Saint Thomas the Apostle

“ This blessed apostle, I say, for all these tribulations that he himself suffered in the continuance of so many years, calleth all the tribulations of this world but light and as short as a moment, in respect of the weighty glory that it winneth us after this world: "This same short and momentary tribulation of ours that is in this present time, worketh within us the weight of glory above measure on high, we beholding not these things that we see, but those things that we see not. For those things that we see are but temporal things, but those things that are not seen are eternal." ”

“ Then answered Thomas: ' Oh! thou my Lord,
send me whither Thou wilt, save to the Indians.'
The Saviour said to him: — ' Go now, and I will be with thee,
and will not forsake thee;
and after that thou hast gained for Me the Indians,
thou shalt come to Me with the glorious crown of martyrdom.'
Thomas answered Him: ' Thou art my Lord,
and I am Thy servant; Thy will be done.'
Lo then! the steward, who was named Abbanes,
(come) from the Indian king, rowed to land,
and went through the province seeking his errand.
Then Christ went to him, and said openly,
' What buyest thou, youth? ”

“ I rear the building, so that the roof shall surmount
all edifices, and it shall be fair without,
and the work shall nevertheless be more beautiful within.
"Whatsoever there be in marble or in glorious building,
I verily make, and if thou wilt commit to me
boys to teach, I will instruct them truly.'
Then said Abbanes: 'Excellent is the man
who hath such workmen; he is better than any king.'
Thomas answered him: ' Excellently thou hast spoken. ”

“ It is impossible to accomplish it alone; no spiritual exclusiveness is thinkable in this connection, to say nothing of the lower forms of egotism and selfishness. Twice in this brief writing does the Apostle refer to “all the saints” (ch. vi. 18) , thereby reminding us of the place and power of each saint in the spiritual economy of God. One saint will be able to comprehend a little, another saint a little more, and so on, until at length all the saints together are “strong to grasp” the Divine love. The wider our fellowship the fuller and firmer our hold of the love of Christ. ”

“ After the Saviour's passion and resurrection from death
and ascension into heaven, when His apostles
travelled throught this earth, then came Thomas
to the city of Caesarea, and the Saviour Himself
came to him from heaven, thus saying: —
' The king of the Indians, who is called Gondophorus,
hath sent his steward to the Syrian land
to seek a workman who is well skilled in his craft ”

“ Thomas afterwards traversed various kingdoms of India, preaching the Gospel everywhere, working many miracles, and converting the nations to Jesus Christ. At last he was persecuted by a king named Mesdeus, who ordered him to worship a statue of the sun. The apostle consented to kneel down before it, and to sacrifice to it, if the statue did not, at his command, fall into dust. But that miracle really took place. Then there arose a great tumult among the people, the greater part of whom took part with St. Thomas. ”

“ It is mainly for the light they throw on Gnostic ideas that the Acts of Thomas deserve to be studied; for they are a mere romance without any historic value. The object of the Acts seems to have been to delineate a Christian ideal as presented in Thomas, whose "acts of compassion, and the cures done by him as a free gift, and still more, his single-mindedness, and gentleness, and fidelity, show that he is a just man, or an apostle of the new God whom he preaches ”

“ O LORD JESUS CHRIST, Enlightener of Thy faithful ones amidst the darkness of this world, I bless Thee, and give thanks to Thee, for the surpassing mercy shown to Thy holy Apostle Thomas by Thy special appearance to him, thus strengthening him in believing in Thy Resurrection, which passes all human understanding, and except by faith and Divine revelation is incomprehensible to fallen man. Many are the marvellous works, O Lord God, that Thou hast wrought since the foundation of the world ”

“ Beyond this, the writings of the New Testament give not the least account of Thomas; and his subsequent history can only be uncertainly traced in the dim and dark stories of tradition, or in the contradictory records of the Fathers. Different accounts state that he preached the gospel in Parthia,――Media,――Persia,――Ethiopia,――and at last, India. A great range of territories is thus spread out before the investigator, but the traces of the apostle’s course and labors are both few and doubtful. ”

