Category Archives: Spiritual Reflections

Two hours late, still not ready

Margaret was all ready for her date. She was wearing her best outfit, her hair was fixed, her makeup was perfect. Imagine her disappointment when her date didn’t show up! After an hour of waiting, Margaret decided that he wasn’t going to come. She changed into her pajamas, washed off her makeup, gathered up a bunch of junk food, and parked herself in front of the television for the evening. As soon as she got involved in her favorite show, there was a knock on the door. She opened it to find her handsome date standing on the doorstep. He stared at her in shock, then said in disbelief, “I’m two hours late, and you’re still not ready?”

In our culture a beautiful spiritual message is built into the system as we get ready for the season of Advent. We have this incredible internal awareness that we lack something. It is a wonderful place for us to start. That is when we start making lists of things we don’t have, or least we are able to convince ourselves that we don’t have.

From the notes of Christian Coon, here is a story. “Every year in mid-November she calls to ask what I want for Christmas, and every year I try to put her off—but she is not to be denied. So I mentally rummage through my closets and, instead of admitting how much I already have, I try to convince myself that I need something. That’s when I ask for a George Foreman grill. Yes. I must have a George Foreman grill”.

It does not matter how much we have we still lack something. That is why at every Black Friday we, the money starved, poor, lost, recession suffering Americans, that it feels like to me, flock at the wee hours of the night at the storefronts as if we won’t be able to live our lives meaningfully without what we buy at that time.

What has happened to our spiritual life is that we have become a people who do not care, not simply about others, but ourselves. We are aware of the fact we lack something. But we are not clear as what it is that we are longing for. The speed around us is faster than we can keep up with, waiting is not the name of the game. As a generation we have lost the beauty of waiting. We are not longing for anything more. What we want now we take now.

In one of the most profound statements Thomas Merton shares his response to a drugstore clerk who asked him which brand of toothpaste he preferred, “I don’t care.” Intrigued by the clerk’s response, Merton wrote, “He almost dropped dead. I was supposed to feel strongly about Colgate or Pepsodent or Crest. . . . And they all have a secret ingredient.” He concluded that “the worst thing you can do now is not care about these things.”

Living life as if it does not matter is the worst thing we can do to ourselves because it matters. The routine of life gets so monotonous for us sometimes we fail to see what we are waiting for day after day. Many of us have come to a place to say, it does not matter, just do it. I don’t care. I hear more often from children these days about that they don’t care. And I am culpable of the same.

In the last few days, I had two children who longed for their cousins, aunts and uncles, opa and oma to come home for thanksgiving. They ran to the window every time they heard the sound of a car on the road. It was Christmas time for them. Waiting in anticipation… away from their wired world.

Now the question for us when will this God emerge from the outer space into our midst? When will this come about? On 25th of December as usual?

Mark is pointing out here is something that is very simple. It could happen in the evening, or at midnight, or at cockcrow, or at dawn, meaning at times that is nothing spectacular, but simply regular. There is no fanfare or loud noise at the arrival of God. God walks among us like one of us.

“Got up at 6:00am to vote. Put on my sweatshirt and my jeans that reek of Korean barbecue. I arrived at my polling place, a church, at 6:15. I counted. I was number 50 in line. We still had 45 minutes before the polling place opened. You had to stand. You coudn’t sit or even lean against the building. It rained all night. The sidewalk was wet. When the polls opened…there were 200 people waiting. Some in heels. Some in ties. Some in pajamas. Lots of hair pulled back in ponytails. Lots of baseball caps. Dodgers. Red Sox. Indians.

The line stretched from the church to the Burger King around the corner. Kinda fitting. That’s America. Faith and french fries. I watched people walk out with their “I voted” stickers. You could see the smiles…and a few tears. An older woman got her ballot and told the poll worker…”I’ve voted my entire life, but this is what I have been waiting for.”

This election for a lot of people is not a political act. It is the fulfillment of a dream that happened on a raily day like yesterday and tomorrow. This is how God appears in life. According to Bonheoffer, “We have become dulled to the message; we only register what is welcome in it, what is pleasant, forgetting the powerful seriousness of the fact that the God of the world is approaching us on our small earth and now makes claims on us. God’s coming is truly not merely a message of joy, but first of all horrifying news for every person with a conscience”.

