Paean to St. Thomas
Today is the Feast of St. Thomas, known as the Doubter. I'd almost call him my patron saint, except that I think that calling him "Doubting Thomas" shortchanges him. Thomas had as much courage as any of his brother disciples -- which is to say, the normal amount -- and as far as we know, no more or less intellect than the others. His nickname was Didymus, or "the Twin"; who was he supposed to be a twin of? Did he have an actual twin brother, or was it a comment on his character? And if so, what comment?
It seems odd, too, that Thomas's day is also the shortest day of the year -- though as a friend pointed out, calendar changes are more responsible for that than the canonization of saints way back when. The shortest day, followed by the longest night, after which the days come out of their bottleneck of light and begin to grow again. Odd, I say, because as his nickname indicates, Thomas is somehow not even -- he represents one member of a disrupted pair, at once solid and shadow, light and dark.
In my experience Thomas is spoken of mostly to malign, or a nail to hang an apologia on. But I like him for more than that, just as I like faith for being more than the opposite of doubt. In fact, I do not believe faith has an opposite: doubt is the mother of faith; doubt is what faith is made out of; doubt and faith have more to do with each other than either has with certainty. Doubt and faith have a love relationship, and if you cut one apart, the other dies.
It isn't so much that Thomas knew that, as that Thomas was that. I like this in a person, which is why I like most of the disciples as presented in the Gospels: unscripted provincials who just happened to be there that year -- empire and culture war and poverty and hate and religious exclusivism going on all around, and here these guys were, fishing and collecting taxes and meeting with secret zealot groups and basically just trying to make a go of it. And becoming disciples of Jesus Christ didn't change any of that; in fact, that is why we say Christ came -- to be mundane with us, since obviously just urging us to be heavenly was never going to cut it. And I rather think God more than capable of grasping the obvious, however slippery a grip we seem to keep on it.
In the old poet's phrase, "I know whom I have believed" -- not what I have believed, but whom. And Thomas knew whom he believed; he just thought that that person was dead, and was unwilling to credit his brothers' hysteria -- who in their turn had been unwilling to credit the women's hysteria. Thomas's doubt puts what passes for faith these days to shame: a determination always to go to the source, to keep to the point, not to allow anyone or anything else to get in his light.
One of the readings for St. Thomas's day is from Job -- Job's answer to God's answer: "All right, you've answered my question -- shutting up now." The story of Job doesn't end there, however; it ends with Job, at God's request, making sacrifices on behalf of his friends, who "didn't speak rightly of [God], as Job did." Huh? Job spent most of his eponymous book berating God, accusing God, complaining about God, questioning God's justice: his friends reiterating that anything that's wrong is wrong with him, not God, and to complain is not to "honor" God.
The longer I live, the more I am convinced that complaint is holy. As C.S. Lewis puts it in his novel, "How can we see face to face till we have faces?" To complain is to unmask oneself before God, and therefore to do God a compliment we rarely do even for one another. (In fact, very often we insult both God and each other by complaining to everyone except the one to whom it matters.) It is the complement to the Eucharist, in which we dress up and play an age-old, meaning-drenched part. The temptation of this modern age (and by modern I mean at least since 1790) is to switch the two: we strip our liturgies naked and clothe ourselves in our closet. We mure up our complaints and take wrecking balls to our cathedrals.
Thomas, who knew no Christian liturgy -- it hadn't been invented yet -- and had forfeited the Temple, still could do the one thing that has always been holy, throughout all ages: he lifted up his voice and insisted on talking to the manager.
So was Doubting Thomas's twin Faithful Joe? No, Thomas was (at least in this case) his own twin: the spokesperson for both doubt and faith, shadow and light.
On the shortest day of the year, so close to the Feast of the Incarnation, we become our own twins too -- waiting for what we already have, groaning in pain and crying in joy, repenting what has been forgiven us, dying and being revived, living in shadows, celebrating light.
And so indeed I lift my cup of tea in salute to St. Thomas the Doubter, whom I love.
