Saint Thomas the Apostle

Saint Thomas the Apostle was one of Jesus' twelve disciples. He is also known as "doubting Thomas", since he refused to believe that Jesus was resurrected until he saw Christ himself. Tradition holds that he later traveled east to spread the Gospel, establishing churches in the Middle East and finally in India, where he died as a martyr. For this reason, Saint Thomas is an especially important saint for Indian Christians.

The Christian Saints Podcast is a joint production of Generative sounds & Paradosis Pavilion with oversight from Fr Symeon Kees

Paradosis Pavilion - https://youtube.com/@paradosispavilion9555

https://www.instagram.com/christiansaintspodcast
https://twitter.com/podcast_saints
https://www.facebook.com/christiansaintspodcast
https://www.threads.net/@christiansaintspodcast

Iconographic images used by kind permission of Nicholas Papas, who controls distribution rights of these images

Prints of all of Nick’s work can be found at Saint Demetrius Press - http://www.saintdemetriuspress.com

All music in these episodes is a production of Generative Sounds
https://generativesoundsjjm.bandcamp.com
Distribution rights of this episode & all music contained in it are controlled by Generative Sounds
Copyright 2021 - 2023

Transcript

 God is glorious in his saints!
 
 Welcome to the Christian Saints Podcast. My name is dr Darren Ong, recording from Sepang in Malaysia. In this podcast, we explore the lives of the Christian saints, from the Anglican, Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox traditions.Today, we commemorate St Thomas the Apostle.
 
 St Thomas was one of Jesus’ twelve disciples. In the gospels he is given the nickname Didymus, which means “the twin”. St Thomas is known as doubting Thomas due to his actions after Jesus’ resurrection. When the resurrected Christ first appears to his disciples, Thomas was not there with him, and he did not believe when the other disciples said they had seen Jesus Christ risen from the dead. We hear of this story in the Gospel of John chapter 20:
 
  Now Thomas (also known as Didymus[a]), one of the Twelve, was not with the disciples when Jesus came. 25 So the other disciples told him, “We have seen the Lord!”

But he said to them, “Unless I see the nail marks in his hands and put my finger where the nails were, and put my hand into his side, I will not believe.”

26 A week later his disciples were in the house again, and Thomas was with them. Though the doors were locked, Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you!” 27 Then he said to Thomas, “Put your finger here; see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it into my side. Stop doubting and believe.”

28 Thomas said to him, “My Lord and my God!”

 29 Then Jesus told him, “Because you have seen me, you have believed; blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.”
 
 There is a wonderful reflection on this passage by Father Lawrence Farley, of St. Herman of Alaska Orthodox Church (OCA) in Langley, B.C., Canada. This reflection is found in the website of the Orthodox Church of America. Father Farley casts the Apostle Thomas as a model of how we Christians should deal with our doubts. This reflection is titled “what it was that saved Thomas”:
 
 Thomas had a heart that had taken one too many beatings.  Despite his often being stigmatized by later generations as “Doubting Thomas,” there is nothing in his past record to indicate such a defect of character.  In John’s account of Christ’s raising of Lazarus, when the Lord said that Lazarus had died and that He was going to enter the cauldron of dangerous Judea to “go to him” [John 11:15], the disciples assumed that He meant following Lazarus by dying too in His attempt to visit the grieving family.  They were properly horrified, and reluctant to follow Him on such a doomed mission.  It was Thomas who spurred them on and said, “Let us also go, that we may die with Him” [v. 16].  In other words, Thomas could not bear the thought of letting his Lord die alone, but was prepared to accompany Him even if it meant his death as well.  This is not the utterance of a doubter, or of someone who is of two minds.  Thomas had wrapped his whole life around Jesus, and that life would have no meaning without Him.