The deer season is open. People know exactly where to hide and what to look for. Because they have familiarized the footprints of a deer. There are deer tracks all over and thus a hunter knows where the deer is or likely to come through.

There is God tracks in the world about us. Only people with conscience can find the tracks. God has passed us when we find the tracks of suffering and pain around us. Hunting for God makes it easier once we know where the tracks of God lead us. God is found among those we run around with. It is not a matter of simple celebration, yes, that is for sure. But it should be a terrifying moment in human life as God among those who are abandoned and lost waiting to be rescued. This is how anticipation becomes a powerful gesture in the Christian world.

And not until we have perceived the terror of this matter can we then also appreciate the incomparable act of beneficence. God is coming, into the midst of evil, into death, judging evil in us and in the world. And by judging it, God loves us, purifies us, sanctifies us, comes to us with grace and love.

What do you think the Arab Spring is? What do you think the occupy wall street is? These people had been waiting for justice. We, as a collective human race, are waiting in anticipation for participation in heavenly behavior for a long time and it is often frustrating. Now they are taken to the streets and palaces.

When we can see what lies behind the Arab Spring and the Occupy Wall Street, then we will have found the God-Tracks among us through our neighborhood. The tea party movement, the move-on moment, The Arab Spring, The Occupy Wall Street, and the struggles of people all over, point to one reality, where God is hovering over these days. God is not in the malls that are filled with beautifully decorated Christmas trees. God is seen in the tents across the globe where human suffering is tangible and human hope is diminishing.

So to bring it all back together, what we are lacking on the day after Thanksgiving is God. Not the George Forman Grill. What we are missing on the day after Thanksgiving is the tracks that lead us to God among people. What we are afraid to see is God among us looking like the one we do not care about. Ultimately we do not want to admit that we do not care about ourselves. That is a sad place to be. However it is the best place to start our Spiritual Journey. For that proves God-Track is among us and not away from us.

Resurrection in the Internet Age

Two days ago we got some great winds here in Russellville. Several houses on the west side of town lost power and were in dark all night long. When I came into my office early in the morning on Wednesday, I did not have power in my office either. Then I thought, we depend on electricity so much to the extend it takes a while to refocus and reconfigure the work of the day.

When all these wind and storm were happening on the previous night, I read a few facebook comments written by some of my friends. “I can deal with power outage. But if my wireless internet goes down or my Wii stops working, we have a problem. They don’t know who they are dealing with”. “If my facebook is down, I am going into depression and lonliness”.

Our modern life is so dependent on electricity and internet we hardly know how to live without it. To us a few minutes away from the web of the world that is right at our finger tips seem to take a lot out of us. We have all kinds of information available on on our fingertips from sources like Wikipedia and many times even if they are right or wrong, makes sense to us. As you know anyone can edit Wikipedia and the information you get there could be as good as you get from someone on the street who has a great imagination.

Now to draw our faith from these sources powered by electricity and downed by a surge, hacked by the unscrupulous and intercepted by malwares are not therefore the ideal way of growing in divine wisdom. Divine wisdom needs no power, www, or facebook. It is far superior powered by grace that depends on nothing that are fallible.

Faith happens within a community of believers and among a people who are willing to walk the journey with one another. Faith is not a set of statements such as I believe in God, I believe in Jesus and such, but a way of seeing the endless relationship we are in with one another and God. While events of history and statements of Councils might help us to clarify some of the notions of the historical faith as in Christianity, true faith emerges only when we it begins to take shape in the company of one another.

Behind the faceless facebook all emotions such as fear, anxiety, anger, disappointments, hopes, dreams and everything else can live fiercely. But they are still in the clouds until it becomes real in the face of a living being in front of you and then healing, true love, freedom and such sublime experiences become real.

This is what happened on the day of Easter. Jesus could have been risen and gone to the heavens, in the clouds or to the web. It would matter nothing to the disciples. But then He chose to stand in front of Mary and say, “Who are you looking for”? And then He stood in the room with the Apostles asking, “What are you afraid of?”. He walked along with two of them to Emmaus wondering, “Who are you talking about?”. Then he chose to break bread with them, an act that is tangible, relational and at the same time vital. Everyone of them is personal and present. That is Easter.

