Saint Thomas the Apostle, called the Twin, was from the Galilean city of Paneada. When our Lord Jesus Christ, during His life on earth, walked through cities and villages teaching people and healing every disease, then Thomas, hearing His preaching and seeing His miracles, clung to Him with all his soul.
And he followed Him, feeding on His sweet words and seeing His most holy face, and was worthy to be included by the Lord in the Twelve Apostles, with whom he followed Him until His saving suffering. After the resurrection of the Lord Christ, St. Thomas strongly strengthened faith in the Church of Christ with his unbelief. Because when the other disciples told him: We have seen the Lord (Jn. 20, 25), he would not believe them until he saw Christ himself and felt His wounds. And after eight days after the resurrection, when all the disciples were together and Thomas with them, the Lord appeared to them and said to Thomas: Stretch your finger here and see my hands; and reach out your hand and put it in my ribs, and do not be unfaithful but faithful. – And Thomas, seeing Christ and feeling His life-giving ribs, said: My Lord and my God (Jn. 20, 26-28). This event with Thomas clearly confirms to everyone the truth of the Lord’s resurrection: because Christ really rose and appeared to the disciples not as an apparition and not in another body but in the same one in which he suffered for our salvation.
After the ascension of the Lord Christ to heaven and the descent of the Holy Spirit, the Holy Apostles cast dice, where one of them would go to preach the word of God. Saint Thomas decided to go to India, to enlighten the regions darkened by paganism there, and to teach the true faith to various peoples: Parthians and Medes, Persians and Hyrcans, Bactrians and Brahmins, and all the most distant inhabitants of India. However, St. Thomas was very sad that he was being sent among such wild peoples. But the Lord appeared to him in a vision, strengthening him and ordering him to be brave and not to be afraid, and promising him that He Himself would be with him. And soon the Lord will enable him to travel to those countries.
When the Apostle Thomas preached the Gospel and enlightened the land of India, there was an honorable presentation of the Mother of God, and all the apostles from different parts were taken on clouds and transported to Gethsemane, to the bier of the Blessed Virgin. Then the Holy Apostle Thomas would also be taken from India, but he did not arrive on the very day of the burial of the glorified body of the Most Holy Theotokos. It would be so according to God’s will, in order to give the faithful the most convincing proof that the Mother of God was taken to heaven with her body. Because just as we became more convinced of Christ’s resurrection through Thomas’s disbelief, we also learned about the ascension of the Most Pure Virgin Mary the Virgin into heaven through Thomas’ delay.
Because the apostle does not arrive until the third day after the funeral, and he grieved that he did not arrive on the day of the funeral itself, in order to accompany the holy body of the Mother of his Lord to Her tomb with the other apostles. Then the Holy Apostles agreed that for the sake of Saint Thomas, they would open the tomb of the Most Holy Mother of God, so that he could see Her holy body, bow down to it and be comforted in his sorrow. However, when they opened the grave, they did not find a body, but only a shroud where he was lying. And from this it would be clear to everyone that the Mother of God, like her Son, was resurrected on the third day and was taken up to heaven with her body.
After that, the Holy Apostle Thomas found himself again in the land of India, and preached Christ; and brought many to faith with signs and wonders. Coming to Meliapor, he enlightened many there and established them in the holy faith with the following miracle. In one place, there was a huge tree that not only a lot of people, but also elephants could not move from its place. The apostle Thomas dragged that tree with his belt to a distance of two kilometers and handed it over for building the Lord’s temple. Seeing this, the faithful were strengthened in their faith, and many unbelievers believed.