Sermon for the Feast of St. Thomas
“My Lord, and my God”
In the wonder of God’s Providence, the Feast of St. Thomas, which falls on the 21st of December, on the longest night and shortest day of nature’s year (at least in the Northern hemisphere – a reminder to us of the conditions and realities of creation and where we are placed within it), was also The Fourth Sunday in Advent. Andrew and Thomas are the Advent Saints but, especially Thomas, whose feast always falls within the Advent season; Andrew’s feast day, the 30th of November sometimes falls just before Advent begins, though this year in the wonder of Providence it, too, fell on a Sunday, indeed, The First Sunday in Advent.
In the case of both Andrew and Thomas and in keeping with the logic of their place in the Sanctorale, the cycle of saints’ days that intersperse and shape and in turn are shaped by the seasons of the Church Year, their commemorations are transferred to the following Tuesday. Thus both Andrew and Thomas give place to what they themselves bear witness to and by which they are defined: the Advent of Christ. So tonight on the eve of Christmas Eve we commemorate Thomas the Apostle.
In an important way, the whole meaning of Advent (and so of Christmas) is profoundly encapsulated in Thomas’s words, “My Lord, and my God”, borne out of his encounter with the Risen Christ as recorded in the 20th Chapter of John’s Gospel. His words bring all of the questions of Advent to their fullness of meaning. Somehow so-called doubting Thomas, as the Collect suggests, drawing in part upon another Thomas, Thomas Aquinas, provides “the more confirmation of the faith” precisely through his being doubtful. Doubtful about what? Christ’s resurrection.
What does this have to do with Advent? Everything. There can be no resurrection without a body. The Christian Advent in its fullness of meaning is all about the body – Christ incarnate and born of the Virgin Mary. The encounter between Thomas and the Risen Christ in the Upper Room on the eighth day of Easter testifies to the truth of Christ’s humanity, the truth of the Word and Son of God made flesh. For what end? The resurrection is the redemption of our humanity and witnesses to the sacrifice of Christ so powerfully presented to us in the Gospel for the Feast of Thomas.