Resurrection becomes alive only to those who have the courage to come out of their hiding places on the web, from the Second Life cathedrals and make believe blissful land in the clouds. Resurrection is for those who have the courage to die to those that imprison them some way or another from being with someone who cares about them.

Jesus could not stand being in the cave too long. He had to come out to meet those whom he cared about. That is when the Resurrection happened. Not when he went to heaven. It is when he chose to appear to those whom he loved, his friends in the room both men and women, in a form and a fashion that made sense to the scared them, that is being in human form.

On this Easter Sunday, I invite you to do the same. Do not be tangled up in the web of the world in your computer. Do not get infected by the malwares of the clouds that addicts you. Let not the outage of power of the world scare you. Allow the wind of grace to blow on you that you can float into the tangible company of someone. Someone is looking for you, someone is waiting to eat with you, and someone wants to break bread with you. These are what we call resurrection. It is then our eyes open and we recognize Jesus among us. Easter is here, because you break bread with God. Easter is not here when Jesus is here but when you are with Jesus.

Wish you a Happy and Blessed Easter.

Be grateful to God for all the blessings in life.

Our floor our table!

My mother used to tell me that table symbolized family. We had lots of friends, family and guests who sat at our table my mother set. Some of our family members were not that great in my view. But my mother would say, no matter what they are or how, they are going to sit at our table and we are going to be nice to them sharing and listening.
Sometimes we didn’t have a lot to share with our guests, but still we gave them all we had in our kitchen, and we ate what was left over. All those who sat at our table were considered people whom we could not judge because they are honored guests and would say, remember the story of Jean Waljean? Christ comes in different forms and specially at the table. She would say, open your eyes and ears. Christ may be talking.
We had some “servants” at home when we grew up. We didn’t have a lot of money to pay them, but since they were poorer than us and didn’t have a lot to eat if they got something to eat they were glad to work for us. In the culture people called them “servants” because they worked for us. They cooked our meals, cleaned our house and did the laundry sometimes. (By the way that is what my mother did everyday. So that is not an excuse for me or anyone to call others servants). At meal times they sat on the floor and we would sit at the table with our father. My mother used to say, it is alright to sit with them if we want to. We liked our “servants”.  They used to be our friends and we loved them. We told them secrets and they told theirs. So we chose to sit with them on the floor where they had their plates and my mother would serve food for all. Of course she would say in secret she wanted to give us a better share of the food but since we sat with our “servants” we were all treated about the same at the “floor” which was our table. She said no one is servant in her house when we all ate the same food.
I had the fortune of sharing the table with those with leprosy, aids, abandoned children, unwed mothers, prostitutes, beggars, in a colony run by the sisters of Mother Theresa in India, and of course a table with Mother Theresa herself. I was a pastor sharing God’s table with 900 “lepers” who lived isolated in the southern part of India. This was one of the most painful experiences of my life, and that was because I saw myself better and I couldn’t and didn’t want to admit it my sins and failures! Several times I was blessed by my fellow priests at our table, deacons, bishops and archbishops. I also had an experience of sharing a meal with a national leader. We all ate the same food, laughed, talked and when we left, we were closer some way.
I used to live in a place called Chester, AR. This is a small town with lots of poor people. One day a few years ago, I decided to invite a few of my friends to share a meal with me. I told about 40 of my friends to bring one sandwich for themselves and one for another. Also I told them that they are free to invite any of their friends to come with them. To make the story short we had about 400 plus people gathered and we all ate had more sandwiches than we brought left over. We shared the table on the hilltop and there were all kinds of people in it, the sick, the sad, the rich, the poor, and of course all religious groups as well with all kinds of orientations and spirituality. But one thing that night we all became friends. 
We were then reminded of the days when Jesus multiplied bread and fish. It must have been fun for Jesus to watch all kinds of people sitting at his table. Because He knew in his heart this meal shared at His table would be such a blessing for all present for they will see their own lives rather than of others around them.
Interestingly when Zacchaeus sat at the table with Christ he saw himself first, then Christ. Mathew saw himself as well and left everything to follow the Lord. Whem Mary Magdalene sat down to wash Jesus’ feet at the table of Simon, she saw her self too. So did Peter, and John. But Judas looked at himself and couldn’t take it. He walked away!
It fascinates me to see people and I always wonder why people walk away from sitting at the same table of plenty? What divides us? We have more in common than different. Who walks away from the table of God? Those who cannot see themselves. Not those who see others. But we might pretend that we are walking away because of someone else. In reality we are walking away because we are unable to face ourselves and our own smallness before the greatness of God. I find no more servants or lesser beings among the mortal men in this world, just children of God of all kinds. I wish we have the grace to acknowledge the truth.
This article was published in the Courier in Russellville, AR on 05/28/2010 (C) Fr. Jos Tharakan
Be grateful to God for all the blessings in life.

