FatherRon.com

When you were a child, you probably took part in your parish’s
religious education program. For eight years, you learned the prayers
and rituals of our Church. In high school, you were confirmed. Soon,
you were off to college – and “church” may have been put aside as you
earned your degree and, after graduation, establishing your career. Then
you married and began a family. And your faith took on a renewed
importance as you wanted your children to have the same connection to
God you had.
That’s the “first half” of a typical spiritual life when you learn the
choreography of a religious institution. You developed a language for
articulating your faith; you established a spiritual identity in belonging
to a church. The choreography and language of faith you learned then
became a bridge to instill those same values in your children.
But then came a crisis in your life – and unexpected illness or
death throws you, you get divorced, you get fired.
After that crisis, you entered the “second half” of the spiritual life,
one in which you hear a “deeper voice” of God. It is a voice calling you
to compassion, forgiveness, risk, surrender.
You now hear God not just in the rituals and creeds of your
church; you hear God in the deepest part of your heart. Your faith is
now fully yours.
The apostle Thomas might be considered the patron saint of this
“second half” of our spiritual lives – when we struggle to make sense of
our lives that have been turned upside down by crisis or catastrophe. In
today’s Gospel, Thomas feels that the faith he learned from and
embraced in Jesus has been betrayed in Jesus’ crucifixion. But, in his
resurrection, Jesus offers Thomas a reason to hope, a baseline for belief,
a prism for looking at the world with gratitude for what has been and
what will be. Faith, in the “second half” of our lives, is the ability to
hope that we can transform and remake, recreate and re-focus our lives
in the love of God and life of the Risen Christ.