“You believe because you can see me. Blessed are those who have not seen and yet believe.” – John 20:29

In his thoughtful reflection on the Faith, Introduction to Christianity, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger (Pope Benedict XVI) recalls a story told by the great Jewish philosopher Martin Buber regarding a certain “learned man and adherent of the Enlightenment” and a Rabbi.  The scholar went to the Rabbi with the intention of shattering his old-fashioned proofs for the truth of his faith. When he entered the Rabbi’s room, he found him pacing back and forth, with a book in his hand, consumed in thought. The rabbi had not even seemed to notice his visitor. Then suddenly he stopped, looked at him, and said, “But perhaps it is true after all.”

Of course, this “perhaps” is necessarily accompanied by a “perhaps not.” And this sparks a question: is doubt the enemy of faith or a necessary component of it? Well, that depends upon the kind of doubt you mean. There are three kinds of doubt: methodological doubt, skeptical doubt, and existential doubt.

Methodological doubt is doubt in matters of empirical inquiry or logical deduction. It is doubt about facts or conclusions. This kind of doubt is fixated on attaining absolute certainty and thus engenders positivistic thinking – a materialistic worldview that states if something cannot be empirically verified, then it isn’t true. This likely was the doubt of the “adherent of the Enlightenment” in the story. He was a rationalist.

Skeptical doubt is a particular attitude towards others and towards reality. It will not believe others or their claims because they can deceive or be deceived. One can also detect in the skeptic a certain lack of backbone under the guise of intellectual superiority. Perhaps the real motivation of the skeptic is that he or she is unwilling to land anywhere, for that would mean standing for something.

Neither methodological doubt nor skeptical doubt are compatible with faith. I think the Apostle Thomas was guilty of both. He needed to “see” – to have empirical proof, absolute certainty: “Unless I see in his hands the print of the nails, and place my finger in the mark of the nails, and place my hand in his side, I will not believe” (John 20:25). And yet, he also seems to have had an attitude of skepticism. Upon the death of Lazarus, when Jesus says, “let us go to him,” Thomas cynically retorts, “Let us also go that we may die with him.” Thomas fears that the Jewish leaders will kill Jesus (and them) if Jesus returns to Bethany. This exposes his doubt in both Jesus’ true mission and promise of eternal life. It also reveals his skepticism about Jesus’ implied plan to raise Lazarus from the dead (see John 11:4, 15). These two types of “doubt” are not really doubt at all. They are better described as “disbelief.”

Yet, along with methodological doubt and skeptical doubt, there is existential doubt. Existential doubt is the “perhaps not” mentioned above. And it is in the face of this kind of doubt, this “unknowing within knowing,” that one must take a stand.  Faith means taking a stand. It means saying, “This is where I stand.”  It is our will saying, “Amen” (“It is so”), while our intellect, seeking absolute certainty as it does, remains dissatisfied. Faith makes us certain. It “gives substance to our hopes” and “convinces us of things we cannot see” (Heb. 11:1). And when you choose where you stand, where you stand gives you your perspective. You “look” from that position. And you live from that position. The definition of theology as “faith seeking understanding” assumes this decision to take a stand. As Cardinal Ratzinger states, “understanding only reveals itself in standing, not apart from it.” St. Thomas Aquinas puts it this way: faith “cleaves firmly to one side” (Summa Theologiae, Secunda Secundae, Ques. 2, Art. 1).

One of lures of agnosticism – of saying “I do not know if God exists or, if He does, whether this or that religion is the true one” – is that you never have to take a stand or pick a side. For most, agnosticism is a lazy position and lacks sincerity. It feigns intellectual humility, while masking the deeper truth that we want to “have our cake and eat it too.” We cannot necessarily deny God’s existence, nor do we want to for the existential void that would bring. Yet, we do not want to take a stand – not for fear of being wrong, but because of the moral demands it would place on our lives. It is a cowardly position to take. Faith takes courage.

So, existential doubt, a certain “unknowing,” is part and parcel of faith. I believe this can be illumined by recalling that faith is related to the personal as a constitutive element of any relationship. It is the unknown in relationships that give them their real value. When I married my wife, did I know her? I would have said that I did. I believe I did. I certainly believed I had enough knowledge of Shannon to commit my life to her. But the choice to say “I do” was an act of faith. I hadn’t solved the equation. I mean, there was more that I didn’t know about Shannon than I actually knew about her. This is because the human person is a mystery.  We are even mysteries to ourselves. Shannon and I would both say that we have come to know ourselves as much as we have come to know one another in the past quarter century plus. Could you imagine how empty our choice, our election of one another would have been if we had absolute certainty? One could say that the “personal” would be eliminated from personal relationships.  Then, we would not be choosing a person, but a list of qualities. Love wouldn’t be a mystery, but a calculus. “Blessed are those who have not seen and yet believe” (John 20:29).