Unorthodox menu to choose from!

From the world of medicine and science we learn that we have unconditioned reflexes and conditioned reflexes. The unconditioned reflexes make us react in a certain way. When a light beam hits our eyes, our pupils shrink in response to the light stimulus. And when the doctor taps you below the knee cap, your leg swings out. These reflexes are called unconditioned, or built-in. The body responds in the same fashion every time the stimuli (the light or the tap) is applied. In the same way, dogs drool when they encounter food.

Now we have conditioned reflexes, those that we train ourselves for. We train a dog to run for food at the sound of a bell. We train a dog to recognize the jacket one is wearing is showing the time of his food. So the next time he seems me in the jacket he is used when he got food , he salivates.

Peter in the first story is going through conditioned reflexes and responses. His menu was pretty kosher at the time of this vision. He knew what was clean and unclean conditioned by the customs and expectations of the time and that of the religion he was part of. There is a Pavlov reaction in Peter at the sight of the great vision of the animals, beasts of prey, reptiles, and birds of the air for food.  He is conditioned to feel what he felt as the scripture says.

It is then the awareness of a conditioning was brought to Peter. It is then the unconditioned grace of God and the purity of God’s creation opened up before Peter.

Without exception we are all conditioned through the ages past and religions we had been part of to be conditioned. Just like Peter our spiritual reflexes have been conditioned to see people through the lenses we are trained to see.  Peter is given an unorthodox menu to choose from and that unnerved him.

It is like for an Indian man who is used to enjoying curry all life long, and having thought of it as the best food in the world coming to know of the half cooked or rare steak that drips blood as good and tasty. It is like drinking cold and iced tea instead of hot tea with lots of cream and sugar. It is like having a black cup of coffee as tastier than a cup of sugar water with a little coffee to go with. Eventually I learned wow, Louisiana gumbo, Pilipino pig head, European snails and the Japanese sushi are all food made for people and tastes as good as my Indian curry. There is nothing that is obnoxious or weird about what I am not conditioned to taste or see. It only calls for expansion of my taste buds, training of my ear, perfecting my eyes.

Why should we condition ourselves to taste and see all that God has created is good? The answer is very simple.  

It is because
“See, the home of God is among mortals.
He will dwell with them as their God;
they will be his peoples,
and God himself will be with them;
he will wipe every tear from their eyes.
Death will be no more;
mourning and crying and pain will be no more,
for the first things have passed away.”

There is no shadow of death among the people of difference, food of various tastes or kinds. If God has chosen to stay with those that he created, it must be pretty good. If God has chosen to come to those that God created it must bear certain qualitative substance and quantitative integrity. If God still finds meaning in wiping the tears of the creatures of the earth, there must be something more in them than we care to admit about our fellow men and women. If death is been removed for even those that I don’t understand, and even despise then who am I to award death to anyone? If life is been restored to people of all kinds what is my right to say otherwise?

Jesus challenges Peter about the blurred vision in the face of a divine vision. Jesus calls Peter to grow up to see the conditions that he has limited himself to in the face of the unconditional riches that are made available to him.

Jesus asks us all to love one another as Christ loves us. How can we do that? Only when we realize this, `What God has made clean, you must not call profane.’ We can only love for an eternity what God has made clean. When there is an intrinsic cleanliness that can not be destroyed or taken away by anything we do, and when we acknowledge and accept that in all of God’s creation, we can love anyone and everyone as Christ calls us to love.

If I am unable to love and care about someone out there, regardless of their compass in any direction then I am still the Pavlov’s dog, sadly conditioned to run at the sound of a bell and not the voice of God.

