21 November 2026 · Syro-Malabar Rite
Open in the Daily Word appAlso: Latin Rite · Syro-Malankara Rite · മലയാളം
“Thomas said to him, “Lord, we do not know where you are going. How can we know the way?” Jesus said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life.”” John 14:5–6
Today the Syro-Malabar Church remembers the arrival of the apostle Thomas in India. According to the ancient tradition of the St Thomas Christians he landed in AD 52 at Kodungallur (Maliankara, near ancient Muziris), preached the Gospel along the Malabar coast, founded Christian communities, and was martyred at Mylapore. Our Church calls him “our Father in faith”.
The readings show what an apostle is: someone called and sent. God calls Moses and sends him to Pharaoh with a promise: “I will take you as my people.” Isaiah's God says to his servant, chosen “from the ends of the earth”: “Do not fear, for I am with you.” Paul tells the Gentiles that they are “no longer strangers and aliens,” but members of God's household, “built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the cornerstone.” That is our story: a people at the ends of the earth, built into God's house on the foundation of Thomas.
In the Gospel it is Thomas who asks the honest question: “Lord, we do not know where you are going. How can we know the way?” And Jesus answers with one of the greatest sayings of the Gospel: “I am the way, and the truth, and the life.” Thomas brought to India not a philosophy but a Person, the Way himself. Later, touching the risen Lord's wounds, he would confess, “My Lord and my God!” That confession is the foundation of our faith.
Today is also the Presentation of the Blessed Virgin Mary: the Church remembers, from ancient tradition, Mary's dedication to God from childhood. Mary and Thomas both teach us the same thing: to belong wholly to God and to follow the Way.
Theme: “Our Father in faith brought us the Way.”
The Syro-Malabar Church remembers the entrance of St Thomas into India (tradition: AD 52, Kodungallur) and the Presentation of Mary.
“You whom I took from the ends of the earth, and called from its farthest corners, saying to you, “You are my servant, I have chosen you and not cast you off”; do not fear, for I am with you.” Isaiah 41:9–10
“Jesus said to them again, “Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you.”” John 20:21
Apply: Share your faith with one person who does not know Christ.
“I will take you as my people, and I will be your God.” Exodus 6:7
“So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are citizens with the saints and also members of the household of God, built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the cornerstone.” Ephesians 2:19–20
Apply: Pray for the Syro-Malabar Church and all St Thomas Christians.
“Do not fear, for I am with you, do not be afraid, for I am your God; I will strengthen you, I will help you, I will uphold you with my victorious right hand.” Isaiah 41:10
“Thomas said to him, “Lord, we do not know where you are going. How can we know the way?” Jesus said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.”” John 14:5–6
Apply: Say “My Lord and my God” at the elevation at every Qurbana.
Thomas brought us not an idea but a Person.
Let us walk the Way and bring others to it.
Take-home resolution: Learn and tell your children the story of St Thomas in India.
Dear brothers and sisters, today our Church remembers a day that changed our land: the arrival of the apostle Thomas in India. Our ancestors handed down the memory that he landed at Kodungallur, preached on this coast, founded Christian communities, and gave his life at Mylapore. We are his children in faith.
The readings tell us what an apostle is. God calls Moses and sends him with a promise. God says to his servant, chosen from the ends of the earth, “Do not fear, I am with you.” St Paul tells the Gentiles: you are no longer strangers; you are members of God's household, built on the foundation of the apostles. That is our story. We were at the ends of the earth, and through Thomas we became God's household.
In the Gospel Thomas asks an honest question: “Lord, we do not know where you are going. How can we know the way?” Jesus answers: “I am the way, and the truth, and the life.” Thomas did not bring our ancestors a new philosophy; he brought them a Person, the Way himself. No wonder our fathers called the faith “Margam”, the Way.
Later, touching the wounds of the risen Lord, Thomas confessed, “My Lord and my God!” That confession crossed the sea and became ours. Every time the Body of Christ is raised at the Qurbana, we say it again.
Today we also remember the Presentation of Mary, who belonged wholly to God from childhood. Let us ask Mary and Thomas to help us belong wholly to Jesus and to carry the Way to others. My Lord and my God! Amen.
The faith Thomas brought to our land is summed up in his own confession: my Lord and my God (John 20:28).
📖 Isaiah 53:5
📖 John 20:24–29
Apply: Make the confession of Thomas at the elevation in the Holy Qurbana.
📖 Isaiah 41:8–10
📖 John 14:1–6
Apply: Ask Jesus to show you the way in a present decision.