Of course, there is some “knowing” – we stand where we stand because of this or that. Since faith “cleaves firmly to one side,” St. Thomas continues, “belief has something in common with science and understanding.” Faith “does not attain the perfection of clear sight,” but we are “induced to believe” for reasons (St. Thomas mentions, as one example, that such beliefs have been confirmed by miracles). Faith, properly understood, is “thinking with assent.” Thus, I would resist the popular description of faith as being a blind leap. I prefer to call faith “a choice to step into the dark.” We know things that inform (or experience things that inspire) our choice to believe, but faith is only faith because of the “unknowing.” Without “doubt,” there is no faith. The light of faith assumes the darkness into which it shines. 

Yet, on some level, we are all afraid of the dark. This is why the choice to step into it, takes courage. Again, faith takes courage. Love (which faith makes possible) takes courage. Life takes courage.

May the Easter greeting, “He is risen indeed!” give us this courage!

Perhaps, it is true after all.

David C. Hajduk, Ph.D. has over thirty years of experience in religious education and pastoral ministry, including youth, family life, and pro-life ministries. He has been a high school Theology teacher since 1993 and an Adjunct Professor of Moral Theology since 2008. David did his doctoral work on the thought of St. John Paul II. In 2019, he became the Director of Theology for Array of Hope. David is responsible for reviewing and creating program content, writing blogs, giving talks, and co-producing Array of Hope’s Reason for Hope podcast. David is an acclaimed and versatile speaker, specializing in topics related to God’s plan for life and love. His book, God’s Plan for You: Life, Love, Marriage & Sex (Pauline Books & Media, 2006, 2018), a book for teens on St. John Paul II’s Theology of the Body, received the Catholic Press Association of the United States & Canada Book Award in 2007. David is also a member of the Angelic Warfare Confraternity, a supernatural fellowship of men and women dedicated to pursuing and promoting chastity under the powerful patronage of St. Thomas Aquinas and the Blessed Virgin Mary. David and his wife, Shannon, have 11 children and homeschool.

As I sit here contemplating the joyousness of this Easter season, I find myself looking to when Mary Magdalene and Mary the Mother of James found Jesus’ empty tomb only to be greeted by an angel. What an incredible gift – experiencing the awe and understanding that our Lord keeps His promises. But I can’t help but think of the moments right before. The time in which these faithful women journeyed in the cool dawn air to care for the body of our God. Walking in near darkness, most likely praying as they were about to enter into His presence, and still mourning the loss of someone they continued to love very much. 

How strange those minutes must have been. Trying to prepare their hearts that felt such aching and an emptiness which could only be filled by the person of Christ Jesus.

I think sometimes I can live there, in those ‘before’ moments. As if I’m walking in the dark, preparing for the worst, while in reality the Lord of all already lives – that Love Himself has come back for me. Instead of living in the season of rejoicing in my Risen Savior, I create a perpetual desert, thinking one day I can make myself deserving to be in the midst of Jesus.

Lent is beautiful and prepares our hearts for Christ’s Resurrection, but it’s important to remember that it ends so Easter can begin, and that the dawn breaks so we might see the empty tomb. In those moments leading up to finding the angel and hearing his message, both Marys knew God’s promises, and that He was the only one who could somehow make them happen. And once they ran and found Him, all they could do was persevere in trusting Him to go tell the other disciples. 

It’s been a difficult year for many of us. Whether it’s from the circumstances we share, or personal struggles that seem to envelop us even further. So, it may be hard to see the stone rolled back – but the Lord of all lives. The Lord who is stronger than our sin, or the ways in which we feel inadequate. The Lord of our joys and peace. The Lord who sings rejoicing each time we come back to Him. He died and resurrected so that we might know that we are loved with a love that goes to the very end.

Easter is not simply a day. Jesus didn’t endure his Passion so we could celebrate for 24 hours just to go back to the desert, but it’s an entire season contemplating His triumph over death so that we could spend eternity with Him. 

So, I invite you to gaze upon the empty tomb, and take heart.

If you feel overwhelmed by your struggles, exhausted by the lies of the world, or torn down by the weight of sin, step into the light of Jesus’ everlasting victory, and find rest in His Resurrection. 

Alleluia, Alleluia! The tomb is empty. He Is Risen.