What God has made in all of us for now and for an eternity is clean. Then, we all without exception get dirt all over us. Behind the dirty dress we all wear, there is a shining heart that can not be contaminated by human options. That is how the world will know we are disciples  of a God who has taken shelter among the people of the world and not just followers who lives in heaven only!
Be grateful to God for all the blessings in life.

Listening and following

On my way back from North Carolina I happened to meet a woman in the plane visiting her two week old, never ever met online boyfriend in Portland, Oregon. In the conversation that followed I learned that she teaches an Indian spiritual practice called Tantra, which is the worship of the god Shiva, a mythical figure. “Tantra deals primarily with spiritual practices and ritual forms of worship, which aim at liberation from ignorance and rebirth”. As we continued our conversation she said, “here you are a Christian Priest from India teaching of the great teacher Jesus, I am from the US teaching the principles of Spirituality of the people of India.”
Yes, who was Jesus to her and to many who teach the “Tantra, Mantra, Mudra” which are the “Technique of living, words or syllable for transformation, or a symbolic or ritual gesture, and many other forms of religious practices? This was the same struggle for the people of Israel at the time of Jesus. For them, the people of Israel, inspite of the fact that Jesus had clearly talked about his identity and proved beyond measure what that means, he was just an opportunist. Their hearts were too closed to understand and see God at work in this man.  Because he was too common and his origins are known to everyone.
In his famous book Mere Christianity, C.S. Lewis makes this statement, “A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic–on the level with a man who says he is a poached egg–or he would be the devil of hell. You must take your choice. Either this was, and is, the Son of God, or else a madman or something worse. You can shut him up for a fool or you can fall at his feet and call him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about his being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us.”
I want to add to this statement by saying He was the greatest human teacher and the tangible reality of how God would look like in human form amongst us. God had to take a shape that humans will understand and be able to identify. But mere resemblance of the human figure was not enough to recognize God in human clothing. The suspense was because they stopped seeing anything beyond what their naked eyes could see.
Several years ago The Radio Corporation of America, or “RCA,” created a lasting logo: the figure of a dog sitting before a Victrola record player, staring in wonder at the speaker. The caption told it all: “He hears his master’s voice.”
Jesus is giving us today the imagery of a sheep. A little animal that trains itself to understand the accent, inflection and the movement of a different species than itself. Because somewhere in its brain it has learned that this creature, we call the shepherd has the capacity to lead the sheep to shelter, security and sustenance.
The only way for us to know who Jesus is and was is by sitting in wonder at the mouth of God. Why did Jesus say Mary has chosen the better part? She listened not just sat lazy, as some people say, at the feet of God. Mary sat with her ears open to listen carefully, not simply hear what was being said, but was not said.

Coming to belief, not a set of dogmatic statements, but a solemn internal recognition of the identity of God, happens in the five senses of the body and the experience of the sixth sense of the spirit. Whether I accept it or not, in Baptism I am “Marked As Christ’s Own” for an eternity. Now that we have become the part of his fold, we have been given the opportunity to train ourselves to understand the accent of God, the intonation of heavenly music and the destination of His journey. Listen carefully and follow the staff of his leading to green pastures.
Why did they take up stones? Because what they saw or heard threatened them. The simplicity of his teaching was scary. Jesus conversation was all about the choice God had made about them, “no one will snatch them out of my hand” if they are willing to enter into the realm of God and the decision they have made.

Liberation from ignorance and rebirth is guaranteed to those who follow the Lord. Freedom for eternity is granted to those who have trained themselves to hear the voice of God and be lead by Christ to destination.
Liberation requires no magical syllables for transformation and no fanatical ritual practices. But they are helpful human actions to calm the body and the mind that we have come to embody in this world, and that we may listen carefully to the voice of God just like Jesus in human form. 
Be grateful to God for all the blessings in life.

Forgiveness to Peace!

John 20:19-31
When it was evening on that day, the first day of the week, and the doors of the house where the disciples had met were locked for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you.” After he said this, he showed them his hands and his side. Then the disciples rejoiced when they saw the Lord. Jesus said to them again, “Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you.” When he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, “Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.”
But Thomas (who was called the Twin), one of the twelve, was not with them when Jesus came. So the other disciples told him, “We have seen the Lord.” But he said to them, “Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands, and put my finger in the mark of the nails and my hand in his side, I will not believe.”
A week later his disciples were again in the house, and Thomas was with them. Although the doors were shut, Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you.” Then he said to Thomas, “Put your finger here and see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it in my side. Do not doubt but believe.” Thomas answered him, “My Lord and my God!” Jesus said to him, “Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe.”

Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not written in this book. But these are written so that you may come to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that through believing you may have life in his name.
The New Revised Standard Version, copyright 1989 by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved. 


How do we achieve inner peace? One man said by completing the things you have begun. And the other said, that is great. I have begun with two bags of potato chips and a chocolate cake. I feel great.

From this scripture we get the idea in the Liturgy that we can actually share peace with people. For the Lord appeared to a bunch of terrified men and women just like us who suffer from sickness, problems and issues, and said “Peace”. 

If today I asked you a question ‘do you believe in peace?’, what would you say? Of course I do believe in peace. Do you think there will be no more wars? I doubt.

Jesus had a tough idea to sell here. The very reason why people followed Jesus was that they believed Jesus will bring an end to the oppression and injustice brought to them by the Romans and the other occupiers. According to them Jesus was the Messiah because he has the ultimate power over the infidels of the time and oppressors of Israel.

We all have our ideas about peace in the world and how it should be brought about. We try by making peacetime treatises.

Right after Europe solemnly pledged not to go for war, it started the world war II. Every time mankind created better and powerful weapons to deter war we fought more. We want to create a world that is terrified of the things we make so that they will be afraid to start a war.

Just two days ago I read in the news that people of Afghanistan love “blood sports”. What is a blood sport? Sports that involve some way or another shedding of the blood of the other whether cock fight, dog fight, cat fight or human fight. The reason given for the love of such a sport is because fights and wars have become so much part of their lives, blood shedding sports are fun to watch.

In today’s story we find something very interesting Jesus does. First he appears out of nowhere in their midst and says, “peace”. Peace is a brought about by presence.  Peace is effect of being present to the other in the most vulnerable moment of their life. To appear before someone, to come in front of someone who might dislike you and disagree with you requires a lot of courage and inner strength. So in this story we have a lesson to learn. That is if you desire a world of peace slowly learn to be present to people who are afraid for various reasons, and might dislike you for what you are.

Again in this story we see Jesus showing them his scars from crucifixion. He does not hide the fact that he was wounded, hurt and given up on. There is no denial of one’s own pain and suffering but a willingness to acknowledge without anger of what one has experienced without blame or shame. IN another words a call to truthfulness of what you have experienced in the hurt rather than what others have done in the process.
Then he gives one of the most important lesson of all. Peace is the product of forgiveness. He says: “If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained” Is it possible?

On Easter Sunday I said how much we all want to rule the world and have a control of the world we live in. Here is that control given to you and me by the Lord. “If you forgive, they are forgiven”. You are granted the soft power of this world today.

Two days ago I was talking with Sally Skardvedt about how we all get trapped in our own world of religious piety and fundamentalism. So when it came to the question of forgiveness a fundamentalist and someone who is unable to travel beyond the boundaries of beliefs to true faith will ask, “if our sins are not forgiven by God who will”.  And then she said if that is heard by a buddhist monk he will say, “we forgive”. It is simple and theologically right. Because this is what the Lord says in the scripture today.

“If you forgive, God will”. Peace is the product of your willingness to forgive.

After the repentance and renewal Eucharist during Holy Week several who attended came to me saying, “after I said, I forgive them” to your question “do you, then, forgive those who have sinned against you”, I felt so much peace within.

Jesus had to show his wounds to remind the apostles that he is capable peace only by forgiving those who inflicted that upon him. By accepting that he is violated, he was ready to let go.

If I am Thomas and heard that the guy who got killed and was buried three days ago in a cave that cannot be easily opened is walking around in town, I will be skeptical. And I am anything like Thomas who said am willing to die with my master, it is not going to be easy to forgive those who inflicted such a painful death to my master. Jesus had all the reason to do what he did. For he knew Thomas needs to let go of the narrow definition of faith which is surrounding beliefs and practices to the true principles of faith which is surrounding the act of forgiveness. 
Be grateful to God for all the blessings in life.