My Lord, My God Moments

Have you ever had an experience like that of the doubting Thomas? Not the doubting part as we all have doubts. But the “My Lord and My God!” part.

I am wondering whether so many of us identify with Thomas and his doubts about the Risen Christ that we live in those doubts, albeit with a bit of hope, and fail to wait for and recognize God’s response to our doubts. 

For me the most amazing part of the story is not that Thomas’ doubt is met with physical proof or evidence but that it is met by transporting and transforming revelation of being in the presence of the Risen Christ, not just a good person, not just a friend apparently returned, but the Messiah!

This recognition, or re-cognition as I like to say, is so holy divine and wondrous as to cause Thomas to gasp and perhaps for us to fall to our knees. This is not just a mild ‘aha’ experience, this is an encounter with the Divine. And when that happens, well, words just won’t do.

Think about how we respond to such holiness, in nature, in love. We are often tongue-tied and perhaps even go directly to our hearts bypassing our minds. And in our hearts alone we realize a myriad of bodily responses, of gestures. We kneel, we bow, we gasp, we sigh, we cry, we smile, we reach up and out, we pray and we praise!

I am going to spend some time today remembering, re-membering, some of the “My Lord My God” moments in my life. I am grateful to have had a few: witnessing new life coming into the world, a mystical hug from God, an inexplicable stillness in nature,  a Eucharist on a mountainous desert in Israel, a sustaining encounter with the ocean, a work of art,a vision of a color never duplicable, an electricity upon consecration, and a peace at dying. Tears come now in the recollection, re-collection. The source can be nothing but My God! 

I want to kneel now.