Feast of Saint Thomas, Apostle

Lectionary: 593

You are no longer strangers and sojourners,
but you are fellow citizens with the holy ones
and members of the household of God,
built upon the foundation of the Apostles and prophets,
with Christ Jesus himself as the capstone.

We remember "Doubting Thomas" as the Apostle who made the truest, most faithful, most perceptive declaration about Jesus, "My Lord and my God." 

There's irony there, and everyone who believes in Jesus must find their place within that irony. We have been brought like strangers and sojourners into the house of God and we know we don't belong there. Except that the Lord insists that we must stay. We know how readily our frail resolutions capsize in the face of the most absurd and ludicrous temptations to sin, and yet the Lord uses us like the stones of a massive cathedral to build upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets. Distracted from distractions by distractions, we are held by the Lord's gaze. He must call us continually back to worship him. Vessels of clay, we carry the most precious liquid the world has ever seen. Finally, we must own the name of disciples, for we belong to him and he claims us. 

A plan of salvation which uses us makes no sense until we see that this is how His glory must be revealed. Like millions of the faithful since his time, Saint Paul reflected with amazement on this mystery:

For I am the least of the apostles, not fit to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God.

But by the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace to me has not been ineffective. Indeed, I have toiled harder than all of them; not I, however, but the grace of God [that is] with me.

Therefore, whether it be I or they, so we preach and so you believed.

Saint Bonaventure told the story of Brother Masseo who once demanded of Saint Francis,

"Why, Father, why you more than any one else? I mean, why are they all running after you ? Why do they hunger and thirst to see you, to hear you, to put themselves under your guidance? You are not a handsome man, nor a renowned savant, nor a baron of high lineage. Once more, how is it that they are all running after you?"

The holy man was immediately caught up in a most terrifying and wonderful rapture as the troublesome question disturbed him deeply. Bonaventure says, 

As soon as the man of God came to himself, he prostrated himself with his face to the earth, watered the ground with his tears, and returned thanks to the Most High with unspeakable fervor of spirit.

Then rising and turning to his companion, he said 

My son, you want to know why they are all running after me? Here is the key to this enigma. The Lord, whose eye is always upon the good and bad, has not observed among so many millions of men any sinner viler than me, and more incapable of bringing about the general reformation He was contemplating; that is why His glance rested upon me. Yes, He has chosen a senseless man to confound the world s wisdom, and weakness and nothingness to confound nobility, power, and grandeur. 

And what is the teaching of that, [Bonaventure adds] if not that all good as well as all virtue comes from Him and not from creatures, that no flesh should glory in His sight, and that if any one glories, he ought to glory in the Lord to whom alone belongs the glory for ever and ever?