Like the other disciples, Thomas rode the rollercoaster of His Lord’s final days.  He rode to the dizzying top when they entered Jerusalem and found the road strewn with palms and the air rent with cries of acclamation.  He shared their sense of imminent triumph when Jesus commandeered the Temple and brought to public humiliation those who tried to entrap Him there.  And like the other disciples he rode to the bottom of despair and grief when the morning after His late night Paschal arrest the mid-morning sun saw Him hanging on a cross.  One can only imagine the trauma to his poor tender heart — the heart of someone who was prepared to die with his Lord during His recent visit to Lazarus in Bethany.  They were so sure that Jesus was the Messiah, and that His Kingdom was at hand.  Yet His crucifixion at Roman hands was the indisputable proof, as far as a Jewish mind was concerned, that He could not have been the Messiah, for the Messiah was by definition the conquering King, the one who would triumph over the Romans.  Thomas’ whole world had been turned upside down in a day.  How could they all have been so wrong?  He could scarcely bear to try to work it out.  Had the Pharisees been right after all when they said He was a blasphemer Who worked miracles by the power of Satan?

Then came the offer of another ride to the top of the rollercoaster:  his fellow disciples came and said that He was alive after all and that they had seen Him [John 20:25].  Thomas could not bear yet another disappointment, another blow to his heart.  He could not bear to have his hopes ignited only to be told by them in another day or so that they had been mistaken after all, and that it was a mass hallucination or that it was only someone who looked like Jesus.  Thomas faced them all and drew his line in the epistemological sand:  “Unless I shall see in His hands the imprint of the nails and put my finger into the place of the nails, and put my hand into His side, I will not believe!”  They could believe all they liked; he would await the proof from his own senses.  Note that Thomas did not say, “I cannot believe”, but “I will not believe” — this was about decision.  Thomas was not doubting so much as choosing — making the choice to withhold belief until he had seen it for himself.  It was not a defect in character, but the putting on of armour, and his only way of protecting himself from yet another wound to his already bleeding heart.

And yet, note the next verse of John’s Gospel:  “After eight days again His disciples were inside and Thomas with them.”  Despite his refusal to share their faith, Thomas did not leave the apostolic company.  In the months and years they had known Jesus, He had melded them into a unified family.  They came from wildly disparate backgrounds — Simon was a Zealot who was dedicated to the violent overthrow of Rome, and Matthew was a collaborator who collected taxes for Rome.  And yet Jesus had transformed them, so that they were now dedicated not only to Him but also to one another — and Thomas remained with this family.  That was why he was with them a week later when Jesus once again came into their midst.  That was why Jesus was able to reveal Himself to Thomas and elicit from him the saving cry, “My Lord and my God!”  There is no reason to think that Jesus would have tracked him down if he had abandoned his fellow apostles and renounced their company.  The risen Christ only revealed Himself to those who loved Him and identified themselves with His other disciples.  He did not reveal Himself to Pilate and throw back into his Roman teeth the cynical quip, “What is truth?”  He did not reveal Himself to Caiaphas to reassert His Messianic claim to now sit at the right hand of Power.  His revelation to Thomas happened because Thomas stayed with his apostolic family and did not leave their company.

In doing this, Thomas teaches us also.  We also sometimes are subject to doubts about the truth of the Christian faith.  Thomas’ doubt sprung from a heart that had been struck down by sudden trauma.  Ours springs from the slow, ceaseless, and unrelenting barrage of propaganda from our secular society that inundates us.  We in the modern West live in a world washed clean from any trace of God or faith.  Everything our senses encounter reinforces the lie — every book or magazine we open, every movie, television program or newscast we watch, every casual contact or radio announcer we hear.  After a while we grow tired of fighting.  Can the whole world be wrong and we Christians alone be right?  A kind of spiritual fatigue overtakes us and the secular model of reality begins to look ever more tempting; unbelief, moral and religious relativism gain ever more credibility.  What do we do then?  Where can we take our doubts?

