The Sunday of Apostle Thomas, known in Russian as Antipascha (“opposite Pascha” or “after Pascha”), is the first Sunday following the Feast of the Resurrection. It commemorates the Apostle Thomas’s encounter with the risen Christ eight days after the Resurrection, as recorded in John 20:24–29. This event is central not only to the post-Resurrection appearances of Christ but also to the Church’s proclamation of the reality of His bodily resurrection. Among the Orthodox Old Believers, this feast carries a particular depth of meaning, bound to our emphasis on continuity, physicality, and uncompromising faithfulness to the traditions handed down from the pre-Nikonian Church.
The key passage is from the Gospel according to John: “Then he said to Thomas, ‘Put your finger here and see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it in my side. Do not doubt but believe.’ Thomas answered him, ‘My Lord and my God!'” (John 20:27–28)
Thomas is often unjustly called “Doubting Thomas,” as if he were some sort of sceptic or unbeliever. This label is both misleading and unfair. Thomas was not doubting the possibility of Christ’s resurrection in a rationalistic or modern sense; he was demanding to see the marks of the nails and the wound in Christ’s side because he knew what had happened at Golgotha. He had seen the crucifixion with his own eyes. He had seen the Lord’s body broken, His side pierced, His blood and water poured out. He wanted to be certain that the one appearing to the other disciples was not a vision, not a ghost, and not a deception of grief or the imagination. He was not content with second-hand reports, even from the other Apostles. He wanted personal knowledge. His words—“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)—were not words of defiance, but of rigorous integrity. He would not proclaim the Resurrection unless he was certain that it was the crucified Lord Himself who had risen.
Continue reading →
You can 