“ The great merit is to believe without any evidence—“He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved, he that believeth not shall be damned.” How it was that Thomas the apostle did not know Jesus when he saw him shortly after near the sea of Tiberias, is another of the mysteries of the Holy Christian religion. The acts of the apostles after the death of Jesus deserve treatment in a separate paper; the present essay is issued to aid the members of the Church Congress in their endeavors to stem the rising tide of infidelity. ”

“ How when Our Lord was ascended into heaven, then he sent St. Thomas, his apostle, into Ind, to preach there God's word. And as St. Thomas went about in the temples he found a star in every one, painted after the manner of the Star that appeared to the three Kings when Christ was born, in which Star was a sign of the Cross and a Child above. And when [Pg 38] St. Thomas saw this he asked of the bishops what it was, and they told him that such a Star of old time appeared on the Hill of Vaws in token of a Child that was born who should be king of the Jews, as was heard spoken out of the same Star. ”

“ If you use the light you have, the Spirit will give you more. Many have had the same experiences through which Thomas the Apostle, passed; read it.
EXCEPT I shall see in his hands the print of the nails, and put my finger into the print of the nails, and thrust my hand into his side, I will not believe. And after eight days again his disciples were within, and Thomas with them: then came Jesus, the door being shut, and stood in the midst, and said, Peace be unto you. Then saith he to Thomas, Reach hither thy finger, and behold my hands ”

“ Thomas the Apostle, December 21st, 1643, being in her twenty-third year. Shortly after she added the a vow of poverty, and from that time her career of sanctity was unmistakable. She advanced in virtue as she advanced in age, and the practise of every good work, and held the office of Prefect of the extern congregation for many years. In 1647, her father falling dangerously sick, she attended him with all the love and charity that might be expected from such a daughter, and had the consolation of seeing him die full of hope and trust in the mercy of God. ”

“ It was not, however, till his sixteenth year, that he appeared to be truly renewed by the grace of God. Then he manifestly became a new creature in Christ Jesus. With his whole heart he now devoted himself to the Lord, was baptized by Mr. Thomas, and received into the church. His subsequent disposition and conduct fully confirmed the sincerity of his profession, adorned the doctrine of God our Saviour, and greatly endeared him to his pastor and fellow-members. ”

“ Though they think there be none, yet since they deny not that all the corps of Christendom for so many hundred years have believed the contrary, and among them all the old interpreters of scripture from the apostles' days down to our time, many of whom they deny not for holy saints, these men must, of their courtesy, hold my poor fear excused, that I dare not now believe them against all those. And I beseech our Lord heartily for them, that when they depart out of this wretched world, they find no purgatory at all—provided God keep them from hell! ”

“ But He who sees into the hearts of all—looking in his benevolence more at the intention than the outward form, may perhaps sometimes find in it the workings of a true christian piety, and so reward it with his love. Let us trust so in the charity of our faith, and proceed to notice that portion of the old record which is more intimately connected with our subject. We read that
"Thomas had brought with him to the convent, on his entering, many books, of both canon and civil law; as well as the books by which he had regulated the schools of Oxford and Exeter before he became a monk. ”

“ There are few saints, in fact, of whose daily life and habits we know more than St. Thomas. He is familiar to us as one of ourselves. We seem to see him enjoying his ordinary recreation of walking up and down the cloister of his convent, occasionally dragged off by his brethren to take a breath of fresh air in the garden, but sure in such cases to be found before long in some remote corner, absorbed in cogitation. ”

“ Not even the rite of baptism is administered and many are so ignorant that they believe Saint Thomas the Great to be the Christ. This friar had, however, the saving quality of optimism, especially in the work of his own Order, for he says, “Of the conversion of those nations of India I say this, that if there were two or three hundred good friars who would faithfully and fervently preach the Catholic faith, there is not a year that would not see more than ten thousand persons converted to the Christian faith.” ”

