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It is said that there are two sorts of people in this world. There are those who see half-empty glasses and those who see half-full glasses. In other words, there are those who are negative and those who are positive, those who look backwards and those who look forwards, pessimists and optimists.

Something similar can be said about doubt. Is doubt negative or is doubt positive?

The reality is that there are two sorts of doubt.

Firstly, there is the doubt that is a negative and destructive poison. It comes from a loss of faith, from lack of faith, it breeds cynicism. This doubt says: ‘I won’t believe, even if you prove it to me.

Then there is the doubt that is positive and constructive. It is curious, inquisitive, it waits to find out, it seeks the truth, it awaits confirmation of what it already suspects. This doubt says: ‘I will believe, if you show me’.

This second sort of doubt is that of Thomas, who with ‘his eagerly searching right hand’ sought out the Risen Christ. His doubt was such that it led to the confirmation of his faith and he cried: ‘My Lord and my God’.

His doubt confirmed him personally, because it led him to Pentecost, to being transformed from a disciple into an Apostle and bringing him to his Divine mission to India, where his holy relics are venerated to this very day. More than this, his doubt has confirmed the faith of millions throughout history, who have heard his story. They say: ‘Yes, I believe, because Thomas saw, he inserted his fingers into Christ’s wounds and so knew that the Crucified is Risen’.

Let us beware of the pessimistic, half-empty view of the world. This was the view that was held by the pharisees, who could only nitpick, hairsplit and find fault, even criticising Him who healed on the Sabbath. The pharisees are those who see only a few trees, never the whole forest, who oppose the good and creative and positive, who reduce the Living God to a mere ritual. And this pessimistic view was also the view of the saducees, the cynics and sceptics, the jaundiced doubters, the intellectuals of the age of Christ, who refused to believe in the Resurrection.

Let us rather turn to the optimistic, half-full view of the world. Not blindly or foolishly optimistic, but carefully and wisely optimistic. Because we know that Christ is risen, because we know that, whatever our many human weaknesses, His Resurrection confers on us life ‘in abundance’, everlasting life, and that whatever the destiny of this world, in the near or distant future, the last words in history are Christ’s. And those words will be words of victory, trampling down death by death and on those in the tombs bestowing life.

Christ is risen!

Amen.