The Life
Thomas was a Galilean by birth, one of the Twelve called directly by the Lord. The name Thomas (in Hebrew) and his other name Didymos (in Greek) both mean “twin.” He was a man of great courage and great honesty. When the Lord announced he would go to dangerous territory after the death of Lazarus, it was Thomas who said: “Let us also go, that we may die with him.” But he is best remembered for the eighth day after the Resurrection. Thomas had not been with the others when the risen Lord first appeared. He refused to believe their testimony. “Except I shall see in his hands the print of the nails... I will not believe.” Eight days later the Lord appeared again, with Thomas present, and offered him his wounds. Thomas confessed: “My Lord and my God!” He preached after Pentecost throughout Persia and as far east as India, where he was speared to death at Mylapore around the year 72.
When Lazarus fell ill, the Lord was at the Jordan, far from Jerusalem. The Jewish authorities had recently tried to stone him. The disciples were nervous about going back. When the Lord announced he was going to Bethany, the others tried to talk him out of it. They said: “Rabbi, the Jews of late sought to stone thee; and goest thou thither again?” The Lord went anyway. Thomas, alone among them, said simply to the others: “Let us also go, that we may die with him” (John 11:16). It was a statement of total loyalty. He was prepared to follow the Lord into death itself.
At the Last Supper, the Lord was speaking to the disciples about his approaching departure. He said: “Whither I go ye know, and the way ye know.” The other disciples nodded. They did not want to seem ignorant. Only Thomas spoke up. He said: “Lord, we know not whither thou goest; and how can we know the way?” (John 14:5). The Lord answered him with the supreme statement that has nourished every Christian since: “I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me.” Without Thomas’s honest question, the world would not have this answer.
On the evening of the Resurrection, the Lord appeared to the disciples in the upper room. Thomas was not there. When the others told him “We have seen the Lord,” he refused to believe. He said: “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, I will not believe.” Eight days later, the disciples were again together in the upper room. Thomas was with them. The Lord came again, through the locked doors, and stood among them. He turned at once to Thomas and offered him his wounds: “Reach hither thy finger, and behold my hands; and reach hither thy hand, and thrust it into my side: and be not faithless, but believing.” Thomas answered: “My Lord and my God!” — the supreme confession of the divinity of Christ in all the Gospels. The Lord answered him: “Thomas, because thou hast seen me, thou hast believed: blessed are they that have not seen, and yet have believed.”
After Pentecost, when the apostles cast lots for where each would preach, Thomas received the regions to the east — Parthia, Persia, and India. He preached extensively across the great Persian Empire and traveled by sea further east than any of the other apostles. The Saint Thomas Christians of southwestern India trace their faith directly to him. Their unbroken tradition records that he landed at Muziris on the Malabar Coast in the year 52, established seven Christian communities along the Kerala coast, and preached for some twenty years across southern India. He was finally martyred at Mylapore in southeastern India around the year 72. He was speared to death on a small hill outside the city that has been known ever since as Saint Thomas Mount.
There is a beautiful tradition preserved by the Church about the Dormition of the Theotokos. When the Theotokos fell asleep in the Lord, all the apostles were miraculously gathered from their distant mission fields to be with her at her death. Thomas alone was not there. He had been preaching in distant India and arrived three days too late. He grieved that he had not been able to say goodbye. He asked to see her one last time. They opened the tomb to show him — and the body was not there. Only her burial linens remained. The Theotokos appeared to all of them then, in glory, telling them she had been taken up to her Son. Thomas’s late arrival became the means by which the Church received her testimony of the Bodily Assumption of the Theotokos.
These four words are the supreme Christological confession in all the Gospels. They are the first explicit recognition of the divinity of the Lord, by name, by any disciple, in any of the four canonical Gospels. They came from the apostle who had needed to see. They were spoken with the deepest reverence and the most personal intimacy. “My Lord. My God.” The Greek text places the divine titles together with the personal possessive in a way that makes them not abstract theological terms but a personal confession. The Lord whom Thomas had walked with for three years, whose feet he had washed, whose voice he had heard — that same Lord, in his risen flesh, with the wounds of crucifixion still visible, was the supreme God of Israel.
Around the year 72, Thomas’s preaching in southeastern India reached the city of Mylapore. He had angered the local king by converting many of the people, including members of the royal household. The king ordered him arrested. He was condemned to death and led out to a small hill outside the city. There he was speared to death by Hindu warriors. His body was buried at Mylapore by the Christians he had baptized. The hill where he was martyred has been called Saint Thomas Mount ever since. The great San Thome Cathedral now stands over his tomb at Mylapore, and the cathedral on the hill of his martyrdom has been a place of continuous Christian pilgrimage for nearly two thousand years.
Thomas matters to every Orthodox Christian for many reasons. He is the apostle of honest doubt. He could not believe lightly. He needed to see for himself. He was not afraid to ask hard questions or to demand evidence. The Lord did not rebuke him for any of this. The Lord met him where he was, gave him exactly what he asked for, and through that meeting received from him the supreme confession of the entire Gospel: “My Lord and my God!” Thomas is therefore the patron of every Christian who has ever struggled with doubt. He is also the apostle who carried the Gospel further east than any of the others, all the way to India, where his Christians remain to this day. He is commemorated on October 6 (his repose) and on Thomas Sunday, the first Sunday after Pascha, when his great confession is read in every Orthodox church.