SAINT THOMAS, APOSTLE.
This is the last Feast the Church keeps before the great one of the Nativity
of her Lord and Spouse. She interrupts the Greater Ferias in order to pay her
tribute of honour to Thomas, the Apostle of Christ, whose glorious martyrdom has
consecrated this twenty-first day of December, and has procured for the
Christian people a powerful patron, that will introduce them to the divine Babe
of Bethlehem. To none of the Apostles could this day have been so fittingly
assigned as to St. Thomas. It was St. Thomas whom we needed; St. Thomas, whose
festal patronage would aid us to believe and hope in that God whom we see not,
and who comes to us in silence and humility in order to try our Faith. St.
Thomas was once guilty of doubting, when he ought to have believed; and only
learnt the necessity of Faith by the sad experience of incredulity: he comes
then most appropriately to defend us, by the power of his example and prayers,
against the temptations which proud human reason might excite within us. Let us
pray to him with confidence. In that heaven of Light and Vision, where his
repentance and love have placed him, he will intercede for us, and gain for us
that docility of mind and heart, which will enable us to see and recognise Him,
who is the Expected of Nations, and who, though the King of the world, will give
no other signs of his majesty, than the swaddling-clothes and tears of a Babe.
But let us first read the Acts of our holy Apostle. The Church has deemed it
prudent to give us them in an exceedingly abridged form, which contains only the
most reliable facts, gathered from authentic sources; and thus, she excludes all
those details, which have no historic authority.
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