“ The doctrines of those illustrious men, like the scattered members of a body, Thomas collected together and cemented, distributed in wonderful order, and so increased with important additions that he is rightly and deservedly esteemed the special bulwark and glory of the Catholic faith. With his spirit at once humble and swift, his memory ready and tenacious, his life spotless throughout, a lover of truth for its own sake, richly endowed with human and divine science, like the sun he heated the world with the warmth of his virtues and filled it with the splendor of his teaching. ”

“ Thomas having preached at all in India has been frequently called in question by writers deserving of attention; but we find it supported by so much evidence, that it seems difficult for an unprejudiced mind to refuse credit to a fact guaranteed by such excellent historical authorities. All the Greek, Latin, and Syriac monuments proclaim that St. Thomas was the apostle of the Indies, who carried the torch of faith into the remote regions where he suffered martyrdom. Some writers have affirmed that he prosecuted his apostolical labours as far even as China ”

“ Like his great teacher Albert, Thomas was respected even more for his piety than for his learning. Not long after his death, people began to speak of him as a saint. Though he was the most learned man of his time, he was considered to have given an example of heroic virtue. ”

“ God does his work once for all. The apostles finished their special work, the fathers finished theirs, and we can have no more apostles or fathers of the church. The doctors have done their work, and, although they may have left room for successors, yet this is not in the sense that their work is to be done over again. We do not believe there can ever arise another St. Thomas to reconstruct more perfectly the edifice of theology and philosophy in those parts which he has built, and these are its essential and principal parts. Of theology we need not speak particularly. ”

“ O blessed Saint Thomas! who art now in the land of light and vision, intercede for us that we may be as little children, believing all we are told and quietly waiting till the day dawn and the Orient arises in all His majesty and strength, preparing as a giant to run His course, but for the moment hiding everything under the form of a helpless babe. We do not ask for sight but for the light which will lead us to Him, the light of faith, so that when we see Him wrapped in swaddling clothes and lying in a manger we may cry out with you: "My Lord and My God." ”

“ If there were but one soul alone to enjoy God, it would be blessèd, even though it were without a single fellow-creature whom it could love.” [294]
(iv) And yet St. Thomas’s own deeply Christian sense, explicit sayings of Our Lord or of St. Paul, and even, in part, certain of the fuller apprehensions of the Greeks, can make the great Dominican again uncertain, or can bring him to entirely satisfactory declarations, on each of these points. For we get the declaration that direct knowledge of individual things, and quasi-creative operativeness are essential to all true perfection. ”

“ No man was more active than he, in revivals. He would go many miles to assist in carrying them on, and in getting outsiders interested in religion. His house being one of the holiest, if not the happiest in St. Michael's, became the "preachers' home." These preachers evidently liked to share Master Thomas's hospitality; for while he starved us, he stuffed them. Three or four of these ambassadors of the gospel—according to slavery—have been there at a time; all living on the fat of the land, while we, in the kitchen, were nearly starving. ”

“ And those that were healed by him said with one accord and one voice, "Glory to thee, Jesus, who in like manner hast given healing to all through thy servant and apostle Thomas! And being in good health, and rejoicing, we pray thee, that we may become members of thy flock and be counted among thy sheep. Receive us, therefore, O Lord, and consider not our trespasses and our former transgressions, which we have done, because we were in ignorance!" ”

“ Thomas himself, attempt at times to combine, with the noblest Platonic and the deepest Christian teachings, certain elements, which, in strictness, have no place in an Incarnational Religion.
(iii) For, at times, the fullest, deepest Action is still not conceived, even by St. Thomas, as a Harmony, an Organization of all Man’s essential powers, the more the better. “In the active life, which is occupied with many things, there is less of beatitude than in the contemplative life, which is busy with one thing alone,—the contemplation of Truth” ”