📖 Exodus 6:6–8
📖 Ephesians 2:19–22
Apply: Share the faith with the next generation, especially abroad.
The faith of Thomas is our inheritance: received, kept and to be handed on.
Every Holy Qurbana echoes his confession: my Lord and my God.
Take-home resolution: I will say my Lord and my God at the elevation and teach the faith to a child.
Dear brothers and sisters, today we remember with gratitude the coming of the apostle Thomas to our land. According to the ancient tradition of our Church, he landed on the coast of Kerala, preached Christ, founded communities and finally gave his life as a martyr. Let us look at Thomas in the Gospel to understand the faith he brought us.
Thomas is famous for his doubt. When the other disciples said they had seen the risen Lord, he said: unless I see the mark of the nails in His hands, and put my finger in the mark of the nails and my hand in His side, I will not believe (John 20:25). A week later Jesus came and showed him His wounds. And Thomas made the greatest confession of faith in all the Gospels: my Lord and my God (John 20:28). Doubt became adoration.
But Thomas was also courageous. When Jesus decided to go back to Judea, where His enemies wanted to stone Him, it was Thomas who said: let us also go, that we may die with Him (John 11:16). And at the Last Supper it was Thomas who asked: Lord, we do not know where you are going; how can we know the way? Jesus answered: I am the way, and the truth, and the life (John 14:5–6).
Our ancestors called the Christian life Mar Thoma Margam, the Way of Thomas. It is the way of a faith that is honest enough to ask questions, brave enough to follow Christ to death, and humble enough to kneel and say my Lord and my God. At the elevation in every Holy Qurbana, many of us whisper those very words.
Today Thomas Christians live all over the world. The faith he brought to one coast has been carried to the Gulf, to Europe, to America, to Australia. In every place, let us keep it, live it and hand it on to our children. Like Thomas, may we see the wounds of Christ in the poor and suffering, and confess Him as our Lord and our God.
Today is a good day to learn the history and identity of our own Church.
📖 Isaiah 49:6
📖 Ephesians 2:19–22
Apply: Thank God for the faith of your ancestors.
📖 Psalm 80:8–19
📖 Hebrews 12:1–2
Apply: Pray for unity and peace in our Church.
📖 Isaiah 54:2–3
📖 Matthew 28:18–20
Apply: Support a mission of our Church this year.
The Syro-Malabar Church is apostolic, Eastern and Catholic.
Knowing our history helps us love our Church and carry the faith forward.
Take-home resolution: This month I will learn our Church's history and pray for its unity and mission.
Dear brothers and sisters, on the day we remember the coming of St Thomas, let us learn something about the identity of our Church, because many young people do not know it.
According to our ancient and living tradition, the apostle Thomas preached the Gospel in India in the first century and died as a martyr. Historians discuss the details, but the faith of the community, the songs, the place names and the very name St Thomas Christians bear witness to a Christian presence in this land from very early times. For centuries our Church lived in communion with the Church of the East and used the East Syriac liturgy, the liturgy of the Holy Qurbana of Mar Addai and Mar Mari, one of the oldest Eucharistic prayers in the world.
Our history also had trials. From the sixteenth century there were contacts and tensions with Western missionaries, Latinisation of our customs and liturgy, divisions and painful separations. Yet the community remained faithful to Christ and to the Catholic communion. Gradually the Church recovered her identity: her own bishops, her own liturgical reforms, and in 1992 the Syro-Malabar Church was raised to the status of a Major Archiepiscopal Church, governed by its Synod of Bishops under the Major Archbishop, in full communion with the Pope.
We are one of the twenty-three Eastern Catholic Churches sui iuris. That means we have our own liturgy, our own canon law, our own spirituality and theology, and we are fully Catholic. The Second Vatican Council asked Eastern Catholics to preserve their traditions faithfully (Orientalium Ecclesiarum 6). This is not a matter of pride, but of fidelity.
Today our Church has missions in many parts of India and dioceses in the Gulf, Europe, North America and Australia. Let us thank God for the faith of our ancestors, pray for unity and peace in our Church, support her missions, and above all live the faith of Thomas so that our children and grandchildren may also say with him: my Lord and my God.
Children, a long, long time ago, a man got off a boat on the coast of Kerala. His name was Thomas, and he was one of Jesus' twelve friends!
He came all the way to India to tell our great-great-great-grandparents about Jesus. That's why we are Christians today!
When we see the Holy Qurbana raised up, let's say what Thomas said: “My Lord and my God!” Say it together now!
