On this day the Catholic Church celebrates the Feast of St. Thomas, one of the twelve Apostles of Jesus. As the story is told in John 20:24-29, Thomas was absent on a fateful day when the Risen Christ appeared to the other disciples. His response to their claim, "we have seen the Lord," is to insist on visual and tangible evidence before he will believe. A week later, Jesus appears again and offers Thomas the proof he requires.My friend Fr. Fred Ball points out that Caravaggio's graphic description of this encounter, while it is what most of us imagine happened, goes a step beyond the scriptural account. We are only told that, in response to Jesus' invitation to touch his wounds, Thomas responds, " my Lord and my God." As Caravaggio depicts the episode, Thomas seems already to be comprehending without touching, as he stares straight ahead, or perhaps within. The other two apostles, meanwhile, have a keen curiosity about the corporeality of the event.
So did the early church. A relic purported to be a fragment of the bone of the index finger of St. Thomas which touched the wound of the resurrected Christ is housed in the reliquary chapel of S. Croce in Gerusalemme, Rome. I wrote my dissertation on this church (see September 14, below), have contemplated this relic many times, and have saved a black-and-white postcard image of it, displayed in the monstrance to the left of the crucifix, for almost thirty years. Si non e vero, e ben trovato.(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Santa_Croce_in_Gerusalemme#Passion_relics).
