Apostles of Edessa and Mesopotamia, by tradition; fathers of the East Syriac Church · Feast: 25 April
Open in the Daily Word app“After this the Lord appointed seventy others and sent them on ahead of him in pairs to every town and place where he himself intended to go.” Luke 10:1
Every Syro-Malabar Catholic knows these two names, because the Holy Qurbana is celebrated for much of the year with the Qudasha of Mar Addai and Mar Mari. Yet very little about the men themselves can be established by history. What we have is the memory of the East Syriac Church, written down long after their time, and it should be read as tradition.
That tradition says Addai was one of the seventy disciples of the Lord, sent after the Ascension by the Apostle Thomas to Edessa, in northern Mesopotamia. Eusebius of Caesarea, writing in the early fourth century, tells the story of this mission, calling the disciple Thaddaeus, and says he drew it from the archives of Edessa. The Syriac Teaching of Addai, from about the year 400, tells it at length with Addai as its hero, including the healing of King Abgar. Historians regard the king's exchange of letters with Jesus as a later composition. What is certain is that Edessa had a Christian community by about the year 200 and became a great centre of Syriac Christianity.
Mari is remembered as the disciple of Addai who carried the Gospel east and south into Mesopotamia and Persia, founding churches around Seleucia-Ctesiphon, where the chief see of the East Syriac Church later stood. The Acts of Mari, the main source, was written centuries afterwards and contains much that is legend. Tradition says he died and was buried at Dorqoni, near Seleucia.
Their greatest monument is the anaphora that bears their names, one of the most ancient Eucharistic prayers still in use. In 2001 the Holy See, with the approval of St John Paul II, recognised its validity even in the old form used by the Assyrian Church of the East, which does not recite the Words of Institution in one continuous narrative; in the Catholic Syro-Malabar and Chaldean use those Words are prayed. Our calendar keeps Mar Addai on the Fifth Sunday of Resurrection and Mar Mari on the second Friday of Kaitha, and the First Qudasha is used from the Monday after Palm Sunday until the end of the season of the Dedication of the Church.
The Gospel travels through people who go together and depend on the Lord.
We have received the faith from those whose lives we hardly know.
What a Church prays shows what it believes, across the centuries.
We may love a tradition and still say plainly what is known and what is not.
The pilgrim Egeria visited Edessa in the 380s. She prayed at the tomb of St Thomas, and the bishop, she writes, gave her copies of the letters said to have passed between Jesus and King Abgar. Whatever the origin of the letters, she shows us how proudly that city then held its apostolic memory.
The story says that Abgar of Edessa, gravely ill, wrote to Jesus asking Him to come. Jesus promised to send a disciple after His Ascension, and Addai came and healed the king, who believed with his people. Eusebius reports the story; historians do not accept the letters as genuine.
The Acts of Mari tell how he went from city to city through Mesopotamia, healing the sick and building churches where shrines had stood. The details are late, but the churches of the East remember him as their founder.
You put on our humanity to give us life through your divinity; you lifted up our lowliness, raised up our fallen state and gave life to our mortality.
The Qudasha of Mar Addai and Mar Mari, in substance
Missionaries prepare the way for the Lord (Luke 10:1).
Our Qurbana joins us to the most ancient Churches.
The sending did not end with the seventy.
Dear friends, in this season of the Resurrection our Church remembers Mar Addai, and with him we think of his disciple Mar Mari. We hear their names often, but we know little about them. History tells us that the Gospel reached Edessa and Mesopotamia very early; the stories of how it happened were written down long afterwards. Yet the fruit is plain: a great Church of the East, reaching as far as our own Kerala.
St Luke tells us: “After this the Lord appointed seventy others and sent them on ahead of him in pairs to every town and place where he himself intended to go” (Luke 10:1). Our tradition counts Addai among those sent. Look at the last words of that verse: they go where the Lord Himself intends to go. A missionary does not bring Christ to a place He has forgotten. He prepares for a Lord who is already on the way.
What these men left us is above all a way of praying. The Holy Mass / Holy Qurbana that we celebrate with their names is one of the oldest Eucharistic prayers in the world. It thanks God that His Son put on our humanity to give us life by His divinity. When we pray it, we stand with Christians who prayed in Syriac under the Persian kings, and with our own forefathers in Kerala.
So let us not treat these prayers as routine. Let us learn what they mean and teach them to our children. And let us remember that the sending has not ended. In our families, at our work, and wherever our people have settled across the world, the risen Lord still sends us ahead of Him, two by two. Amen.
Lord Jesus Christ, you sent your disciples ahead of you in pairs to every town. We thank you for Mar Addai and Mar Mari and for all who brought the Gospel to the East, and for the prayer that has come down to us with their names. Keep us faithful to the Holy Qurbana and make us bearers of your good news in our time. Amen.