wanted to touch the flesh of His Resurrected body. Forty days later, His flesh ascended into heaven.

We live in a time where anti-flesh, anti-material and so anti-human ideologies are legion. We have got used to living out of our bodies, on social media and Zoom calls. We have started to think that our body and our mind are separate things, that the body is a piece of property our immaterial self owns: that we can sell it or change it, even destroy it at a time of our choosing; that other people’s bodies are buyable, usable, expendable. We live in a world of mass abortions, elective cosmetic and sexual surgery, pornography, industrial exploitation and euthanasia, all egged on by online memes, algorithms and influencers, serving the needs of capital. We have come to think that the matter of the world, the natural environment, is meaningless until we choose how to use it to serve our needs, to turn into fuel and products for our consumption.

The Incarnation of Our Lord Jesus Christ stands against this dualism of mind and matter. Jesus was born to be with us as a human, in a body, not to conquer the body, but to offer it. The night before He died, He said to His disciples: “This is my body, given for you.” But that gift began at Christmas, when the Word took flesh, and almighty God dwelt among us in the weakness of a newborn baby.

Everything we have, this whole world, including our bodies, is a Christmas present from God. He has given us this gift not for us to use as we will, but as He wills. We are to make everything we have a priestly offering to God. Here is the irony we learn at Christmas: it is when we give ourselves that we truly find ourselves. It is by giving everything and becoming poor in spirit that we become richer than we can imagine, because by doing so, we enter the richness of God.

The Word was made flesh and dwelt among us. God is with us, now and always. In Christ, He has embraced our humanity and lifted it up to oneness with His divinity. When we really understand that truth, there is nothing more we need. It is a truth we learn when we look into the eyes of a newborn child. For it is the truth of the absolutely self-giving love which beats at the heart of the universe. May our hearts beat with that love this Christmas, and the joy and peace of the Christ-child prevail on earth. And may we look and touch and say with St Thomas, “my Lord and my God.”