18 December 2026 · Syro-Malabar Rite
Open in the Daily Word appAlso: Latin Rite · Syro-Malankara Rite · മലയാളം
“Jesus said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.”” John 14:6
Today the Syro-Malabar calendar commemorates the Miraculous Cross at Mylapore. The ancient stone cross with a Pahlavi inscription, found on St Thomas Mount near Chennai in the sixteenth century and venerated in connection with the apostle Thomas, is one of the oldest Christian monuments in India. Tradition records that it showed miraculous signs during the Holy Qurbana. Whatever one makes of the reports, the cross itself witnesses to the antiquity of the faith of the St Thomas Christians, who honoured the Cross without a corpus as the sign of victory and life.
The readings unfold the meaning of the Cross. Moses strikes the rock and water flows; the Fathers saw this fulfilled when the soldier's lance opened Christ's side. Peter proclaims: “God has made him both Lord and Messiah, this Jesus whom you crucified.” Paul says Christ reconciled Jews and Gentiles “to God in one body through the cross.” And Jesus, about to go to his Passion, tells Thomas: “I am the way.” The Way passes through the Cross.
Theme: “Peace through the Cross.”
The Miraculous Cross at Mylapore and the meaning of the Cross.
“I will be standing there in front of you on the rock at Horeb. Strike the rock, and water will come out of it, so that the people may drink.” Exodus 17:6
“Let the entire house of Israel know with certainty that God has made him both Lord and Messiah, this Jesus whom you crucified.” Acts 2:36
Apply: Pray before the cross at home tonight.
“So Moses made a serpent of bronze, and put it upon a pole; and whenever a serpent bit someone, that person would look at the serpent of bronze and live.” Numbers 21:9
“And just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.” John 3:14–15
Apply: Look at a crucifix in silence for five minutes.
“Do not fear, for I am with you.” Isaiah 43:5
“Jesus said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.”” John 14:6
Apply: Reconcile with one person before Christmas.
The Cross of Christ is our peace and our way.
We adore you, O Christ, and we bless you.
Take-home resolution: Teach your children the meaning of the cross in your home.
Dear friends, today the Syro-Malabar Church remembers the Miraculous Cross of Mylapore, the ancient stone cross found on St Thomas Mount near Chennai, one of the oldest Christian monuments in India (H). It reminds us that the faith of the St Thomas Christians is ancient, and that our fathers honoured the Cross as the sign of life and victory.
In the first reading the people in the desert are thirsty and angry. God tells Moses to strike the rock, and water flows out (Exodus 17:6). The Fathers of the Church saw in this a sign of Christ, the Rock struck on the Cross, from whose side flowed blood and water.
St Peter, on Pentecost, proclaims: God has made him both Lord and Messiah, this Jesus whom you crucified (Acts 2:36). The Cross was not defeat; it was the throne from which Christ was raised to glory.
St Paul says Christ is our peace: he has broken down the dividing wall, reconciling both groups to God in one body through the cross (Ephesians 2:14–16). The Cross unites what sin divided.
In the Gospel, Jesus says to Thomas and the apostles: do not let your hearts be troubled; I am the way, and the truth, and the life (John 14:1, 6). Our apostle Thomas asked the question, and Jesus answered with himself. The Way passes through the Cross to the Father's house.
The St Thomas cross has no corpus: it is the Cross of the Risen One, blossoming at its ends, with the dove of the Spirit above. When we look at it, let us remember that every suffering united to Christ can become a source of living water. Let us bring our troubles to the Cross today and hear: do not let your hearts be troubled. Amen.
Children, the cross shows us how much Jesus loves us. Make the sign of the cross slowly and with love today!
Lord Jesus, you made peace through your Cross and opened the way to the Father. As our fathers in faith honoured your Cross, let us glory in it and walk your way to life. Amen.
Today the Syro-Malabar calendar keeps the memory of the Miraculous Cross at Mylapore, and the four readings open up the meaning of the Cross. In Exodus, water for a dying people comes from a rock that has been struck. In Acts, Peter proclaims that the crucified Jesus has been raised and has poured out the Spirit. In Ephesians, the Cross breaks down the wall between peoples and makes them one house of God. In John, on the night before he dies, Jesus tells Thomas that he himself is the way to the Father. The line runs from the struck rock to the Father's house, and its key words are water, peace and way. It is a fitting set of readings for the Church of St Thomas, a week before the birth of the Lord: the child we are waiting for was born for the Cross.
Setting.
Israel has crossed the sea and been fed with manna (Exodus 14–16). Now they camp at Rephidim, and there is no water. The people quarrel with Moses and ask: "Why did you bring us out of Egypt, to kill us and our children and livestock with thirst?" (17:3). The story ends with a question that lies under all their complaints: "Is the Lord among us or not?" (17:7).
