St. Sherlock of Holmes
April 25, 2025 at 12:15 a.m.
Divine Mercy Sunday
My wife and I love a good mystery. No I don’t mean “Where did our two-year-old put her glasses?!” I mean we like to sit down and watch a good old “Whodunnit?” Usually there’s a quirky detective who notices things nobody else notices, and is able to piece together what happened. Then at the end of one of these movies or shows, there’s usually some kind of big reveal where the detective walks everyone through a narrative of what happened, goes through all the evidence, and then ultimately points the finger at someone in the room. Sometimes it’s the person you suspected from the beginning. Other times it’s someone you never would have believed until you heard the detective explain the means, motive, and opportunity. In either case if it’s a well-written story and they’re not pulling a fast one on you, you’ll see that the evidence really was there all along.
Whether in a mystery story or in real life, it seems that the bigger the claim, the more evidence is needed for it to be believed. If my older kids tell me that my toddler has gotten into their stash of Easter candy, and I walk into the kitchen and find her surrounded by wrappers on the floor with chocolate all over her mouth, it’s a pretty open and shut case. That’s so believable, I wouldn’t even be skeptical upon hearing the claim from the other kids. I wouldn’t even need to see the evidence. But if their claim was that their little sister was selling the Easter candy to the neighbor kids out the back door, this I’d have to see. Maybe after we do a little digging we’d uncover that she’s been doing it since Halloween and Christmas too and has three other neighborhood kids working for her. But I’d need to see the evidence.
The Gospel this Sunday tells us the story of “Doubting Thomas”. He wasn’t with the other Apostles the first Easter Sunday when Jesus appeared to them with his physically risen yet glorified body, and he tells them, “Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands and put my finger into the nail marks and put my hand into his side, I will not believe.” To our modern minds, that makes a lot of sense. His approach would be applauded as sensible. Practical. Realistic. But when Jesus appears to Thomas the following week and Thomas gets to touch the nail marks, Jesus doesn’t say, “Blessed are you Thomas, for you did not merely believe because of what others told you, but you withheld your belief until you could see for yourself. Blessed are those who hold out for the same degree of certainty.” In fact, it’s quite the opposite. Jesus says, “Blessed are those who have not seen and have believed.”
So, are we just supposed to forget about the idea of evidence and go by the word of others? The answer is actually both; we should look for evidence and also be open to the witness of others. The very next line after Jesus says, “Blessed are those who have not seen and have believed” is “Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of his disciples that are not written in this book.” In the Gospels we get plenty of evidence, and plenty of witnesses. Continuing on in the First Reading from the Acts of the Apostles, we hear that “Many signs and wonders were done among the people at the hands of the apostles.” More evidence. More witnesses. And in this case the witnesses are the ones doing the signs! The witnesses actually become the evidence, that not only is Jesus truly risen, but that the Holy Spirit has come upon the Church at Pentecost and that he’s sending them out to carry on his mission.
So how can we deepen our faith in the Resurrection today? Take a look at the evidence. One popular book The Case for Christ by former atheist Lee Strobel lays out a compelling case for why the Resurrection really happening is the best explanation of the facts. Take a look at the research that has been done on the Shroud of Turin (the likely burial cloth of Jesus with a miraculous image of him left on it) – the Church doesn’t have an official position on its authenticity, but the research increasingly suggests that it’s the real thing. Not to mention all the evidence and scientific investigation that has been done into Eucharistic Miracles and Marian Apparitions over the years. Way too much to get into here, but I’d encourage you to look into some of those if you never have.
But remember the evidence is only part of the picture. We also rely on witnesses. Eyewitnesses we read about in scripture, then the witness of the martyrs who gave their lives believing in all of this and the lives of the saints of the past two thousand years, and the witness of those around us today who have passed along the faith to us. Become a witness yourself and point others to the evidence, and may we all say with Thomas, “My Lord and my God.”
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Divine Mercy Sunday
My wife and I love a good mystery. No I don’t mean “Where did our two-year-old put her glasses?!” I mean we like to sit down and watch a good old “Whodunnit?” Usually there’s a quirky detective who notices things nobody else notices, and is able to piece together what happened. Then at the end of one of these movies or shows, there’s usually some kind of big reveal where the detective walks everyone through a narrative of what happened, goes through all the evidence, and then ultimately points the finger at someone in the room. Sometimes it’s the person you suspected from the beginning. Other times it’s someone you never would have believed until you heard the detective explain the means, motive, and opportunity. In either case if it’s a well-written story and they’re not pulling a fast one on you, you’ll see that the evidence really was there all along.
Whether in a mystery story or in real life, it seems that the bigger the claim, the more evidence is needed for it to be believed. If my older kids tell me that my toddler has gotten into their stash of Easter candy, and I walk into the kitchen and find her surrounded by wrappers on the floor with chocolate all over her mouth, it’s a pretty open and shut case. That’s so believable, I wouldn’t even be skeptical upon hearing the claim from the other kids. I wouldn’t even need to see the evidence. But if their claim was that their little sister was selling the Easter candy to the neighbor kids out the back door, this I’d have to see. Maybe after we do a little digging we’d uncover that she’s been doing it since Halloween and Christmas too and has three other neighborhood kids working for her. But I’d need to see the evidence.
The Gospel this Sunday tells us the story of “Doubting Thomas”. He wasn’t with the other Apostles the first Easter Sunday when Jesus appeared to them with his physically risen yet glorified body, and he tells them, “Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands and put my finger into the nail marks and put my hand into his side, I will not believe.” To our modern minds, that makes a lot of sense. His approach would be applauded as sensible. Practical. Realistic. But when Jesus appears to Thomas the following week and Thomas gets to touch the nail marks, Jesus doesn’t say, “Blessed are you Thomas, for you did not merely believe because of what others told you, but you withheld your belief until you could see for yourself. Blessed are those who hold out for the same degree of certainty.” In fact, it’s quite the opposite. Jesus says, “Blessed are those who have not seen and have believed.”
So, are we just supposed to forget about the idea of evidence and go by the word of others? The answer is actually both; we should look for evidence and also be open to the witness of others. The very next line after Jesus says, “Blessed are those who have not seen and have believed” is “Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of his disciples that are not written in this book.” In the Gospels we get plenty of evidence, and plenty of witnesses. Continuing on in the First Reading from the Acts of the Apostles, we hear that “Many signs and wonders were done among the people at the hands of the apostles.” More evidence. More witnesses. And in this case the witnesses are the ones doing the signs! The witnesses actually become the evidence, that not only is Jesus truly risen, but that the Holy Spirit has come upon the Church at Pentecost and that he’s sending them out to carry on his mission.
So how can we deepen our faith in the Resurrection today? Take a look at the evidence. One popular book The Case for Christ by former atheist Lee Strobel lays out a compelling case for why the Resurrection really happening is the best explanation of the facts. Take a look at the research that has been done on the Shroud of Turin (the likely burial cloth of Jesus with a miraculous image of him left on it) – the Church doesn’t have an official position on its authenticity, but the research increasingly suggests that it’s the real thing. Not to mention all the evidence and scientific investigation that has been done into Eucharistic Miracles and Marian Apparitions over the years. Way too much to get into here, but I’d encourage you to look into some of those if you never have.
But remember the evidence is only part of the picture. We also rely on witnesses. Eyewitnesses we read about in scripture, then the witness of the martyrs who gave their lives believing in all of this and the lives of the saints of the past two thousand years, and the witness of those around us today who have passed along the faith to us. Become a witness yourself and point others to the evidence, and may we all say with Thomas, “My Lord and my God.”