*If you would like to pray with the image that inspired this blog you can find it here: The Empty Tomb by Mikhail Nesterov

Alexandra Cernick graduated with a degree in creative writing from Fairleigh Dickinson University, after which she spent two years serving as a FOCUS missionary. She has a deep love for family, and a strong passion for sharing Christ and His Church through beauty. She is a frequent contributor to Behold, a program with the goal of leading women to see their innate dignity through praying visio divina.

Alex is a writer, artist, coffee drinker, maker of Mexican food, lover of the Saints, and a big fan of the Oxford comma. She is a firm believer that “beauty will save the world”, and hopes to play a small part in whatever ways God calls her to.

In the thirteenth chapter of the Gospel of Luke, Jesus uses shocking examples to emphasize the urgency of repentance. Jesus’ audience probably could not have imagined a worse “end” than being brutally and publicly executed by a pagan occupying force and your blood being used to commit a horrible sacrilege. And yet Jesus, after indicating that the Galileans who had suffered such a fate couldn’t be considered worse sinners than their countrymen, goes on to say, “I tell you, if you do not repent, you will perish as they did!” What is the implication here? All sinners are deserving of such punishment. And we are all sinners. Jesus is thus making clear that our repentance cannot be delayed. He continues this message by offering the parable of the fig tree. We often highlight God’s patience and mercy by this parable, but it is striking that though the fruitless fig tree is given another year (a year of special attention and care, a last ditch, extreme and persistent effort to save it), it will be cut down at the end of that year if it does not bear fruit. It seems that there will be a moment when the time of mercy is over, and what is left is judgment. 

So why such urgency? Because immortal souls are at stake. But do we even believe this any longer in a world that tells everyone that they should just accept themselves because they are perfect just as they are? In a world where everyone is told to live as they please, as long as they aren’t “hurting anyone,” whatever that means? In a Church where no one goes to Confession, and everyone goes to Communion, and everyone in the world is going to heaven? In this kind of world, how can any of us believe that there is an urgency to repent? To turn to God? To reform our lives?  

It is God’s will that all men and women be saved and come to the knowledge of the truth (1 Tim 2:4). Precisely how will they obtain such knowledge?  Paul exhorts Timothy: “Preach the word, be urgent in season and out of season, convince, rebuke, and exhort, be unfailing in patience and in teaching” (2 Tim 4:2). 

Where are so many being lost today? Our Lady told St. Jacinta Marto (one of the Fatima visionaries) that “The sins which cause most souls to go to hell are the sins of the flesh” (remember that Our Lady showed the three children a terrifying vision of hell and the souls suffering there, which should give anyone pause who believes that hell doesn’t exist or is empty). One could say these sins of the flesh cause whole societies to plummet into the abyss. Look at how far our own has fallen in recent years. So far that young children are being encouraged in transgenderism and it’s called “gender affirming.” So far that polyamory is on the rise and being protected in law (though this prediction was summarily dismissed by advocates of same-sex “marriage” back at the time of Obergefell v. Hodges). So far that politicians are supporting infanticide over and above unrestricted abortion. So far that almost every sexual perversion is normalized and deemed “sex positive,” as pornography grows more prevalent, more degrading and violent towards women, and more interwoven with sex trafficking.

And if you speak up against any of this and stand up for God’s plan for sex or preach the Gospel of Life, you may just become a martyr, even if a white one (that is, one without the shedding of blood). You might get “cancelled,” fired, fined, or worse. And your persecutors may very well come from people within the Body of Christ who think that by doing so they are serving God (John 16:2). It is definitely “out of season.”

But be not afraid! Today is the feast of the Annunciation, when the angel Gabriel appeared to Mary and asked her to be the mother of the Son of God. It is the day that Jesus was virginally conceived in Mary’s womb. It is also the day in 1995 that St. John Paul II released his powerful encyclical Evangelium Vitae (The Gospel of Life), a work that had a transformative impact on my wife and me. Here is what John Paul II wrote in that encyclical to encourage us. He refers to St. Paul’s exhortation to Timothy:

“Faced with so many opposing points of view, and a widespread rejection of sound doctrine concerning human life, we can feel that Paul’s entreaty to Timothy is also addressed to us: ‘Preach the word, be urgent in season and out of season, convince, rebuke, and exhort, be unfailing in patience and in teaching’ (2 Tim 4:2)… In the proclamation of this Gospel [of Life], we must not fear hostility or unpopularity, and we must refuse any compromise or ambiguity which might conform us to the world’s way of thinking (cf. Rom 12:2). We must be in the world but not of the world (cf. Jn 15:19; 17:16), drawing our strength from Christ, who by his Death and Resurrection has overcome the world (cf. Jn 16:33)” (The Gospel of Life, no. 82).

