Last Saturday night, at the Easter Vigil, thirteen people were baptized in our Faith here at St. Maria Goretti.  It was new record for us.  We’ve never had that many people get baptized at the Easter Vigil before.  We used a lot of water and oil and candles.  It was great.  There was water everywhere!  However, a good friend of mine who is a priest of the Archdiocese of New York, has got us way beat.  He worked in Tanzania as a transitional deacon, during the summer before he was ordained a priest.  And my friend tells stories of baptizing five or six hundred people a day, in the missions of Tanzania.  Can you imagine what that must be like?  The women would come from miles away, carry their babies, and with their children in tow, and there’d be these lines that would go on for blocks, of people waiting to have their babies and their children baptized.  My friend was amazed.  On his first day, the priest in charge told him to start baptizing, and don’t stop until they were all baptized.  My friend started down the line, and very soon he ran into a problem.  Several of the women were nursing their children at their bare breasts when the good Deacon got to them.  My friend, being a rather reserved American Irish Catholic with flaming red hair and very pale white skin, decided it was best, and the most prudent thing, to come back to them later, when the child was done nursing.  And the priest in charge yelled at him for it.  He said, “Get your hand in there and baptize that child, you’re not going to have time, and these people aren’t going to have time, for you to come back later.”  Sometimes, you just gotta do what needs to be done.  So on his first day in Africa, my friend, Deacon Eddie, learned to put his hand right in there, into places where he never thought he’d ever go, to baptize and anoint little Tanzanian children, that he would never see again.  Sometimes you can’t think, or discern, or ponder; sometimes you just gotta do what you gotta do.

       I think of my friend every year when we have this Gospel reading, the week after Easter.  The Apostle Thomas, had to reach down far into himself, and find the courage to reach out and touch the wounds of the Risen Christ.  It took guts.  Thomas had a problem.  He couldn’t believe what the other Apostles were telling him.  Dead people don’t come back to life.  We’d say the same thing today.  There had been these other resurrection appearances to everybody else, but Thomas had missed them.  And then a week later, Jesus shows Himself again, and Thomas is there, and Jesus offers to let Thomas touch His wounds so that he can believe.  And in that one instant, Thomas has got to make a decision.  He can say that he saw the Risen Jesus just like everybody else.  Or he can reach out, put his finger in the nail holes, and his hand in Jesus’ side, and really believe forever!  Thomas does reach out and touch the Risen Christ.  And he’s not just doing it for himself, but he’s doing it for all of us.  So that we too can believe.

       My brothers and sisters, St. Thomas is teaching us an amazing lesson, the same lesson that my friend learned in Africa.  Sometimes, even today, to really experience the Risen Lord Jesus, you CAN’T be bashful.  You can’t sit back and wait.  Sometimes you gotta stick your hand into places where you never thought you’d ever go!  Sometimes, as Christians, we’ve got to be a little brash, a little brazen! And sometimes we can be too quiet, too reserved, too nice.  Do you think the devil is sitting back being quiet, and being reserved, and being nice?  No way.  The devil is having a hay-day and he’s being very brash and brazen!  Look at the newspapers today!  Unfortunately, sometimes the Church, all of us, has used that whole “meek and humble” thing from the Beatitudes as an excuse.  We sit back, and too often the Risen Christ Himself is waiting for us to do something.  We’ve got to get off our rear-ends.  It’s time to go to work.  Most especially, He waits for us to do what we need to do, to have Faith.  What if Thomas hadn’t reached out?  Would he still have been able to become St. Thomas, without that experience?   How many experiences does God have for us just like that?  And do we have the guts to do what we need to?   I hope we do.  I hope we do.

        St. Thomas challenges us to make some leaps of Faith for the Risen Christ.  We have made Christianity so safe, so predictable, so routine, and so boring!  Being a Catholic Christian was NEVER supposed to be boring.  If it is, then it’s our fault.  We’re not doing it right.  It’s time to be courageous.  It’s time to trust and believe.  It’s time for us to let Jesus show us that He’s NOT dead.

May God bless us on this Divine Mercy Sunday,  Father, Son, and Holy Spirit…AMEN !!!

St. Maria Goretti…Pray for us !!!