Saint Thomas the Apostle, also called Doubting Thomas, or Didymus, was one of the Twelve Apostles of Jesus. He is perhaps best known for disbelieving Jesus' Resurrection when first told of it, then proclaiming "My Lord and my God" on seeing Jesus. He was perhaps the only Apostle who went outside the Roman Empire to preach the Gospel. He also crossed the largest area, which includes Persia, India and China].

Thomas in the Gospel of John

Thomas appears in a few passages in the Gospel of John. In John 11:16, when Lazarus has just died, the disciples are resisting Jesus' decision to return to Judea, where the Jews had previously tried to stone Jesus. Jesus is determined, and Thomas says bravely: "Let us also go, that we might die with him".

In Thomas' best known appearance in the New Testament, John 20:24-29, he doubts the resurrection of Jesus and demands to touch Jesus' wounds before being convinced. This story is the origin of the term Doubting Thomas. After seeing Jesus alive , Thomas professed his faith in Jesus, exclaiming "My Lord and my God!"; on this account he is also called Thomas the Believer.

Veneration as a Saint

Thomas is revered as a saint in the Roman Catholic Church, the Eastern Orthodox Churches, and the Oriental Orthodox Churches. In the Roman Catholic Church, his actual feast day is December 21. It was moved in order to accommodate the commemoration of St. Peter Canisius, who died on December 21. The Roman Catholic and Anglican calendars honour him on July 3, the day on which his relics are believed to have been translated from Mylapore, a place along the coast of the Marina Beach, Chennai in India to the city of Edessa in Mesopotamia. For the Eastern Orthodox Churches, the Eastern Catholic Churches and the Coptic Orthodox Church he is remembered each year on Saint Thomas Sunday, which falls on the Sunday after Easter. In addition, the Eastern Orthodox and Byzantine Catholic churches celebrate his feast day on October 6 .He is also commemorated in common with all of the other apostles on June 30 , in a feast called the Synaxis of the Holy Apostles. He is also associated with the "Arabian" (or "Arapet") Icon of the Theotokos (Mother of God), which is commemorated on September 6 .

 

St Thomas and India

St. Ephraem, the great doctor of the Syrian Church, writes in the forty-second of his "Carmina Nisibina" that the Apostle was put to death in India, and that his remains were subsequently buried in Edessa, brought there by a merchant.

A Syrian ecclesiastical calendar of an early date confirms the above. The entry reads: "3 July, St. Thomas who was pierced with a lance in India. His body is at Urhai [the ancient name of Edessa] having been brought there by the merchant Khabin. A great festival." It is only natural to expect that we should receive from Edessa first-hand evidence of the removal of the relics to that city; and we are not disappointed, for St. Ephraem, the great doctor of the Syrian Church, has left us ample details in his writings. In the forty-second of his "Carmina Nisibina" he tells us the Apostle was put to death in India, and that his remains were subsequently buried in Edessa, brought there by a merchant. But his name is never given; at that date the name had dropped out of popular memory.

A long public tradition in the church at Edessa honoring Thomas as the Apostle of India resulted in several surviving hymns that are attributed to Ephrem, copied in codices of the 8th and 9th centuries. References in the hymns preserve the tradition that Thomas' bones were brought from India to Edessa by a merchant, and that the relics worked miracles both in India and at Edessa. A pontiff assigned his feast day and a king and a queen erected his shrine. The Thomas traditions became embodied in Syriac liturgy, thus they were universally credited by the Christian community there. There is also a legend that Thomas had met the Biblical Magi on his way to India.

St. Gregory of Tours , before 590, reports that Theodore, a pilgrim who had gone to Gaul, told him that in that part of India where the corpus (bones) of Thomas the Apostle had first rested, there stood a monastery and a church of striking dimensions and elaboratedly adorned, adding: "After a long interval of time these remains had been removed thence to the city of Edessa."

 The indigenous church of Kerala, India has a tradition that St. Thomas sailed there to spread the Christian faith. He is said to have landed at a small village, at that time a port, named Palayoor, near Guruvayoor, which was a priestly community at that time. He left Palayoor in AD 52 for southern Kerala State, where he established the Ezharappallikal, or "Seven and Half Churches". These churches are at Kodungallur, Kollam, Niranam, Nilackal (Chayal), Kokkamangalam, Kottakkayal (Paravoor), Palayoor (Chattukulangara) and Thiruvithamcode Arappally (Travancore ) - the half church

 

 

St Thomas Christians

Thomasine Christianity is found in the southern Indian state of Kerala. These churches of Malabar trace their roots back to St. Thomas the Apostle who according to local tradition arrived along the Malabar Coast in the year AD 52. In the Syriac tradition, St. Thomas is referred to as Mar Thoma Sleeha which translate roughly as Lord/Saint Thomas the Apostle.

St Thomas Christians had a unique identity till the arrival of Portuguese in India, who converted St. Thomas Christians to the Catholic Church. As a result of this foreign intervention into the culture there are several present day St. Thomas churches, primarily in the Catholic and Oriental Orthodox Traditions.

The largest church in terms of membership is the Syro-Malabar Catholic Church, a major archepiscopal church in communion with the Bishop of Rome with a membership approaching four million adherents. The second largest is the Indian Orthodox church which have 3.5 million followers. The Oriental Orthodox church with its rich history is trampled under continued litigation between two parties owing their allegiance to separate primates. The Malankara Orthodox Syrian Church (also known as the Indian Orthodox Church) views itself as an autocephlous Orthodox Church with the Catholicos of the East as their head while, the Malankara Syriac Orthodox Church has a local head in the person of the Catholicos of India.

 A related, although minor, church in Malankara is the Mar Thoma Church. The church claims membership of 900,000.

 Prior to the advent of Roman Catholic Christianity in India in the 16th century, Syrian and Persian Christians in Malabar were called Nazaranis or Nazarenes. The first name indicated the Christian doctrine they followed after the church founded by Thomas of Cana in Malabar was linked to the Nestorian Church of Seleucia in AD 450, and the second name linked them back to the first Jewish Nazarene Christians who fled to Edessa, Syria, prior to the fall of Jerusalem in AD 66. Jewish Nazarenes belonged to an ancient sect of which Samson and Jesus were the most famous members -- Nazarene does not refer to the town of Nazareth in Israel, which did not exist till the 3rd century AD.