The reading is short, but the place became famous. Moses named it Massah and Meribah, "testing" and "quarrelling" (17:7), and Psalm 95:8 still warned later generations not to harden their hearts as at Meribah. A similar event at Kadesh is told in Numbers 20:1–13.
Structure.
Key words.
Verse by verse.
“So Moses cried out to the Lord, “What shall I do with this people? They are almost ready to stone me.”” (17:4)
Moses brings the anger of the people to God, and does not throw it back at them. This is what a mediator does.
“take in your hand the staff with which you struck the Nile, and go.” (17:5)
The same staff brought plague on Egypt and life to Israel. The elders are to go as witnesses, as at a trial, but the trial turns out strangely.
“I will be standing there in front of you on the rock at Horeb. Strike the rock, and water will come out of it, so that the people may drink.” (17:6)
God stands on the rock, and Moses strikes it. God does not strike the people. In a sense the blow falls where God is standing, and life comes out of it. Christian readers could not hear this verse without thinking of Calvary.
How the Church reads it.
St Paul writes that the Israelites drank from a spiritual rock, "and the rock was Christ" (1 Corinthians 10:4). Jesus promises rivers of living water (John 7:37–39), and John records that from his pierced side "at once blood and water came out" (John 19:34). The Catechism sees in this blood and water the types of Baptism and the Eucharist (CCC 1225), and speaks of the Spirit as the living water welling up from Christ crucified (CCC 694). St Ambrose tells the faithful: Drink Christ, for he is the rock from which water gushed (in substance; Commentary on Psalm 1).
Setting.
This is the end of Peter's speech on the day of Pentecost, in Jerusalem, to Jews who have come from every nation (Acts 2:5). The crowd has heard the disciples speaking in many tongues. Peter explains what has happened, first by the prophet Joel (2:17–21) and then by the Psalms. David, whom his hearers revere, becomes the main witness. The speech is the earliest public preaching of the Resurrection that Luke records.
Structure.
Key words.
Verse by verse.
“he both died and was buried, and his tomb is with us to this day.” (2:29)
Peter's argument is plain enough for anyone to check. A well-known tomb in Jerusalem holds David. The tomb of Jesus does not hold him.
“This Jesus God raised up, and of that all of us are witnesses.” (2:32)
This is the centre of the apostolic preaching. It is said simply, and it rests on people who can be asked.
“Being therefore exalted at the right hand of God, and having received from the Father the promise of the Holy Spirit, he has poured out this that you both see and hear.” (2:33)
The Father, the Son and the Spirit are all here in one sentence. The Cross, the Resurrection and Pentecost belong to a single movement.
“God has made him both Lord and Messiah, this Jesus whom you crucified.” (2:36)
The word "made" does not mean that Jesus was not Lord before. The Resurrection shows and establishes in his risen humanity what he always was (see CCC 445). On "whom you crucified", see the question below.
How the Church reads it.
The Catechism teaches that the title "Lord" given to Jesus is the divine name of the Old Testament, and that it gives him the honour due to God (CCC 446–449). It sees in Pentecost the outpouring by the risen Lord of the Spirit he received from the Father (CCC 731). When we confess at the Holy Qurbana that he is seated at the right hand of the Father, we are confessing what Peter preached that morning (CCC 659, 663).
Setting.
The passage comes just after the reading we heard earlier this week, on being saved by grace (2:1–10). Paul now turns to what that grace has done to human divisions. The Gentiles were "far off" and the Jews were "near" (compare Isaiah 57:19). Paul writes as a Jew who honours the covenants: he says that what the Gentiles lacked was precisely a share in "the covenants of promise" (2:12).
Many commentators think that the "dividing wall" may recall a real barrier in the Temple at Jerusalem. A stone wall kept Gentiles from going further into the courts, and Greek inscriptions warning them of death have been found. Paul himself was accused of bringing a Greek past it (Acts 21:28–29).
Structure.
Key words.
Verse by verse.
“For he is our peace; in his flesh he has made both groups into one and has broken down the dividing wall, that is, the hostility between us.” (2:14)
"In his flesh": peace has not come through a treaty or a good idea. It has come through the body of a man who was put to death.
“He has abolished the law with its commandments and ordinances,” (2:15)
This does not mean that the moral law has been cancelled. Paul elsewhere says that we "uphold the law" (Romans 3:31). He means the Law as a boundary that kept Gentiles out. In Christ, entering God's people no longer depends on it. Compare Matthew 5:17.
“and might reconcile both groups to God in one body through the cross, thus putting to death that hostility through it.” (2:16)
Those who killed Jesus thought that they were ending something. Paul says that what was put to death on the Cross was hostility itself. "One body" may mean his crucified body and also the Church.
“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 readers of this letter had no claim on Israel's God. Now they are at home. So are we, far from Jerusalem, on the coasts of India.
