Homily – Ascension – Year A – Fr Jeremiah Browne (#southafrica #eswatini #swaziland #Botswana)
Some time back, I heard someone saying that if you don’t, at one time or another, doubt nearly every aspect of the Christian faith, then maybe you are not taking it seriously enough. At one level that’s a kind of shocking statement, but at another level it speaks to a truth that is often unspoken – faith and doubt walk hand in hand. Often we associate doubt with lack of faith, or loss of faith, but what if doubt is in fact an integral part of growing in faith?
Today’s Gospel (Matthew 28:16–20) speaks to that question. In an unusual admission Matthew writes “The eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain to which Jesus had ordered them. When they saw him, they worshiped, but they doubted.”
That is a remarkable sentence. The disciples are standing before the risen Christ himself. They have heard his teaching, witnessed his miracles, and encountered him after the resurrection, yet Matthew tells us that even here, in that moment, some doubted.
What is significant about the text is that Jesus doesn’t reject them because of their doubts. He doesn’t turn away from them or replace them with more confident followers. Instead, these doubters become the very people to whom he entrusts the mission of the Church, to “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations.”
Could that be because faith is not the absence of questions or struggles, but rather a willingness to continue walking with God even when everything isn’t clear?
As we grow older, life becomes more complicated. We encounter struggles and challenges that are difficult to make sense of. A faith that may have made sense to us as children can often falter when faced with the challenges of adult life.
In those moments, doubt can actually become constructive, because it can force us beyond shallow answers and inherited ideas, inviting our faith to deepen, mature and become something personal, tested and real. It is often through the questions we struggle with most deeply that we come to discover not a weaker faith, but a deeper and more honest one.
Think about forgiveness, for example. Forgiveness means one thing to a small child. It means something very different to a teenager betrayed by a friend. It means something deeper still to a married couple trying to heal after hurt and disappointment. The same is true of faith.
Faith, too, must grow and deepen if it is to sustain us through the complexities of real life. A simplistic faith eventually becomes inadequate when confronted with suffering, disappointment, grief, injustice, failure, unanswered prayer, illness or loss.
Perhaps that is why the Gospel presents the disciples exactly as they are – not as flawless spiritual heroes, but as ordinary people whose faith is still growing, deepening and struggling. Yet these are the very people Jesus sends into the world. He entrusts his mission not to perfect people, but to people willing to keep walking with him.
The Ascension reminds us that Christ doesn’t abandon the world. He returns to the Father, but he leaves his mission in human hands. Weak hands. Imperfect hands. Sometimes uncertain hands. Yet he also leaves a promise: “I am with you always, to the end of time.”
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