Something to Really Believe

In which I stop by to see Saint Thomas

Canadian singer-songwriter Burton Cummings had never been much on religion, by his own admission. But on that dreary afternoon when he ducked into Manhattan’s Saint Thomas Church to wait out a bad New York winter storm, he couldn’t deny what he felt as he sat quietly in the back pew. In later years, he described it as “a presence” — something that couldn’t be explained, or explained away. All he could think, in the words of the hit song that came out of it, was “I’m scared.”

I saw the city for the first time the other week. But there was no storm on the afternoon I stopped by to see Saint Thomas. The weather was warm. Times Square was humming. My city-wise host friend and I had plotted a loose course of “church-hopping” for the day, timing it so that we would hit the cathedral before it closed at 2. Had I planned better the weekend prior, I might have caught a piano concert or attended a mass. Then again, scrolling through the official church site, my enthusiasm had been dampened by footage of the choir singing through masks, the attendees scattered in the pews according to “proper” distancing regulations.

Walking inside, we saw the pew rows alternately marked with a green check or a red X—for sheep and goats respectively, my friend quipped. I noticed that for the “X”-marked rows, the wine-red velvet cushions had been lifted up and set back, as if to make the pews maximally uninviting. These sorts of reminders formed a consistently irksome pattern throughout our tour. (At the Church of St. Mary the Virgin, we found a small typed note in the Holy Water stoup explaining that Holy Water would not be provided “as long as COVID remains a threat.”)

And yet, the cathedral remained, its hushed majesty towering over all, transcending the chances and changes and neuroses of this mortal life. I took a pew to soak it in, my friend taking one behind me. For a little while, we sat like that, each of us in our private way giving ourselves over to the mystery. Even as we eventually succumbed to our generational temptation to capture everything with a phone camera, we kept this limited, taking in as much as we could with the infinitely superior camera of our eyes. We were nearly alone, except for a single young man sitting quietly across the aisle.

As I meditated on the High Altar and its Great Reredos, with its rank on rank of saints from the first apostles to John Wycliffe to Bishop Butler, I thought of the hymn “Ye Watchers and Ye Holy Ones.” I thought of the eternal call and response, the perpetual give-and-take of souls in endless rest—both those souls who like Thomas saw and believed, and those who had not seen, and yet believed. Though I wasn’t close up enough to see, I know among the figures is the doubting apostle himself, on his knees before Christ, his demand granted, his spirit submitted.

I have an abiding affection for Thomas, inclined as I am in my own personality to be pessimistic, to be cautious, to demand evidence. We catch glimpses of his personality in little vivid asides, such as the moment when the apostles realize Jesus won’t be dissuaded from returning to hostile Jerusalem. “Well,” Thomas sighs heavily, “Let us all go with him, so that we may die also.” (I can never resist elaborating on this in my mind à la Puddleglum in C. S. Lewis’s The Silver Chair: “We’ll never see home again, I shouldn’t wonder.”) After the resurrection, Thomas can’t rely even on the strength of his fellow apostles’ word. He is intransigent. He will not believe, unless. Unless.

Lewis wrote that faith is not properly defined as a blind persistence in that which contradicts our reason. Rather, it is the ongoing act of holding on to that belief in spite of shifting moods and circumstance—a task which may consume a lifetime in itself.

“Blessed are they who have not seen, and yet believe.” Many have interpreted Jesus’ words as a rebuke of those who seek evidence, those who find themselves unable to make the Kierkegaardian leap over seventy thousand fathoms without some surety, some lifeline their hands can handle. This is not how I see it. Jesus simply knows that what Thomas has been given will be given to only a few. And though he has not left himself without witness, though he knows John will see and bear record, he knows that it is not the same. It is not the same as if our own fingers could touch his prints, could thrust themselves in his side. It is not the same as if we could bring our questions to him and receive an audible reply, even a cryptic and brusque reply.

Like so many before me, I prayed. I prayed twice, once in the pew and again before the small side altar, kneeling on the embroidered Lamb. Inadequately, I called to mind and offered up my various fears, anxieties and sorrows, for myself and those I love. I felt, as we all do, the sense of randomness that so often attends such fears, the sense of powerlessness, the sense that God Himself, having set material causes in motion, has stepped back to watch them run their course. I can reconcile this in my mind with perfect omniscience, even perfect goodness. In that sense, I don’t doubt. Only sometimes, like Thomas, I wish for a sign. My hands wish for assurance.

Safely home, with the city already beginning to fade in my mind, I pulled up YouTube and searched for interior tours of the church. Immediately, the algorithm found me this clip of Burton Cummings, making a decades-later pilgrimage to the place where he’d first felt “something in the air.” He is not a deeply knowledgeable guide. He can’t expound on the detail of the architecture, the carvings, the figures. He has only a child-like gratitude that this cathedral is here for him to see, to sit in, to enjoy.

The church is nearly empty, as it was for me. But towards the end, unexpectedly, someone begins to play the great organ. In awe, Cummings takes a knee. It is the only thing to do.

Living in confusion,
Searching for truth that I never found,
I needed something to really believe.
Looked toward the heavens
On a dark and stormy winter afternoon.
Something in the air was oh so rare.
I’m not really sure what it was,
But I know for sure that it’s still right there.