Compunction , John 20: 24-29, St Thomas the Apostle,
Good Day Bloggers! Wishing everyone a blessed Tuesday!
P.U.S.H. (Pray Until Something Happens). It has a remarkable way of
producing solace, peace, patience and tranquility and of course
resolution...God's always available 24/7..
We are all human. We all experience birth, life and death. We all have
flaws but we also all have the gift knowledge and free will as well,
make the most of it. Life on earth is a stepping to our eternal home in
Heaven. Its your choice whether to rise towards eternal light or lost to
eternal darkness. Material items, though needed for sustenance and
survival on earth are of earthly value only. The only thing that passes
from this earth to Heaven is our Soul, our Spirit...it's God's perpetual
gift to us...Embrace it, treasure it, nurture it, protect it...
"Raise not a hand to another unless it is to offer in peace and goodwill." ~ Zarya Parx 2012
Word of the Day - Compunction. com·punc·tion. 'kuhm-puhngk-shuhn]
noun.- A feeling of uneasiness or anxiety of the conscience caused by regret for doing wrong or causing pain; contrition; remorse. ~~Many times we lash our in haste. Let's try to add compassion to compunction today and think before we speak or act by promoting peace instead of anger. -
Today's Gospel Reading - John 20:24-29
Thomas, called the Twin, who was one
of the Twelve, was not with them when Jesus came. So the other
disciples said to him, 'We have seen the Lord,' but he answered,
'Unless I can see the holes that the nails made in his hands and can
put my finger into the holes they made, and unless I can put my hand
into his side, I refuse to believe.'
Eight days later the disciples were in the house again and Thomas was with them. The doors were closed, but Jesus came in and stood among them. 'Peace be with you,' he said. Then he spoke to Thomas, 'Put your finger here; look, here are my hands. Give me your hand; put it into my side. Do not be unbelieving any more but believe.'
Thomas replied, 'My Lord and my God!' Jesus said to him: You believe because you can see me. Blessed are those who have not seen and yet believe
Eight days later the disciples were in the house again and Thomas was with them. The doors were closed, but Jesus came in and stood among them. 'Peace be with you,' he said. Then he spoke to Thomas, 'Put your finger here; look, here are my hands. Give me your hand; put it into my side. Do not be unbelieving any more but believe.'
Thomas replied, 'My Lord and my God!' Jesus said to him: You believe because you can see me. Blessed are those who have not seen and yet believe
Featured Items from Litany Lane
Saint of the Day: St Thomas the Apostle, Known as Doubting Thomas...
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| CARAVAGGIO The Incredulity of Saint Thomas 1601-02 Oil on canvas, 107 x 146 cm Schloss Sanssouci, Potsdam |
Feast Day: July 3, Patron Saint of Architects.
Though a devout apostle he heavily realized on visual proof....thus upon Jesus Resurrection he doubted the words of fellow apostles and demanded visual proof that Jesus had risen, the infamous cliche has perpetuated history: "Must one see to Believe.....The Gospel reads in Jh 20;24-29 as the Risen Jesus said to Thomas: "You believe because you can see me. Blessed are those who have not seen and yet believe."
Biography of Saint Thomas, the Apostle:
St. Thomas was a Jew, called to be one of the twelve Apostles. He was a dedicated but impetuous follower of Christ. When Jesus said He was returning to Judea to visit His sick friend Lazarus, Thomas immediately exhorted the other Apostles to accompany Him on the trip which involved certain danger and possible death because of the mounting hostility of the authorities. At the Last Supper, when Christ told His Apostles that He was going to prepare a place for them to which they also might come because they knew both the place and the way, Thomas pleaded that they did not understand and received the beautiful assurance that Christ is the Way, the Truth, and the Life. But St. Thomas is best known for his role in verifying the Resurrection of his Master. Thomas' unwillingness to believe that the other Apostles had seen their risen Lord on the first Easter Sunday merited for him the title of "doubting Thomas." Eight days later, on Christ's second apparition, Thomas was gently rebuked for his skepticism and furnished with the evidence he had demanded - seeing in Christ's hands the point of the nails and putting his fingers in the place of the nails and his hand into His side. At this, St. Thomas became convinced of the truth of the Resurrection and exclaimed: "My Lord and My God," thus making a public Profession of Faith in the Divinity of Jesus. St. Thomas is also mentioned as being present at another Resurrection appearance of Jesus - at Lake Tiberias when a miraculous catch of fish occurred. This is all that we know about St. Thomas from the New Testament. Tradition says that at the dispersal of the Apostles after Pentecost this saint was sent to evangelize the Parthians, Medes, and Persians; he ultimately reached India, carrying the Faith to the Malabar coast, which still boasts a large native population calling themselves "Christians of St. Thomas." He capped his left by shedding his blood for his Master, speared to death at a place called Calamine, Mylapore India.[1]
Saint Thomas the Apostle's Ministry: Christianity in India
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| PITTONI, Giambattista The Torture of St Thomas 1722 Oil on canvas San Stae, Venice |
"It was to a land of dark people he was sent, to clothe them by Baptism in white robes. His grateful dawn dispelled India's painful darkness. It was his mission to espouse India to the One-Begotten. The merchant is blessed for having so great a treasure. Edessa thus became the blessed city by possessing the greatest pearl India could yield. Thomas works miracles in India, and at Edessa Thomas is destined to baptize peoples perverse and steeped in darkness, and that in the land of India." – Hymns of St. Ephraem, edited by Lamy (Ephr. Hymni et Sermones, IV).
