LIVES OF THE SAINTS

My Lord and my God!

John 20:28

St. Thomas

Thomas, called the Twin, is held in Christian memory above all for a single week of his life. When the risen Christ first appeared to the disciples in the locked upper room, Thomas was not with them, and when the others told him they had seen the Lord, he would not believe it. He asked for what they had already been given, to see the wounds and to touch them: Unless I put my finger where the nails were, I will not believe. A week later Christ came again, turned to him, and offered him exactly that. We are not told whether Thomas touched the wounds or only fell down before them. We are told what he said: My Lord and my God, the clearest confession of Christ's divinity that any of the Twelve makes in the Gospels.

The Orthodox Church does not treat his doubt as a disgrace. It keeps the scene on the first Sunday after Pascha, called Thomas Sunday, and teaches that his demand to see, far from weakening the Resurrection, confirmed it, so that none could later say the disciples had seen a ghost or believed too easily. His doubt became, in the providence of God, a gift to all who would come after and could not touch the wounds themselves. Christ's word to him is a word to us: Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.

There is more to Thomas than that week, though it is what we remember. Earlier, when Jesus resolved to go to Judea where His enemies waited, it was Thomas who said to the others, Let us also go, that we may die with Him, a courage that stands beside his later doubt and completes him. After Pentecost tradition carries him farther than any of the Twelve, all the way to India, where the ancient Saint Thomas Christians of the Malabar Coast still trace their faith to his preaching. He was martyred near Madras around the year 72, pierced with a spear.

In the icon he is shown young and beardless, holding a scroll. He is the apostle whose honest doubt was answered and overcome, a comfort to all whose faith has had to pass through a question to arrive.