Today is the Feast of St. Thomas, known as the Doubter. I'd almost call him my patron saint, except that I think that calling him "Doubting Thomas" shortchanges him. Thomas had as much courage as any of his brother disciples -- which is to say, the normal amount -- and as far as we know, no more or less intellect than the others. His nickname was Didymus, or "the Twin"; who was he supposed to be a twin of? Did he have an actual twin brother, or was it a comment on his character? And if so, what comment?
It seems odd, too, that Thomas's day is also the shortest day of the year -- though as a friend pointed out, calendar changes are more responsible for that than the canonization of saints way back when. The shortest day, followed by the longest night, after which the days come out of their bottleneck of light and begin to grow again. Odd, I say, because as his nickname indicates, Thomas is somehow not even -- he represents one member of a disrupted pair, at once solid and shadow, light and dark.
In my experience Thomas is spoken of mostly to malign, or a nail to hang an apologia on. But I like him for more than that, just as I like faith for being more than the opposite of doubt. In fact, I do not believe faith has an opposite: doubt is the mother of faith; doubt is what faith is made out of; doubt and faith have more to do with each other than either has with certainty. Doubt and faith have a love relationship, and if you cut one apart, the other dies.
It isn't so much that Thomas knew that, as that Thomas was that. I like this in a person, which is why I like most of the disciples as presented in the Gospels: unscripted provincials who just happened to be there that year -- empire and culture war and poverty and hate and religious exclusivism going on all around, and here these guys were, fishing and collecting taxes and meeting with secret zealot groups and basically just trying to make a go of it. And becoming disciples of Jesus Christ didn't change any of that; in fact, that is why we say Christ came -- to be mundane with us, since obviously just urging us to be heavenly was never going to cut it. And I rather think God more than capable of grasping the obvious, however slippery a grip we seem to keep on it.
In the old poet's phrase, "I know whom I have believed" -- not what I have believed, but whom. And Thomas knew whom he believed; he just thought that that person was dead, and was unwilling to credit his brothers' hysteria -- who in their turn had been unwilling to credit the women's hysteria. Thomas's doubt puts what passes for faith these days to shame: a determination always to go to the source, to keep to the point, not to allow anyone or anything else to get in his light.
One of the readings for St. Thomas's day is from Job -- Job's answer to God's answer: "All right, you've answered my question -- shutting up now." The story of Job doesn't end there, however; it ends with Job, at God's request, making sacrifices on behalf of his friends, who "didn't speak rightly of [God], as Job did." Huh? Job spent most of his eponymous book berating God, accusing God, complaining about God, questioning God's justice: his friends reiterating that anything that's wrong is wrong with him, not God, and to complain is not to "honor" God.
The longer I live, the more I am convinced that complaint is holy. As C.S. Lewis puts it in his novel, "How can we see face to face till we have faces?" To complain is to unmask oneself before God, and therefore to do God a compliment we rarely do even for one another. (In fact, very often we insult both God and each other by complaining to everyone except the one to whom it matters.) It is the complement to the Eucharist, in which we dress up and play an age-old, meaning-drenched part. The temptation of this modern age (and by modern I mean at least since 1790) is to switch the two: we strip our liturgies naked and clothe ourselves in our closet. We mure up our complaints and take wrecking balls to our cathedrals.
Thomas, who knew no Christian liturgy -- it hadn't been invented yet -- and had forfeited the Temple, still could do the one thing that has always been holy, throughout all ages: he lifted up his voice and insisted on talking to the manager.
So was Doubting Thomas's twin Faithful Joe? No, Thomas was (at least in this case) his own twin: the spokesperson for both doubt and faith, shadow and light.
On the shortest day of the year, so close to the Feast of the Incarnation, we become our own twins too -- waiting for what we already have, groaning in pain and crying in joy, repenting what has been forgiven us, dying and being revived, living in shadows, celebrating light.
And so indeed I lift my cup of tea in salute to St. Thomas the Doubter, whom I love.
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