by CCW | 21 December 2017 22:00
The cycle of the Saints’ Day celebrations illumine the seasons of the Church year. Andrew heralds the Advent and inaugurates the tradition of Christian discipleship of bringing others to Christ, in his case, initially Simon Peter. Other figures, too, such as John the Baptist and Mary, belong to the theological landscape of Advent, the one preparing the way by repentance, the other as the chosen vessel of Christ’s Incarnation. What, then, about Thomas, the Saint of the Advent, too, it seems? His feast day falls so close to the winter solstice, the darkest day and longest night, and so close to Christ’s nativity. Two things, perhaps. His feast marks the intensity of the inwardness of the Advent of Christ and grounds Advent and Christmas in the mysteries of the crucifixion and the resurrection without which they have no meaning.
The Epistle reading from Ephesians not only recalls the apostolic foundation of the Church but also our Christian vocation through that foundation to be “an habitation of God through the Spirit,” even as Christ is the Divine Word who dwelt among us, Mary being the “habitaculum dei,” the little habitation of God for us, as the Fathers put it. But it is the Gospel that especially arrests our attention. It is the story of so-called “doubting Thomas,” the Thomas who was not with the other disciples on the evening of the Resurrection when Christ appeared to them “behind closed doors,” the Thomas who hearing about Christ’s appearing said he would not believe “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.” Not just seeing as believing, it seems, but touching is required as well.
The story already anticipates and belongs to the refutation of what will be the earliest heresy known as docetism. The distinction between spirit and matter, between God and the world, between God and man is held absolutely and in a dualist manner. Spirit is good, and matter is evil and in its various gnostic forms, salvation is about the liberation of spirit from matter in which it is trapped. There is, in other words, no redemption of the natural world, no redemption of our humanity, only a “beam me up, Scotty” kind of Star Trek view of salvation which denies the integrity of the material world empirically speaking. From such a view, the Incarnation of God is impossible and an affront to the Divine nature. Christ’s crucifixion and resurrection can only be a kind of play, a mere seeming; in short, a sham. And, by extension, the virgin birth must be false. Contrary to the wonderful words of the Te Deum, God would have abhorred the Virgin’s womb!
At issue is the very nature of human redemption which turns as well upon the nature of creation. In the Christian understanding, creation and redemption are necessarily connected and have their point of connection in the nature of God himself. In a way Thomas’s encounter a week later in the same upper room and behind closed doors with the Risen Christ is testament to the Christian claim about the intimacy of God’s engagement with our humanity in the humanity of Christ, the Word made flesh. It is a marvelous scene and that we should hear it just before the mystery of Christmas means that it serves to prepare us for the celebration of Christ’s birth. How? Christ presents himself to Thomas and bids him “reach hither thy finger, and behold my hands; and reach hither thy hand, and thrust it into my side” and most wonderfully with respect to both Easter and Christmas, he says to Thomas and to us, “be not faithless but believing.”
We are not told what Thomas did. We are only told what he said: “My Lord, and my God.” It complements the words of the angel to the Shepherds on Christmas morn. “For unto you is born this day in the City of David, a Saviour which is Christ the Lord.” To name Christ as Lord is to say he is Lord and God. That must be our faithful response to the mystery of Christmas. Thomas’s doubt provides the greater certainty for our faith. Our response to what we behold in Bethlehem in the child Christ is Thomas’s word, “My Lord, and my God.”
Just so at Mass there is the tradition of the private prayers of the priest at the elevation of the host and the chalice with Thomas’s words: Dominus meus, Deus meus, My Lord and my God. It has entirely to do with what we see and hear, what we believe and understand. And what is that? It is the mystery of human redemption in the engagement of God with our humanity in the Incarnate Christ. He comes to dwell and abide with us and in us, that we may be “an habitation of God through the Spirit.” For as the Te Deum states, “when thou tookest upon thee to deliver man, thou didst not abhor the Virgin’s womb.”
Thomas’s doubt leads to certainty. Descartes, too, perhaps, was influenced by this story, it seems to me, with his hyperbolical doubt, calling all things into question about what we can know, especially highlighting the uncertainty of what is known through our senses but only to discover what could be known indubitably. His famous cogito, “I think therefore I am,” is an empty knowing without the further discovery of the necessary existence of God. In short, for early modernity, there can be no knowledge of the self without the knowledge of the existence of God as the foundation for all our knowing both of ourselves as finite and imperfect and of the natural world.
Yet long before Descartes, Thomas’s doubt led to the certainty of faith. May it be so with us this Christmas. May we behold the infant Christ and say with Thomas,
Fr. David Curry
Feast of St. Thomas, 2017
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