In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.
Christ is risen
When Saint Mary Magdalene and the other women ran to the apostles and said that they had seen the Risen Christ, did the apostles immediately believe them ? No. The apostles went and saw the empty tomb, and even then they were not sure until finally they were convinced by a series of events. The questions of the Apostle Thomas are in line with the same hesitancy of all the other apostles.
This is important for us Orthodox Christians to remember in our spiritual lives now. In the course of our everyday life there are many people saying plenty of things, trying to draw us away from the truth of Jesus Christ. There are many theories, and much this-and-that these days which is intent on taking us away from Christ.
Also, there are always thoughts, because, while we live our lives, thoughts come and go. There are questioning thoughts, doubting thoughts, suspicious thoughts – all sorts of thoughts. We have to learn how to discern what is the truth.
What is the truth ? As we know also (the Lord Himself warned us that it would be the case), there are many people who come pretending to have secret knowledge about the truth about Jesus Christ. Such people are proclaiming that they have secret knowledge about the end of the world. This is so common. People are afraid of the end of the world. Any time someone claims to know, by some sort of divine revelation, that the end is coming soon, and on a particular day, people become very afraid. However, at the same time they tend to believe this sort of silly talk. No-one knows the time of the Lord’s Coming. Our Saviour Himself said when He was amongst us that only the Father knows the time, the day, and the circumstances of the culmination of all things. That means that only the Father knows the time of the Saviour’s return.
Christians cannot survive unless they read the Bible, unless they know the Bible in their hearts. Also, they cannot properly understand the Scriptures unless they are reading what the Fathers said about the Scriptures. Therefore, when people say one thing or another, make one suggestion or another, propose alternatives, it is important for us to know the Scriptures, and to know what is the truth about Jesus Christ.
What happens, for instance, when the Jehovah’s Witnesses or the Mormons come to your door ? It is important that we know the truth in the Scriptures, so that we will not listen to their distortions of the Scriptures (because they rewrite things). We have to know what Christ, Himself, and the apostles gave us. We have to know our Scriptures. However, to argue about Scripture with people, in my experience, is never fruitful. This is because they have an idée fixe, and they are not going to listen to anyone. The only thing that will affect them is the love of Jesus Christ in our hearts, and our prayers for them. If they are willing to pray with us (and most of them are not), then Jesus Christ may get through to them.
Thus it is with thoughts, too. Thoughts come from all sorts of different places. They are not all only generated by our brain. Thoughts come from our environment and they penetrate us. Thinking is not only the functioning of those cells in the gray matter in the brain ; it is much more than that. Thoughts come also from the Tempter himself. There are many sources of these thoughts.
It is important for us, in knowing Jesus Christ, knowing Him who is the Truth, Himself, and knowing the Scriptures, and knowing the Orthodox way, to be able to discern whether a thought is a truth or a lie. It is not easy, and it is not simple. However, because the Grace of the Holy Spirit is in our hearts, the Lord can teach us to see, hear, and understand clearly what is the nature of one thought or another, and whether we should accept it or reject it. By rejecting it, it is important for us not so much to try to fight with the thought as to turn our backs on it, and to turn ourselves to Jesus Christ and to say : “Save me from this thought”.
All this is connected to the Apostle Thomas in one way or another. The Apostle Thomas, having seen and having immediately believed, then, like the other apostles, went abroad, and took the love of Jesus Christ with him. In more cases than not, when the apostles were going amongst the people, it was not by arguing that they brought people to Jesus Christ. It was by speaking the truth about Him, who is the Truth. It was about living the love of Jesus Christ in their midst.
The Apostle Thomas went first to Egypt. I remember reading that, just a few years ago, they had discovered a little portion of the Gospel according to Saint Matthew in upper Egypt, and that it was to the 50s or 60s that this portion of the Gospel was dated. It was dated to those years because of other documents and artifacts that were found around it. This is less than thirty years after the Crucifixion. The Gospel in written form was already copied by hand, transmitted to Upper Egypt, and then somehow lost or buried. Probably something happened, and the Gospel was buried with other documents of the same period (perhaps to protect them).
Nevertheless, we have a little particle of the Gospel according to Saint Matthew from such an early date. The Apostle Thomas may have been one of the means by which the written Gospel already had reached Egypt in those early days. After going through Egypt from north to south, the Apostle Thomas went across the Indian Ocean to India where he began to live and speak about Jesus Christ. He converted a prince in northern India to begin with. He went first to northern India, and then to southern India. In the state of Kerala (“the pepper state” on the west coast), he converted many people from the Brahmin class, the top-ranking priestly class of the Hindu religion. He converted very many of them, and then he went around to the other side of India, to Madras. It was there that he was finally killed by pagans after he had brought many more people to Christ.
There are Indian families today, Orthodox Christian Indian families in the area of Kerala and also in the area of Madras, who know all their Christian ancestors back to the Apostle Thomas. The rest of us are not usually so sure who our ancestors are past 100 years or so.
However, the people who received the Gospel of Jesus Christ in India 2,000 years ago had the witness of the Apostle Thomas, whose doubt has produced so much fruit. These people are still Christians today. The personal encounter of Jesus Christ has been handed on. This is the true Tradition of the Orthodox Church – the handing on, and the personal encounter with the one Lord, Jesus Christ.
We are inheritors of the work of all the apostles, the Apostle Thomas amongst them. We have inherited their personal encounter as well. It is the way of the Orthodox Christian to come to a personal encounter with Jesus Christ. We have met Him. We know that He loves us, and we know that we love Him. We have to be grateful to those apostles for their readiness to share this love with those around them, so that we, today, can experience this love, this hope, this joy, this peace. May we be able to share with others in our own lives this same love, joy and peace.
Our Saviour, who inspired the apostles, who was so infinitely patient with them (and, as we saw today, with the Apostle Thomas), did not wag His finger at the apostle, but He just said, as it were : “Come, touch and believe”. Let us ask the same patient Saviour, in His infinite love and patience, to give us the strength to live in His love, to give witness to His love to those around us, to live in His truth, and thus to glorify the Risen Christ, together with the unoriginate Father, and the all-holy, good, and life-giving Spirit, now, and ever, and unto the ages of ages.