The saints

Saint Thomas

Apostle · Feast day July 3 · First century · Galilee, India · Also known as Didymus, Thomas the Twin, Doubting Thomas

Saint Thomas, called Didymus, the Twin, is remembered as doubting Thomas for refusing to believe in the resurrection until he saw for himself, and then making the greatest confession of all: My Lord and my God. By ancient tradition he carried the gospel all the way to India.

And Thomas answered and said unto him, My LORD and my God.John 20:28 (KJV)

The honest doubter

Thomas appears in the Gospel of John as a man of blunt honesty and deep loyalty. When Jesus resolved to go to Judea where enemies waited, it was Thomas who said, Let us also go, that we may die with him. And when Jesus spoke of going to prepare a place, Thomas said plainly, Lord, we know not whither thou goest, and how can we know the way, drawing from Jesus the answer, I am the way, the truth, and the life.

My Lord and my God

Thomas was not with the others when the risen Jesus first appeared, and he refused to believe on their word: Except I shall see in his hands the print of the nails, I will not believe. Eight days later Jesus came and stood among them and said, Reach hither thy finger, and be not faithless, but believing. Thomas answered him with the highest confession in the Gospels: My Lord and my God. Jesus said, Blessed are they that have not seen, and yet have believed, a blessing spoken over every believer since.

The apostle of India

By strong and ancient tradition Thomas travelled farther than any other apostle, carrying the gospel to Persia and to India, where the Saint Thomas Christians of Kerala trace their faith to his preaching to this day. He is said to have been martyred there, near Chennai, run through with a spear.

Why Thomas still matters

Thomas is the patron of every honest doubter. His doubt was not cynicism but a longing to be sure, and Jesus met it, not with rebuke, but with his own wounded hands. From the most doubting of the twelve came the clearest confession of who Jesus is.

A note for all traditions: the saints are honored across the church as examples of faith and, in the Catholic and Orthodox traditions, as friends who pray with us, never worshiped, for worship belongs to God alone. What Scripture records and what later tradition holds are distinguished above. In every tradition there is one Lord, Jesus Christ, and every believer, not only the saints, is called to follow him.

Related: Saint John · Doubt and faith · Saints for July 3 · Saint of the day