Why Kondugallur?

Tradition has it that St Thomas (yes, he of doubting fame) travelled to India a number of times, with his landing being here – Kodungalluar, Kerala – in 52 AD. A well-known trading point and harbour at the time, Thomas is said to have founded seven and a half churches in the area - hence my visit to this particular place in India.

Also, my Uncle and Aunt have visited Kerala many, many times and spoken of its beauty. Another friend visited earlier this year and spoke of the beauty too. Known as 'God's own country', how could a girl from Yorkshire (which also calls itself God's Own Country), not come to see how the competition – in both directions – fared against one another?!

Over the past couple of days I have headed out of town to explore the churches bearing Thomas’ name: 

St Thomas’ Shrine, Kodungallur (Additional photographs here)

Marthomas Pontifical Shrine, Azhikode (Additional photographs here)

St Thomas Latin Church, Azhikode. (Additional photographs here)

Each church has been open (although with two of them, finding a door that was open was a bit of a challenge!) and each church has been a haven of calm.

I have appreciated spending time thinking about the challenge of the journey Thomas made – and why he did it at all. I have been wondering what the local people thought about this man and this message. With a resident Jewish community here, no doubt Thomas will have made his way to speak with them. I wonder what they – like so many Jews of the time – will have made of this message that this man brought with him. Had they already heard of Jesus – the Messiah – from traders who had travelled here before Thomas arrived?

When the great European Explorers ‘discovered’ India as part of their search for a route to the untold riches of ‘the East’, priests who came with them were surprised to find that Christianity was already well-established here. This will not, I don’t suppose for one moment, have stopped some of the new arrivals seeking to establish their own brand… witness, today there are Syrian, Roman Catholic, Anglican (Church of South India and Church of South India), New India Church of God churches to be found. Oh my. Whatever happened to, ‘May they all be one’?!

As I’ve travelled today – exploring churches and viewing temples too, I have been struck by how important it is that there are buildings that stand as testimony to the existence of faith in our world. Also, that these buildings exist as the places in which the people of God can gather together to give testimony and thereby encouragement to each another of our faith. This is nothing new, but it is an important realisation for me - when so many people say, I don't need to go to church/Temple/Synangogue to be a Christian/Jew/Muslim/person of faith'. People of faith do well to know there are others on the journey of faith - for when the journey is hard, for when there is something to give thanks, for when there are things to be shared, questioned or wondered about.

There has been so much that is familiar in all of the churches I have seen (which comes as no surprise, given the ‘gift’ (ahem!) of Western Church ritual and its impact on so much of the world) and this has made it easy in different ways to feel at home in these places. I have wondered, though, what the early buildings/churches of Kodungallur would have been like as they became communities that were too large to be accommodated inside people’s houses. What did they build? Where did they build?

Rather like the way in which so much of what one experiences when visiting the Holy Land is about the ‘spirit of place’ as it is impossible to certify where this or that happened. (Even the Church of the Multiplication (Feeding of the Five Thousand) is on the wrong side of the lake – for conveniences’ sake!)) There is a sense of that here in Kodungallur too. Which is fine.

I have been drawn here because I wanted to, ‘come, see the place’ - because of family and friend connections and because it is a place that holds such a sense of the spiritual for so many across the world. 

The lines ‘come, see his hands and his feet / the scars that speak of sacrifice’ from Kendrick’s song, The Servant King come to mind as I reflect on my kneeling in front of the relic of St Thomas, watched over by a local custodian of the church who was also praying at the same time. She was so very proud in a wholly humble way as she unlocked the doors and cabinet to show me this relic – a bone from Thomas’ arm – given when Kerala was celebrating the anniversary of Thomas’ arrival in India. I knelt because I felt I should in this particular place. I asked for nothing, but only gave thanks for this one man’s extraordinary journey to a land so far away from his own, and my own journey to discover more about Thomas’ journey, and the journeying of my Uncle, Aunt and my good friend who had, like Thomas, come this way to this land before me.