Feast of St Thomas

Today is the feast of St Thomas, the apostle who evangelized Syria, Persia and India.

The responsories for the day are all of the Common of Apostles, so I thought I would provide a setting of the antiphon used for both the Benedictus and Magnificat for the feast, quia vidisti me Thoma, credidisti, instead:

 

Quia vidísti me * Thoma, credidísti: beáti qui non vidérunt, et credidérunt, allelúia.

Because thou hast seen me, * Thomas, thou hast believed: blessed are they that have not seen and have believed, alleluia.

The Matins reading on his background is fairly short (in all the versions of the breviary that I can find), presumably because the Third Nocturn readings are all on him, albeit mostly dealing with the Gospel account of his post-Resurrection skepticism:

The Apostle Thomas, called Didymus, or the Twin, was a Galilean. After the descent of the Holy Ghost, he went into many provinces to preach Christ's Gospel. He gave knowledge of the rules of Christian faith and life to the Parthians, Medes, Persians, Hyrcanians, and Bactrians. He went last to the East Indies. Here he provoked the anger of one of the idolatrous kings, because the holiness of his life and teaching, and the number of his miracles, drew many after him, and brought them to the love of Christ Jesus. He was therefore condemned, and slain with lances. He crowned the dignity of the Apostleship with the glory of martyrdom, on the Coromandel coast, not far from Madras.

You can read a longer account of him though, in a General Audience given. by Pope Benedict XVI.

Alternatively, if you are game, the Apocryphal (and in places outright heretical) Acts of St Thomas, available over at New Advent, makes an entertaining read.

Five days to go...

And just a quick reminder that when you commemorate the Advent day at Lauds, the antiphon is of the date, Nolite timere, and reminds us that there are only five days to go before Christmas!

You can hear the antiphon chanted with the Benedictus by the nuns of Jouques here.