[AI translation] I want nothing more with this sermon today than for all of us to understand this statement of Jesus as Jesus understood it! Of course, it can be very misunderstood to say "blessed are those who do not see and believe." This is the very thing that the world used to mock believers for, that they blindly believe, that they buy into all the fables without thinking, without evidence, without a realistic basis, that they simply turn a blind eye to reality and accept everything the church says... But Jesus meant something quite different by this Word. He meant something quite different when He said it to Thomas. What did he mean? I would like to talk about this now, and I would like to do so by simply explaining the original meaning of these three words: see, believe and blessed.1) First, then, what does it mean to see something? In general, it means experiencing with our senses, the visible, tactile, perceptible assurance. What Thomas said. This is, in fact, an eternal human need. Especially in an age when everything is weighed, calculated, tested, examined, tried, designed, taken apart to the atomic core and put together. One only considers realistic what can be measured, calculated, illuminated, disassembled, explained and evaluated. And this cannot be done with God, nor with the human soul. If anyone were to try, he would come to the same conclusion as the alleged astronomer who once said: 'I have searched the universe with my telescope, but I have found God nowhere in it'; or as the doctor who once said: 'I have dissected the whole man, but I have found his soul nowhere. This is why many people in our time become God-deniers and materialists.
And we, believers, although we know that man can never come to God through sight and touch, that is, through the use of the senses, yet we ourselves are always trying, or at least wanting, to come to Him. We fall again and again into the same mistake as Thomas: we want to believe what we see. Like the young father who once said, when he and his wife were waiting for the arrival of their second child after the death of their first, "If God takes this child away from me, I really don't know what to think of Him, can I still believe in Him?" In other words, if I see that God will keep me out of trouble, then I believe in Him, otherwise I don't! That's how we all are: if what we see as good, what we want to happen, then God is good. If only God would show us His help and love a little more tangibly, it would be easier to bow down to Him and believe in Him. So we want to back up our faith with tangible evidence, like Thomas. I have seen many times that many people cannot come to accept the forgiveness of sins, to grasp the reality of grace, to experience the power of God, because they think: "If I felt something of it, I could believe it, but I don't feel anything, so what can I believe?" Perhaps you, too, are unable to recognize in Jesus the Savior of your life because you think, "If I could see some tangible sign of His power in my own life, I could believe in Him, but so, without evidence, blindly, on mere words, on the word I hear, so I cannot believe!"
We are all materialists by nature. "If I do not see, if I do not put my hand into the wounds, I will certainly not believe that Jesus is risen and alive!" Yes, the modern man of reason is almost a little proud of the fact that he only believes what he can touch with his hands, what he can understand with his mind... But that is not true. For example: does one only watch television and listen to the radio when one understands how it works? Do we only start living when we know what life is? Even the greatest biologists do not know. Nor do we believe our mother is really our mother if she first proves it with a birth certificate. If a person really believed only what he could see and understand, he would not dare to take a single step on earth, he would not dare to trust a single person, life itself would become impossible for him! But it would also be a very arrogant attitude. It is a great arrogance to simply say that what you cannot understand does not exist. It is an incredible arrogance to claim that one's eyes, or the telescope, or the perceptive faculty of one's brain, can only be the measure of what is possible in the world, what can exist. He doubts everything else... The science of the last century was indeed full of this arrogance, the science of the present age is much more modest, because it has realised that there are many mysteries which it cannot grasp and dissect. Today we have reached the point where anyone who believes only what he sees is very undemanding, because he narrows the world around him. The one who sees the world of realities as no bigger than the fragment of it that he glimpses through the keyhole of his intellect, is an infinite impoverisher. And through vision, in any case, one can only attain to very superficial, external knowledge, not to the knowledge of the essence. Pilate, for example, saw Jesus, the Roman soldiers took Jesus with their hands and yet they did not know him in his essence, in his true nature. And the Apostle Paul, Gábor Bethlen, Francis of Assisi, and many other believers never saw him, and yet knew him personally. Well, then, do not think that to believe is some inferior function to seeing. Let no one be afraid that it is a martial thing, an anti-scientific attitude, to believe what one does not see and understand. One does not need to see at all to believe. Seeing does not confirm believing. Faith is more than seeing! Faith is more direct seeing. Faith is grasping the essence. That is why Jesus said, "Blessed are those who do not see and believe."
