“My Lord, and My God”
Thomas, called in the Scriptures, Didymus, is more commonly known as “doubting Thomas”. He is the apostolic Advent saint, par excellence, since his commemoration always falls in late Advent, indeed, close to the winter solstice, the darkest time of nature’s year, and the longest night. Yet there is a wonderful paradox. Somehow, through Thomas’ doubting or questioning, we are, as Thomas Aquinas puts it, provided with a greater confirmation of faith. The Collect picks up on that sensibility and understanding.
Advent is the season of questions. The story of Thomas belongs to the accounts of the Resurrection and to the struggles of the disciples about the meaning of Christ as Lord and God. Thomas was not present with the other disciples huddled in fear behind closed doors on the evening of the day of Easter when Jesus revealed himself to them. Thomas has heard from them about what they saw and heard “but he said unto them, Except I shall see in his hands the print of the nails, and put my finger into his side, I will not believe”. He seems to be insisting on the reality of Christ’s bodily existence. “Eight days later, [the[ disciples were within and Thomas with them, then came Jesus, the doors being shut, and stood in the midst”.
The marvel of this account is that it is preceded by Jesus’ encounter with Mary Magdalene whom he commands noli me tangere, “touch me not”! Here Jesus bids Thomas to do the exact opposite, namely, to touch and see, specifically with respect to the wounds of his crucifixion. In a way it is a testimony to the bodily reality of the Incarnate Christ and to his Resurrection. Once again, we are reminded of the inescapable connection between Christmas and Easter.
In that sense his feast day belongs to the last days of Advent in the near approach to Christmas, to the birth of Christ, to the Word made flesh. That Jesus says one thing to Mary Magdalene and another to Thomas in the same chapter of John’s Gospel recognizes the different forms of human knowing. He speaks to each according to the capacity of the beholder to behold, we might say. His doubting is really his questioning about the nature of God’s engagement with our humanity. Theologically, it is a telling rebuke to what will become one of the earliest heresies, Docetism, which denied that God could become human, denying the engagement of spirit and matter, of God and man, seeing that as unworthy of God thus maintaining the complete separation of both.
Advent and Christmas are about the unity and the distinction of God and Man as grounded in the divine distinction of the Persons of the Trinity. Such is the basis for our co-inherence, our life with God and with one another as arising from the mutual and equal indwelling of Father, Son and Holy Ghost. We are not told whether Thomas actually did reach hither his finger and his hand to thrust them into the wounded side of the Risen Christ. It is enough that his words of faith speak to the mystery of Christmas: My Lord, and my God. This, too, is what we behold in the babe of Bethlehem: our Lord and our God.
The poet, Malcolm Guite, captures this sensibility wonderfully in a sonnet on Thomas, the “courageous master of the awkward question” and the “father of my faith”, as he puts it..
“We do not know … how can we know the way?”
Courageous master of the awkward question,
You spoke the words the others dared not say
And cut through their evasion and abstraction.
Oh doubting Thomas, father of my faith,
You put your finger on the nub of things.
We cannot love some disembodied wraith,
But flesh and blood must be our king of kings.
Your teaching is to touch, embrace, anoint,
Feel after Him and find Him in the flesh.
Because He loved your awkward counter-point
The Word has heard and granted you your wish.
Oh place my hands with yours, help me divine
The wounded God whose wounds are healing mine.
At every mass, the host and the chalice are elevated with the words of the private devotional prayers of the priest repeating Thomas’ words, “My Lord, and My God”, Dominus meus, Deus meus. Thus Thomas contributes to our being gathered into the mystery of the Incarnation in its fullest sense, into the mystery of Christmas and Easter.
“My Lord, and my God”
Fr. David Curry
Feast of St. Thomas, 2022