St. Thomas the Apostle

Who they were

Thomas, called Didymus or the Twin, gets remembered for one week of his life, and it deserves a fairer reading than the nickname it earned him. He is the apostle who, when Jesus turned toward Jerusalem and danger, said let us also go, that we may die with him. Courage came before the doubt.

Absent for the first Easter appearance, he refused secondhand faith. Unless he saw the wounds himself, he would not believe, and the risen Christ's response was not rebuke but accommodation. He showed him. Thomas's answer, my Lord and my God, is the most complete declaration anyone makes in the four Gospels, and the Church has prayed it at the elevation of the Host ever since. The ancient and credible tradition takes him farthest of the Twelve, to India by 52 AD, where the Mar Thoma Christians of Kerala have called themselves St. Thomas Christians for nineteen centuries, and where the tradition places his martyrdom at Mylapore.

Why people turn to St. Thomas the Apostle

Doubters, the honest ones, who want it to be true and need it to be solid. He is standing permission to bring the demand to God directly rather than pretending. Engineers, builders, and architects hold the formal patronage; India holds the ancient one.

How to ask their intercession

With the actual doubt, stated plainly. That was his method. And my Lord and my God, prayed slowly, is both his prayer and his answer.