2) Of course, Jesus didn't mean at all to close your eyes, use your mind, think about nothing, but just believe blindly. Believing does not mean, I repeat, naively believing everything, like a child believing a story about fairies and witches. Some people think that to believe means not to do this, not to do that... But to believe is to follow certain morals. Some people think that to believe is to go to church. But if someone were to say that I am a believer because I go to church, that would be like saying that a wheelbarrow is a car because it is in a garage. Also, many people think that to believe is to accept a lot of truths, such as that God exists and Jesus lives - but the devils know this much better, that God exists and that Jesus lives!
Do you know when one starts believing? It's when they suddenly realise that someone is interested in them, cares about them, sees through them! I don't see that someone, but I can't help thinking that that someone sees me. Whatever I do, he sees me! He knows everything about me. He knows me perfectly. He hears every word I say. So faith doesn't start off so pleasantly. Because when you're seen, it's not always pleasant. Of course, there are times when we wish we could be seen. I have noticed in television broadcasts, when the audience was being taped, that people were trying at all costs to behave, to position themselves so that they could get on the screen, so that they could be seen on television. This is a sensation! But this is quite different. It's not a sensation, it's a revealing, kneeling, humiliating and yet uplifting realisation that someone is watching, seeing, even when I don't want them to. He has caught me with his gaze, and for once I am forced to turn around and face him. And when these two invisible spiritual eyes meet, that is faith! I am caught by God! God is defeated! God embraced me! And I BELIEVE! That's what happened to Thomas: he suddenly heard the same words coming back from Jesus' mouth that he had spoken when he couldn't see Jesus anywhere around him. For behold, he said: If I do not put my hand into his wounds, if I do not see him, I will not believe. And now Jesus says to him: Come, put your hands into my wounds, and do not be an unbeliever, but a believer. Did Jesus see him so much, was he so close to him, did he hear his every word? Yes, this is what Jesus wanted Thomas to feel. Let him realise that the invisible world which he cannot grasp with his five senses, the God whom he cannot search out with telescopes and genius, is closer to him than his shirt and his skin. A reality more real than Himself!
And then Thomas cries out: my Lord and my God! As if to say, "Didn't I believe that? Was I that crazy? Did I want to touch these holy scars? For this precious love and power is not to be touched with hands and eyes and intellect, but with prayer; it is not to be touched, but to be worshipped! My Lord, and my God! Do you not feel the gaze of Jesus in your back? Well, turn around, and then you will believe! Believe! Thou mayest believe! All! Even that Jesus paid the price for you. And that for His blood all is forgiven. And that His hand of protection guides you, helps you, blesses your life, saves you from your bonds, and His redeeming love will take you to heaven! "Blessed are they that see not and believe!"
And don't think that not seeing and believing is something vague and unreal. Do you know who ever praised God's love the most? The people who have seen the least of it in their lives: the martyrs! That's how realistic it is: to believe! I once saw a couple listening to the Word and singing the Psalm at an Easter service after the funeral of their only son. There was in this listening to the Word and singing of the psalm something of uncanny power, of triumph, of some incomprehensible joy triumphing over all sadness! Many who saw it said: these people really believe! We all believe in some way, but these people really believe!
3) Is not such a man happy? Isn't Jesus right when he says that those who do not see and believe are happy? Have people who have given up faith become happier? Do people become happier when they do not believe? If they reject everything they once believed? No! Most certainly not! In fact, I have never heard a believer say that he would like to be an unbeliever, but I have heard many times from unbelievers that I would like to believe like believers! How good it is for those who believe, how good it was when even I could believe like a child! Blessed are those who believe and do not believe! It doesn't mean they're lucky, they always get everything right; they're not happy in the sense that at the end of the novel the lovers are finally together; they're not happy on the outside, but on the inside! It's an inner order-it's happiness. I have often said that Jesus, before he takes a soul to heaven, first takes heaven into that soul. Well, well: this is happiness! Something from heaven, from the heavenly heavens, the joy, the peace - the happiness of God! "Happy are they that see not and believe!"
Do you believe? But so - really? Behold, Jesus lives even when your human eyes cannot see; He is near even when your human hands cannot reach; He loves even when your human heart cannot feel! But you can believe all this! You can believe it too! And then you too can be happy! Happy! Dare to believe that the hand that is now in your lap is in Jesus' hand at this moment, so much so that you have only just to squeeze it - and now say so to Him in the words of our 295th hymn:
Jesus, I trust in you,
O let me not perish!
You who through sin, through hell, through the grave,
Thou art the only victor:
Encourage me in thy weak faith,
Prepare me that my soul
That my soul may see above, O Lord,
For ever and ever happy.
Canto 295, verse 2
Amen!
Date: 10 July 1960.
Lesson
Jn 20,19-31