Lent #20: to live up to my name

to be brave to ask the question

Start being brave about everything. Drive out darkness and spread light. Don't look at your weaknesses. Realize instead that in Christ crucified you can do everything.
--Catherine of Siena, Letters

From John 11:

Jesus: Lazarus is dead, ¹⁵ and I am grateful for your sakes that I was not there when he died. Now you will see and believe. It does not matter if the people there want to kill Me. Gather yourselves, and let’s go to him.

Thomas, Didymus the Twin (to the disciples): ¹⁶ Let’s go so we can die with Him.

I always felt a connection with Thomas because Thomas is my family of origin name (and is still my name).
We usually associate Thomas as the doubter.  "I won't believe until I put my fingers into his hands and side"--is Thomas' passionate claim as Jesus stands before them--either a figment of their mutual imagination, or the Real Deal.

However, I love Thomas' passion. His heartfelt place of living between doubt and faith and asking the question out loud that is on everyone's mind.

In the passage above, Thomas is the one willing to go and die with Jesus (hardly the words of someone who bears the nickname Doubting Thomas). Here is the passion of Thomas--ready with whole heart to follow Jesus to death, or ready to believe with whole heart as he touches the hands of Christ.

I imagine Thomas being a passionate, in the flesh person. An activator, a mover, a "let's go and do it" person. Someone who is willing to embrace death or embrace the wounds of Christ--whatever is put before him.
Tradition has it that Thomas took the gospel to India where he was martyred. I have been to the shrine of Thomas on the top of the mountain in India that honors this brave saint and disciple. (I there committed a great social faux pas in connection with a nun--but that's another story).

I hope to be like Thomas. Ready to go, bold in my faith and in my doubt. Honest and genuine, living-in-the-moment of a passionate embrace of Christ--be it the wounds of Christ or the death of Christ.

I want to cultivate the Thomas in me that believes, hides, follows, visions, touches, embraces, leads and dies with a heart of faith that comes not from not asking questions, but from asking all the hard questions.