Believing without seeing, touching, smelling, tasting, and hearing is not something that we can will in ourselves. It demands full trust in God on our part because faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen (cf Heb 11:1) Besides the five senses that are the rational ways of proving the existence of anything, we also have a sixth sense - that of feeling. We tend to see feelings as subjective and unreliable given its emotional and psychological ties. Yet, a person of faith, like the disciple Thomas, will allow what is the authentic output of the heart to even overwrite the logical output of the mind. For love is not always logical, and faith can move us to do things that are incomprehensible to the sensible mind.

This explains the way the early believers began to live as a community of faith, hope and love, where selfishness was non-existent, and everyone looked out for the other. But faith is not blind either. Indeed, it needs to be balanced with a healthy dose of reason. Thomas' faith therefore was tested and he responded as humanly as possible - going by what he felt in the depth of his heart with a healthy dose of reason, and yet not totally shut to the possibility that what is too good to be true might just be true! All he asked for was to be able to see as the rest did. And he did.