“built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the cornerstone.” (2:20)
The Church rests on people who actually knew him, and the Catechism builds its teaching on the apostolic Church on this verse (CCC 857). For us, one of those stones has a name: Thomas.
How the Church reads it.
The Second Vatican Council quotes this passage directly when it speaks of the Jewish people: by his Cross Christ our peace reconciled Jews and Gentiles, making both one in himself (Nostra Aetate 4). The Church does not replace the root of the olive tree, but is fed by it (Romans 11:17–18). The Catechism says that earthly peace is the image and fruit of the peace of Christ, who by the blood of his Cross killed the hostility in his own person (CCC 2305), and it describes the Church as the building of God, resting on Christ the cornerstone (CCC 756).
Setting.
It is the night of the Last Supper. Jesus has washed the disciples' feet (13:1–20). Judas has gone out: "And it was night" (13:30). Jesus has said that he is going where they cannot follow (13:33), and that Peter will deny him (13:38). Into that fear he speaks these words. They are the start of the long farewell discourses (John 14–17).
Thomas is one of the few disciples who come alive in this Gospel. He is the one who said, "Let us also go, that we may die with him" (11:16), and later the one who will say, "My Lord and my God!" (20:28). Here he is the honest man who says that he does not understand.
Structure.
Key words.
Verse by verse.
“Do not let your hearts be troubled. Believe in God, believe also in me.” (14:1)
The Greek form of "believe" can be read as a statement or as a command. Either way, faith in Jesus is set right next to faith in God, which no mere teacher could ask.
“In my Father’s house there are many dwelling places.” (14:2)
"My Father's house" was the Temple in 2:16. Now it means the Father's own presence, and there is room in it. On the night he is betrayed, what Jesus has in mind is the place he is going to prepare.
“I will come again and will take you to myself, so that where I am, there you may be also.” (14:3)
Heaven is described here in terms of a person: being where he is.
“Thomas said to him, “Lord, we do not know where you are going. How can we know the way?”” (14:5)
We should be grateful for this question, since the greatest answer in the Gospel was given to it. The man who asks it is the Apostle who, according to our tradition, walked the farthest way of all, to India.
“Jesus said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” (14:6)
Three words, and one "I". The way leads to the Father, and he is also the truth about the Father and the life of the Father. This is said by a man hours away from the Cross, and it is the Cross that makes him the way.
How the Church reads it.
The Catechism teaches that human beings, left to their own powers, have no access to the Father's house, and that only Christ can open it (CCC 661), and it presents him as the way and the model of holiness (CCC 459). St Augustine puts it this way: Christ as God is the homeland to which we are going, and Christ as man is the way by which we go (in substance; Sermon 123). The Second Vatican Council quotes this verse in Nostra Aetate 2, in the same place where it says that the Church rejects nothing true and holy in other religions.
What is the Miraculous Cross at Mylapore?
It is a carved stone cross with an inscription in Pahlavi, the Persian language of the first Christian millennium, found on St Thomas Mount near Chennai in the sixteenth century and venerated there. Scholars date it long after the Apostle, and they have read its inscription in more than one way. It is a witness to very old links between the Christians of India and the Church of Persia. Tradition records that it showed miraculous signs during the Eucharist. Reports like these do not belong to the deposit of faith (compare CCC 67), and no one is bound to accept them. The faith of the St Thomas Christians in the Cross as a sign of victory stands whether one does or not.
When Peter says "whom you crucified", is he blaming the Jewish people?
No. Peter is a Jew speaking to fellow Jews, about the events of those weeks in that city, and he is calling them to repentance. The next verses show three thousand of them baptized (Acts 2:37–41). The Church teaches that the Passion cannot be charged against all Jews then living, nor against Jews today (Nostra Aetate 4; CCC 597), and that sinners, all of us, were the authors of Christ's sufferings (CCC 598).
"No one comes to the Father except through me." Does this mean that non-Christians cannot be saved?
All salvation comes through Christ; the Church does not soften that. But she also teaches that those who, through no fault of their own, do not know the Gospel and yet seek God with a sincere heart can be saved, by the grace of Christ, even if they do not know that it is his (Lumen Gentium 16; CCC 846–848). The verse says who the way is. It does not say that those who have not heard of him are beyond his reach.
The St Thomas Christians have long honoured the Cross, and many Syro-Malabar churches display a cross without a corpus, of the kind known from the stone crosses at St Thomas Mount and in Kerala, for instance at Kottayam. It is called the Mar Thoma Sliva, and it proclaims the Cross as the sign of victory and life. The readings of today say the same. The struck rock gives water, the crucified one is Lord, the Cross makes peace, and the way to the Father runs through it. The Holy Qurbana makes present the sacrifice of the Cross, and from the altar, as from the rock, flows the living water of grace.