Eusebius of Caesarea[4] quotes Origen (died mid-3rd century) as having stated that Thomas was the apostle to the Parthians, but Thomas is better known as the missionary to India through the Acts of Thomas, perhaps written as late as ca 200. In Edessa, where his remains were venerated, the poet Ephrem the Syrian (died 373) wrote a hymn in which the Devil cries,
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- ...Into what land shall I fly from the just?
- I stirred up Death the Apostles to slay, that by their death I might escape their blows.
- But harder still am I now stricken: the Apostle I slew in India has overtaken me in Edessa; here and there he is all himself.
- There went I, and there was he: here and there to my grief I find him. —quoted in Medlycott 1905, ch. ii.
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 an unnamed merchant.[5]
A Syrian ecclesiastical calendar of an early date confirms the above and gives the merchant a name. 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.[6]
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.
According to Eusebius' record, Thomas and Bartholomew were assigned to Parthia and India.[7][8] The Didascalia (dating from the end of the 3rd century) states, “India and all countries condering it, even to the farthest seas...received the apostolic ordinances from Judas Thomas, who was a guide and ruler in the church which he built.”Moreover, there is a wealth of confirmatory information in the Syriac writings, liturgical books, and calendars of the Church of the East, not to mention the writings of the Fathers, the calendars, the sacramentaries, and the martyrologies of the Roman, Greek and Ethiopian churches. Since trade routes from the East were wide open at the time and were used by early missionaries, there are no circumstantial reasons why Thomas could not have visited India in the 1st century. And his visit is the most plausible explanation for the early appearance of the church there.
An early 3rd-century Syriac work known as the Acts of Thomas connects the apostle's Indian ministry with two kings, one in the north and the other in the south. According to one of the legends in the Acts, Thomas was at first reluctant to accept this mission, but the Lord appeared to him in a night vision and said, “Fear not, Thomas. Go away to India and proclaim the Word, for my grace shall be with you. ”But the Apostle still demurred, so the Lord overruled the stubborn disciple by ordering circumstances so compelling that he was forced to accompany an Indian merchant, Abbanes, to his native place in northwest India, where he found himself in the service of the Indo-Parthian king, Gondophares. According to the Acts of Thomas, the apostle's ministry resulted in many conversions throughout the kingdom, including the king and his brother.[3]
Critical historians treated this legend as an idle tale and denied the historicity of King Gundaphorus until modern archeology established him as an important figure in North India in the latter half of the 1st century. Many coins of his reign have turned up in Afghanistan, the Punjab, and the Indus Valley. Remains of some of his buildings, influenced by Greek architecture, indicate that he was a great builder. Interestingly enough, according to the legend, Thomas was a skilled carpenter and was bidden to build a palace for the king. However, the Apostle decided to teach the king a lesson by devoting the royal grant to acts of charity and thereby laying up treasure for the heavenly abode. Although little is known of the immediate growth of the church, Bar-Daisan (154–223) reports that in his time there were Christian tribes in North India which claimed to have been converted by Thomas and to have books and relics to prove it. But at least by the year of the establishment of the Second Persian Empire (226), there were bishops of the Church of the East in northwest India, Afghanistan and Baluchistan, with laymen and clergy alike engaging in missionary activity.