Lord Jesus, you are the Way, the Truth and the Life. We thank you for sending your apostle Thomas to our land. Keep us faithful to the faith he preached, make us members of your household built on the apostles, and send us, like him, to bring you to others. My Lord and my God! Amen.
Today the Syro-Malabar Church remembers the coming of St Thomas the Apostle to India, and the whole Church keeps the Presentation of the Blessed Virgin Mary. The readings are chosen for the apostle. In Exodus, God calls Moses, a man who doubts his own words, and sends him with a promise of redemption. In Isaiah, God tells the servant he called “from the ends of the earth”: “Do not fear, I will help you.” In Ephesians, the Gentiles, once far off, become a holy temple “built upon the foundation of the apostles”. In John, it is Thomas who asks the question that draws from Jesus the words “I am the way, and the truth, and the life”. The line runs from a reluctant messenger to an apostle who carried the way to a distant land, and its key words are sending, foundation and way.
The Presentation of Mary fits the same readings. A holy temple, a dwelling place for God (Ephesians 2:21–22), was first prepared in her, the young girl wholly given to God, who would become the dwelling place of the Word.
Setting.
Moses' first visit to Pharaoh has failed. Pharaoh has made the slaves' work harder, and the Israelite foremen blame Moses (Exodus 5). Moses complains to God: “Why did you ever send me?” (5:22). In chapter 6 God answers by renewing his promise and his name: “I am the Lord” (6:2). Many scholars see in 6:2–13 a second account of Moses' call, parallel to the burning bush in chapter 3, from another strand of Israel's tradition.
Structure.
Key words.
Verse by verse.
“I will redeem you with an outstretched arm and with mighty acts of judgment.” (6:6)
Jewish tradition counts four promises of redemption in vv. 6–7 (bring out, deliver, redeem, take), and links them with the four cups of wine at the Passover meal.
“I will take you as my people, and I will be your God.” (6:7)
The covenant formula, repeated through the whole Bible until its last book: “they will be his peoples, and God himself will be with them” (Revelation 21:3).
“The Israelites have not listened to me; how then shall Pharaoh listen to me, poor speaker that I am?” (6:12)
Every apostle knows this fear. God's answer is not to remove the difficulty but to repeat the command. The mission rests on God's word, not on the messenger's talent.
How the Church reads it.
The Catechism presents Moses' call as a model of prayer: God calls, Moses hesitates and objects, and in the end he learns to cooperate with God's plan (CCC 2575). The Church reads the Exodus as the great figure of Christ's redemption, celebrated in every Holy Qurbana as our Passover (CCC 1363–1364). On this feast, Moses sent to Pharaoh reminds us of an apostle sent across the sea to a people he did not know.
Setting.
This oracle belongs to the Book of Consolation (Isaiah 40–55), addressed to the exiles in Babylon. The nations tremble before the rise of Cyrus (41:1–7) and make new idols for protection. To Israel, small and weak, God speaks words of tenderness. This is the first passage in Isaiah to call Israel “my servant”, a title that will grow into the figure of the Suffering Servant (52:13–53:12).
Structure.
Key words.
Verse by verse.
“you whom I took from the ends of the earth, and called from its farthest corners, saying to you, “You are my servant, I have chosen you and not cast you off”;” (41:9)
“do not fear, for I am with you, do not be afraid, for I am your God;” (41:10)
The reason for courage is not one's own strength but God's presence: “I am with you”. Jesus gives the same promise when he sends the apostles to all nations (Matthew 28:20).
“Do not fear, you worm Jacob, you insect Israel! I will help you, says the Lord; your Redeemer is the Holy One of Israel.” (41:14)
The image is humbling but tender: God chooses what is small and makes it strong. The worm becomes a threshing sledge (v. 15).
How the Church reads it.
In the Magnificat Mary sings that God “has helped his servant Israel” (Luke 1:54), echoing this passage. The Church sees Isaiah's servant fulfilled in Christ, and the promise “I am with you” lived by the apostles. St Thomas, sent according to tradition to the farthest corners of the known world, carried this word to India: the God of Israel is the God of all nations (CCC 543, 849).
Setting.
Ephesians was written to Christians most of whom were Gentiles, once “far off” from the covenants of Israel (2:12–13). In the Temple of Jerusalem a stone balustrade separated the Court of the Gentiles from the inner courts. Inscriptions on it, two of which have been found by archaeologists, warned that any foreigner who passed it would be responsible for his own death. Paul (or his disciple writing in his name) sees Christ's cross as breaking down every such wall of hostility.
Structure.
Key words.
Verse by verse.