Thomas teaches us:  take your doubts to Church.  Do not abandon your Christian family, or retreat from the apostolic company.  Stay in Church, praying privately and attending the Church’s public Liturgy.  And ask Christ to give you the answers, and reveal Himself, and bring you the truth.  If you really want to know the truth, Christ will give it to you.  But be clear:  you must want to find the truth like a starving man wants to find food, like a man dying of thirst in the desert wants to find a watery oasis.  If you merely wouldn’t mind knowing the truth, there is no reason to think you will hear from Christ, for you are trifling with God.  God Himself promised:  “You will seek Me and find Me when you search for Me with all your heart”  [Jeremiah 29:13].  If you really want the truth, Christ will reveal it to you, for everyone who seeks finds.

Saint Thomas is not just the saint for Christian doubters.  He is the saint for all souls who really want to know the truth.  And he reveals where that truth is to be found:  in the apostolic Church of the living God.
 
 St Thomas is not specifically mentioned in the Bible after this. But church tradition holds that he traveled eastward as a missionary, bringing the gospel to the middle east, and all the way to India. Saint Thomas is a very important and beloved saint for Indian Christians, who believe that the churches and Christian communities that he established in his missionary journey last to this day. St Thomas’ Basilica is a church in Chennai, in India, over  St Thomas’ tomb.
 
 The most detailed ancient account of his missionary work in India comes from the “Acts of Thomas”. I won’t read it here, because it contains some heretical ideas about who Jesus Christ is. Insteaad I will read a summary of Thomas’ missionary work from that text from a scholarly article by J. N. FARQUHAR, The Apostle Thomas in North India 1926
Bulletin of the John Rylands Library, 10(1), 80-111.

 
 When the Apostles had been for a time in Jerusalem, they cast lots to

ascertainin which country each should preach, and India fell to the lot of Thomas;

but he was most unwilling to go. Christ appeared to him in a dream and

promised him His grace, but he would not go. Christ then sold him as a slave

to a merchant named Habbin, who camed him away by sea to India. The

starting-point of the voyage is not mentioned, but they stop at Andrapolis ;

and then, proceeding to India, reach the court of King Gudnaphar who

wanted a man to build hin a palace. Thomas, introduced as a carpenter,

received from the king money for the erection of the palace, but spent it om

the poor. The king remonstrated ; but miraculous eventsconvinced him that

Thomas by spending the money on the poor had built him a palace in heaven.Hence Gudnaphar and his brother Gad became Christians. Thereafter,

Thomas went to another kingdom in India, where by order of the king,

whose name was Mazdai, he was speared to death by four soldiers.

***
St Thomas has many different feast days. In the west, his feast day was originally in 21 December, but it was moved to July 3. The Roman Catholic church and most Anglican churches celebrate St Thomas’ day on the July 3 date. The eastern Orthodox church and Byzantice Catholic churches celebrate St Thomas’ day on 6 October, and also celebrate the Sunday after Easter as the St Thomas Sunday, since Jesus appeared to Thomas the week after the resurrection.



Thanks for listening to this episode of the Christian saints podcast. Look for the Christian Saints podcast page on Facebook or Instagram, or look for us on Twitter at podcast_saints. All music in this episode was composed by my good friend, James John Marks of Generative sounds. Please check out his music at https://generativesoundsjjm.bandcamp.com/. If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider giving us a 5-star review on Itunes or whatever podcast app you use, so more people can find the Christian saints podcast and be blessed by these stories of the saints.

***
 
 Troparion — Tone 2

You were a disciple of Christ, / and a member of the divine college of Apostles. / Having been weak in faith you doubted the Resurrection of Christ, / but by feeling the wounds you believed in His all-pure Passion: / pray now to Him, O all-praised Thomas, to grant us peace and great mercy.

Kontakion — Tone 4

Thomas, the faithful servant and disciple of Christ, / filled with divine grace, cried out from the depth of his love: / “You are my Lord and my God!”