My life as a practicing Catholic started with the Eucharist. In my freshman year of high school, I went on a confirmation retreat, where I experienced my first Adoration. For the first time, I was fully reaching towards God, and He touched me. I felt truly, completely, and unconditionally loved, and I knew the source of that love was the Eucharist placed before me.
In the following years, I would have more Adoration experiences, filling my journal with gifts from God. And yet, despite all of the glory, my mind would always briefly think this one destructive phrase: “What if?” What if the person speaking tongues is actually babbling nonsense to get attention? What if the person with prophesy is a fraud making vague statement anyone could agree with?
These “what-ifs” about other people’s experiences earned me the nickname “doubting Patrick.” While the thoughts were distracting, I could at least rely on the fact that Jesus was truly present in the Eucharist and that He was revealing His love to those around him. Until I asked the ultimate “what if”: What if Jesus isn’t really there?
In the summer of 2018, I was a summer missionary with Life Teen. I lived in a pseudo-monastic community, complete with morning and night prayer and a daily holy hour in front of the Blessed Sacrament. One night in adoration, I stepped outside of myself. What are we doing? We are singing songs to this thing. We could be committing idolatry. I don’t recognize that bread as Jesus. If He were really here, my soul should recognize Him immediately.
I convinced myself I was a failed missionary and terrible Catholic. I had denied Christ when I was told He was right in front of my eyes. Throughout the whole month I saw Jesus do glorious things, and yet I’d started doubting His presence. In my mind, I had committed a terrible sin. Luckily, at a Catholic camp, a priest isn’t hard to find.
In confession, I unloaded all the “what-ifs” that attacked me and explained how I couldn’t see God in the Eucharist. The priest paused, and I waited to hear scolding or be handed a theology lesson. Instead, he simply looked at me and said casually, “Yeah, that’s not a sin.” I looked at him, bewildered.
“But I didn’t recognize Jesus!” I protested. “It’s like He appeared in His glorified body and I denied Him.”
He replied, “But He doesn’t appear to us in His glorified body.”
Upon further reflection, I notice that in Scripture, only one apostle claimed that Jesus was God during His earthly ministry. Peter may have recognized Christ as the Messiah, and James and John may have seen the transfigured Christ, but while Jesus was in their midst, they never professed he is truly God. In fact, the disciples were consistently befuddled by the signs and teachings of Jesus, since they had to wrestle with who or what Jesus was. Their senses confounded them.
The one person who asserted the divinity of Jesus was Thomas—yes, doubting Thomas. After Thomas questioned the existence of the risen Jesus, He appeared before him and Thomas professed, “My Lord and my God” (Jn 20:28). Jesus welcomes doubt, and supplements it with truth.
As I was debriefing my experience of doubt with a fellow missionary, he told me that Adoration is either one of the greatest glories of Catholicism, or we are idolaters. That is probably why Christians are so polarized by the Eucharist. My sight will only see bread and wine. Like the apostles, I’ve accepted my human perception will often conflict with the divine reality before me.
Faith can overcome the limitations of sight and allow me to recognize the True Presence, but this faith is a gift from God. Even when I was in an environment conducive to trust, I still questioned Him. Maybe God removed my faith so I could wrestle with my doubt and learn that it is not a sin; rather, it is invited. Like Thomas, we are called to question and seek clarity. And God will answer if we are persistent in prayer.
Saint Thomas Aquinas recognized the limitations of the human senses when it comes to the Eucharist. In his Adoration prayer “Tantum Ergo,” he wrote an appeal for God to gift us with a faith that supersedes our senses. Præstet fides supplementum, sensuum defectui, which translated reads: Faith for all defects supplying, where the feeble senses fail.
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