The Acts of Thomas identifies his second mission in India with a kingdom ruled by King Mahadwa, one of the rulers of a 1st-century dynasty in southern India. It is most significant that, aside from a small remnant of the Church of the East in Kurdistan, the only other church to maintain a distinctive identity is the Mar Thoma or “Church of Thomas” congregations along the Malabar Coast of Kerala State in southwest India. According to the most ancient tradition of this church, Thomas evangelized this area and then crossed to the Coromandel Coast of southeast India, where, after carrying out a second mission, he died near Madras. Throughout the period under review, the church in India was under the jurisdiction of Edessa, which was then under the Mesopotamian patriarchate at Seleucia-Ctesiphon and later at Baghdad and Mosul. Historian Vincent A. Smith says, “It must be admitted that a personal visit of the Apostle Thomas to South India was easily feasible in the traditional belief that he came by way of Socotra, where an ancient Christian settlement undoubtedly existed. I am now satisfied that the Christian church of South India is extremely ancient... ”.
Although there was a lively trade between the Near East and India via Mesopotamia and the Persian Gulf, the most direct route to India in the 1st century was via Alexandria and the Red Sea, taking advantage of the Monsoon winds, which could carry ships directly to and from the Malabar coast. The discovery of large hoards of Roman coins of 1st-century Caesars and the remains of Roman trading posts testify to the frequency of that trade. In addition, thriving Jewish colonies were to be found at the various trading centers, thereby furnishing obvious bases for the apostolic witness.
Piecing together the various traditions, one may conclude that Thomas left northwest India when invasion threatened and traveled by vessel to the Malabar coast, possibly visiting southeast Arabia and Socotra enroute and landing at the former flourishing port of Muziris on an island near Cochin (c. AD. 51–52). From there he is said to have preached the gospel throughout the Malabar coast, though the various churches he founded were located mainly on the Periyar River and its tributaries and along the coast, where there were Jewish colonies. He reputedly preached to all classes of people and had about seventeen thousand converts, including members of the four principal castes. Later, stone crosses were erected at the places where churches were founded, and they became pilgrimage centres. In accordance with apostolic custom, Thomas ordained teachers and leaders or elders, who were reported to be the earliest ministry of the Malabar church.
According to tradition, St. Thomas attained martyrdom at St. Thomas Mount in Chennai and is buried on the site of San Thome Cathedral.[9]
The Irony of Doubting Thomas and the Assumption of Our Blessed Heavenly Mother Mary
The Irony of Doubting Thomas and the Assumption of Our Blessed Heavenly Mother Mary
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According to The Passing of Mary, a text attributed to Joseph of Arimathaea,Thomas
was the only witness of the Assumption of Mary into heaven. The other
apostles were miraculously transported to Jerusalem to witness her
death. Thomas was left in India, but after her first burial he was
transported to her tomb, where he witnessed her bodily assumption into
heaven, from which she dropped her *girdle. In an inversion of the story
of Thomas' doubts, the other apostles are skeptical of Thomas' story
until they see the empty tomb and the girdle.[10] Thomas' receipt of the *girdle is commonly depicted in medieval and pre-Tridentine Renaissance art,[11][12] the apostle's infamous doubting reduced to a metaphorical knot in the Bavarian baroque Mary Untier of Knots.
*Definition: As a liturgical vestment, the girdle, also known as a cincture, is a long, rope-like cord tied around the waist over alb.
References:
- Online Catholic St. Thomas ."Biography of St. Thomas the Apostle". St. Thomas the Apostle Catholic Church. http://www.stapostle.org/index2.php?area=about&data=sthomasbio. Retrieved 2012-3-3.
- ^ T.K. Joseph (1955). Six St. Thomases Of South India. University of California. p. 27.
- ^ "Nasrani Syrian Christians". Kuzhippallil.com. http://kuzhippallil.com/nsc.html. Retrieved 2010-01-17.
- '^ Historia Ecclesiastica, III.1.
- ^ a b MEDLYCOTT, India and the Apostle St. Thomas (London, 1905).
- ^ Ananthakrishnan G, (2006-12-26). "Thomas's visit under doubt". Times of India. http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/msid-926822,prtpage-1.cms. Retrieved 2010-04-25.
- ^ "Thomas The Apostole". Stthoma.com. http://www.stthoma.com/. Retrieved 2010-04-25.
- ^ Neill, Stephen (2004). A History of Christianity in India: The Beginnings to AD 1707. Cambridge University Press. pp. 29
- ^ Robinson, J. Armitage (2003). Two Glastonbury Legends: King Arthur and St. Joseph of Arimathea, 1926. Kessinger Publishing, p. 33. ISBN 0-7661-7738-6
- ^ "The Passing of Mary". Ccel.org. 2005-06-01. http://www.ccel.org/fathers2/ANF-08/anf08-111.htm#P8673_2825546. Retrieved 2010-04-25.
- ^ dimus no. 17 (April 2008)St Thomas Receiving the Virgin Mary’s Girdle at her Assumption
- ^ In imitation of Saint Thomas Aquinas: art, patronage and liturgy within a Renaissance chapel