03/07/2023

St Thomas, whose Feast Day is celebrated today, is by tradition the bringer of the Good News to India. If this is true, then he is the first bringer of the Good News into a culture that was basically alien to the civilisations of the Mediterranean Sea. It was a culture that was although polytheistic had a core of believe that connected life on earth to supernatural being which was totally spiritual but impersonal.

Saint Thomas' encounter with the risen Lord is totally person to person. Unlike Mary Magdalen he is invited to touch. He does so and we all have it confirmed that the Resurrection is totally physical in this world but at the same time time something greater, for Christ's body is not confined by the laws of physics.

The first heresies were like St Thomas in his initial refusal  to believe the Resurrection and they chose to teach that Jesus was not only a spirit after the Crucifixion but was not even a human body on the Cross. The Incarnation should have driven such fear and denigration of our bodies out of our human consciousness but it is still there.

There is no matter, especially human flesh, that is created to be sinful. God looked on his creation and saw that it was good. We all have freedom in our beings but it is not in our bodies that freedom exists. No-one is free to be alive without breathing, eating and drinking. Jesus, true man and true God could not have nails pierce his body and a lance thrust into his side without bleeding and wounds being left there.

Some paintings of St Thomas accepting Our Lord's invitation to confirm by touching what his ears had heard and his eyes have now seen, this bodily reality that is our Saviour God can cause us to squirm away from their intense realism, but Father, Son and Holy Spirit want us to know that " the beloved Son in whom I am well pleased"is still with us and still in the flesh he begot from Mary. . 

The only way we can come to the rooms God has prepared for us is to use our freedom to become thankful and obedient in this life and be in our bodies knowing that from the day we are born they begin to decay and  that the inevitable dust and ashes we become have the potential to become like the Resurrection a glorious New Life. 

An impossible dream for mankind but, Jesus is with us so it will happen if we remain true to "Our Father" whom we have not seen but still believe.

Dear Lord I have to thank you for these moments of inspiration which I know to come from you. I am never free from sin and sometimes feel too pleased with myself but with Mary's prayers  I know that  I can face my end without fear. Lord keep me strong in my last days for without your help I know that my best intentions cannot keep me from the primrose path of bodily delights in this world. Let me become by my death the inspiration to others that I have not been in my life.