“has broken down the dividing wall, that is, the hostility between us.” (2:14)
“So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are citizens with the saints and also members of the household of God,” (2:19)
The Gospel reached India as a homecoming, not as an import: the people of this land became members of God's household.
“built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the cornerstone.” (2:20)
The “prophets” here are probably the prophets of the early Church, named with the apostles (compare 3:5; 4:11). The Church rests on the apostolic witness.
“in whom you also are built together spiritually into a dwelling place for God.” (2:22)
How the Church reads it.
The Catechism teaches that the Church is apostolic because she is built on the foundation of the apostles, keeps their teaching and is guided by their successors (CCC 857, citing Ephesians 2:20). It also uses this passage for the image of the Church as God's building, with Christ as the cornerstone (CCC 756). The same image matches the season of Qudash Edtha, and today's Marian feast: Mary was the first and purest dwelling place of God among us.
Setting.
Jesus speaks at the Last Supper, after washing the disciples' feet and foretelling Peter's denial (John 13). The disciples are troubled: he is going away. In this conversation three disciples interrupt with questions: Thomas (v. 5), Philip (v. 8), and later Judas, not Iscariot (v. 22). Thomas appears in John as a man of loyal courage (“Let us also go, that we may die with him”, 11:16), of honest questions (14:5) and, after Easter, of the highest confession of faith: “My Lord and my God!” (20:28).
Structure.
Key words.
Verse by verse.
“Do not let your hearts be troubled. Believe in God, believe also in me.” (14:1)
The same verb was used of Jesus himself, troubled at the tomb of Lazarus, in the hour of the cross and at the betrayal (11:33; 12:27; 13:21). He knows our trouble from within.
“Lord, we do not know where you are going. How can we know the way?” (14:5)
Thomas does not pretend to understand. His honest question becomes a gift to the whole Church, because it draws out the answer of v. 6.
“I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” (14:6)
St Augustine explains: as God, Christ is the homeland where we are going; as man, he is the way by which we go (in substance).
“Whoever has seen me has seen the Father.” (14:9)
“the one who believes in me will also do the works that I do and, in fact, will do greater works than these, because I am going to the Father.” (14:12)
“Greater” not in power but in reach: through the apostles, the Gospel would go beyond Galilee and Judea to the ends of the earth, to Rome and to India.
How the Church reads it.
The Catechism calls Jesus Christ, “the way, and the truth, and the life”, the first and last point of reference of all catechesis (CCC 1698), and teaches that his whole life reveals the Father: “Whoever has seen me has seen the Father” (CCC 516). Praying “in his name” is the newness of Christian prayer (CCC 2614). Pope Benedict XVI, in his catechesis on St Thomas (2006), said that Thomas' question gives us too the right to ask Jesus for explanations, and that Jesus' answer is meant for every seeker (in substance).
Did St Thomas really come to India?
The Thomas Christians of Kerala have handed down from ancient times that the apostle landed at Kodungallur (Muziris), traditionally in AD 52, founded communities and died a martyr at Mylapore. Early writings from Syria, such as the third-century Acts of Thomas (a work with legendary elements) and the hymns of St Ephrem, link Thomas with India. Sea trade between the Roman world and the Malabar coast in the first century is well documented, so the journey was possible. The Church honours this living tradition, while historians weigh its details.
Is the Presentation of Mary in the Bible?
No. The story of the child Mary brought to the Temple comes from an early Christian writing, the Protoevangelium of James (second century), which is not part of Scripture. The feast is very old in the East and was linked with the dedication of the church of St Mary in Jerusalem in 543. Its truth is spiritual: Mary was wholly given to God from the beginning of her life (Marialis Cultus 8).
If Jesus is the only way, what about people of other religions?
The Church teaches that Christ is the one mediator and saviour of all (CCC 846; 1 Timothy 2:5). She also respects what is true and holy in other religions (Nostra Aetate 2), and teaches that those who, through no fault of their own, do not know Christ but seek God sincerely may be saved by his grace, which always comes through Christ (CCC 847).
For the Syro-Malabar Church this is a family feast. The Thomas Christians have always called their way of life the Law of Thomas (Mar Thoma Margam), and the ancient churches the tradition attributes to him are still places of pilgrimage. Ephesians 2:20 is our own story: our Church stands “upon the foundation of the apostles”, and of one apostle in particular, who doubted, asked, believed and confessed “My Lord and my God”. The East Syriac tradition in which our faith was handed on came to us through the Church of the East, which also looked to Thomas as its father. On the same day, the Presentation of Mary invites families to offer their children to God, as Joachim and Anne offered theirs according to tradition.