Wednesday, December 21, 2011

On the feast of St. Thomas

Collect for the day:
Everliving God, who strengthened your apostle Thomas with firm and certain faith in your Son's resurrection: Grant us so perfectly and without doubt to believe in Jesus Christ, our Lord and our God, that our faith may never be found wanting in your sight; through him who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.
I would just like to say that I hate this collect. To me, it completely misses all the best parts of the story of St. Thomas: the part where Thomas fearlessly says that he doesn't believe, and that he won't believe until certain conditions are met; the part where the other disciples (apparently) don't try to argue him out of it or castigate him for not believing; the part where Thomas is willing to let his conditions go by the bye in light of new information.

Nothing perfect about that.  Certainly it's not without doubt.  And I am confident that if my faith is found wanting (and I don't doubt that it will), that God's grace will more than make up for my lack.

1 comment:

it's margaret said...

yeah --some of the collects surely show that they are more than 40 years old and in need of great revision....