Although St. John Paul II was writing about life issues, he could well have been writing about sound doctrine regarding the meaning of masculinity and femininity, sex, and marriage. (And, for the record, he did write about that… a lot!)

I believe two saints for our time are St. John the Baptist and Elijah the Prophet. Why did John lose his head? Not by witnessing to Christ directly, but by witnessing to the Truth (and thus to Christ who is The Truth). Specifically, by witnessing to the Truth about sex and marriage. He opened his mouth about an unlawful marriage and adultery, and this unleashed the wrath of Herodias, who took advantage of the vanity and drunken lust of Herod (enflamed by her own daughter’s erotic dance). This is actually one of the reasons why John is the new Elijah. Elijah too preached against the unlawful marriage of Ahab and Jezebel, and he spent his days on the run from the diabolical queen, and eventually grew so weary he even begged God to take his life. 

It is easy to grow weary. But again, be not afraid! Be urgent in season and out of season. Immortal souls are at stake. And Christ wants us to win those souls for Him!

David C. Hajduk, Ph.D. has over thirty years of experience in religious education and pastoral ministry, including youth, family life, and pro-life ministries. He has been a high school Theology teacher since 1993 and an Adjunct Professor of Moral Theology since 2008. David did his doctoral work on the thought of St. John Paul II. In 2019, he became the Director of Theology for Array of Hope. David is responsible for reviewing and creating program content, writing blogs, giving talks, and co-producing Array of Hope’s Reason for Hope podcast. David is an acclaimed and versatile speaker, specializing in topics related to God’s plan for life and love. His book, God’s Plan for You: Life, Love, Marriage & Sex (Pauline Books & Media, 2006, 2018), a book for teens on St. John Paul II’s Theology of the Body, received the Catholic Press Association of the United States & Canada Book Award in 2007. David is also a member of the Angelic Warfare Confraternity, a supernatural fellowship of men and women dedicated to pursuing and promoting chastity under the powerful patronage of St. Thomas Aquinas and the Blessed Virgin Mary. David and his wife, Shannon, have 11 children and homeschool.

We have just entered the holy season of Lent. Lent is a journey to Easter, but it is a journey to Easter through the cross. Lent reminds us that the road to Heaven passes through Calvary. There is no other way. There are no “cross-less Christians.” Jesus Himself said, “Whosoever doth not carry his cross and come after me, cannot be my disciple” (Luke 14:27). 

Our whole earthly life is a journey to Heaven, which is our Homeland. This explains that feeling of what could be called “homesickness” we all experience. That feeling of restlessness and unease we have with our current “living arrangements.” A feeling as if we do not quite belong. 

If Heaven is our final destination, the world and indeed no creature in it can never be our “end.” We know this all too well. Has any created thing ever really satisfied you? Or have you been left wanting more? Have you found not the fulfillment of a need, but rather simply an increase in that need? We spend most of our energy trying to satiate a thirst that simply cannot be satiated, save by the One who thirsts for our souls from the cross (John 19:28). This world cannot satisfy because we were made for another. This is not our home. As we pray in the O Salutaris Hostia before we adore the Blessed Sacrament: Oh, grant us endless length of days, in our true native land with Thee.

A word that sums up what our attitude should be as we live “en route” is “sojourn.” A sojourner is one who “spends the day” – who only visits for a brief time, a temporary stay. Listen to these words from the first letter of St. Peter: “Beloved, I exhort [you], as strangers and sojourners, to abstain from fleshly lusts, which war against the soul” (1 Peter 2:11). St. Peter makes clear that we are strangers to this world – aliens living not in our own country. We are sojourners – here for a short time, temporarily, just passing through. It is not our home. In fact, another translation of the word translated here as “sojourner” is “pilgrim.” Pilgrims (those on the way to a Holy Place) usually slept in tents.  This image for our earthly life is profound – we live in tents on pilgrimage to a Holy Place. St. Paul refers to this world as a tent in his second letter to the Corinthians: “Once this earthly tent-dwelling of ours has come to an end, God, we are sure, has a solid building waiting for us, a dwelling not made with hands, that will last eternally in Heaven” (2 Corinthians 5:1).

So what should our lesson be? We should not be, or get, too comfortable. This earthly life is a temporary stop. We are merely “spending the day.” St. Paul makes this abundantly clear when he exhorts us, “Do not be conformed to this world” (Romans 12:12) or when He reminds us that, “Our conversation is in heaven, from whence we also look for the Savior, our Lord Jesus Christ” (Philippians 3:20). The word “conversation” found there is interesting. Conversatio is a difficult to translate Latin word, the most precise meaning of which is “way of life.” So, St. Paul is telling us that we ought to get our “way of life” from heaven, not from earth. We really should be living more like angels than animals, more in the spiritual than in the carnal. If we go beyond the Latin conversatio to the Greek word politeuma we find a word that means state or commonwealth. It was the word used to refer to Roman citizenship. There we see it again – our citizenship is in heaven, not earth. We are aliens here.

We need to live as if in tents. We need to live as people “on the move.” As God commands the Israelites in Egypt: “This is how you are to eat it: with your loins girt, sandals on your feet and your staff in hand, you will eat it in a hurry. It is the Lord’s Passover” (Exodus 12:11). We need to learn to live in such a way that we can leave everything behind. As Jesus says, “He that is on the housetop, let him not come down to take anything out of his house, and he that is in the field, let him not go back to take his coat” (Luke 17:31). Jesus exhorts us to store up our treasures in heaven and not on earth (cf. Matthew 6:19-21). We need to “hold on loosely” to the things of this world and even to the people we love. Some of Jesus’ most challenging words have to do with this. “He that loveth father or mother more than me, is not worthy of me; and he that loveth son or daughter more than me, is not worthy of me. And he that taketh not up his cross, and followeth me, is not worthy of me” (Matthew 10:37-38). Or in another place: “If any man come to me, and hate not his father, and mother, and wife, and children, and brethren, and sisters, yea and his own life also, he cannot be my disciple” (Luke 14:26). And in yet another: “And every one who has left houses or brothers or sisters or father or mother or children or lands, for my name’s sake, will receive a hundredfold, and inherit eternal life” (Matthew 19:29). In short, we need to live “detached” from the earthly and from all created things. 

St. John of the Cross calls this way “Nada” – the Spanish word for “nothing.” This rugged path of “nothing” is the only road which leads to the summit of perfection. It is the one that not only rejects all disordered attachments to or inordinate use of the goods of earth, but even counts all earthly goods as “nothing.” St. Paul is the one who stated, “I count all things to be but loss for the excellent knowledge of Jesus Christ my Lord; for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them but as dung, that I may gain Christ” (Philippians 3:8). He counted them as “dung” – let that sink in a moment. St. John of the Cross wrote: “In order to enjoy, know, possess, and be everything, desire to enjoy, know, possess and be nothing” (Ascent of Mount Carmel, Book I, Ch. 13, v. 11). The paradoxical truth is that the more we live detached, the more we actually enjoy our stay here on earth. It’s only when we seek to make a permanent abode that life becomes a movement from anxiety to anxiety. This has become more and more evident in our increasingly secular culture. It would seem that, for most, the world has become “all in all.”

So how do we break with the world? How do we live this detachment, this “Nada”? How do we, as St. Paul did, “in every circumstance and in all things learn the secret of being well fed and of going hungry, of living in abundance and of being in need” (Philippians 4:12)? How can we not be of the world while we are in it? How do we attain what St. Ignatius of Loyola called a “holy indifference” to all creatures and circumstances?

St. Peter, when he beseeched us as strangers and sojourners, exhorted us “to refrain from carnal desires.” St. Paul, when he discussed how our “way of life” is found in heaven laments those who have “become enemies of the cross of Christ, whose end is destruction, whose God is their belly, and whose glory is in their shame, who mind earthly things” (Philippians 3:19).  St. Paul warns us: “If you live a life of nature, you are marked out for death; if you mortify the ways of nature through the power of the Spirit, you will have life” (Romans 8:13) and exhorts us: “Mind the things that are above, not the things that are upon the earth… You must [put to death] those passions in you which belong to earth” (Colossians 3:2). This earthly pilgrimage should be marked by self-denial, as Jesus said to all, “If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily, and follow me” (Luke 9:23). 

And so, we fast. We pray. We give alms. We renounce the world, and hold on loosely to the things of it.  We take up the cross.

This is journey ahead. This is the road to Heaven. There is no other way. 

And Lent is here to remind us.

David Hajduk received his Ph.D. in Theology from Maryvale Institute in Birmingham, England, and wrote his dissertation on the thought of St. John Paul II. He is a teacher, speaker, pastoral minister, and award-winning author of God’s Plan for You: Life, Love, Marriage and Sex (Pauline Books & Media, 2006, 2018), a book for teens on the Theology of the Body. David is the Director of Theology for Array of Hope.