Greetings Hagiophiles!
Today we see the Saintly Sixteen completed, as Clare of Assisi had a tidy victory of Rafqa of Lebanon. Nobody's going to call her Poor Clare now, unless it's her accountant doing her taxes. The thirty two holy hopefuls have been cut in half (well, not literally, though that was one method of martyrdom - see Hebrews 11.37), and now things get really serious.
Today it's our friends Albert Schweitzer (big moustache, did everything, certified polymath) versus Thomas the Apostle (hand picked disciple, doubter but then believer, reluctant apostle).
Biblical characters so far in Lent Madness 2024 have done well in getting into the next round, but here Thomas runs into a bona fide historical figure whose deeds are documented, whereas Thomas' story, if you read today's post. The third century text The Acts of Thomas, for example, has many charming stories (legends, really) including how, while he was in India, Thomas found and baptized the Magi who had gone to Bethlehem to honour the infant Jesus.
What do we make of these charming stories? The councils of the church excluded certain books, like The Acts of Thomas, from the canon of scripture, doubting their orthodoxy in some cases, or their accuracy in others. The Reformation was notoriously hard on the saints' lives and stories, like the ones about Jesus as a child, that had grown up during the Middle Ages. The Reformers disapproved of legends that they felt distracted the faithful from the saving truth of scripture, which alone could save us (sola scriptura).
However, today as our bible study noted when we met yesteday, millions of people follow the show The Chosen, a multi-season life of Christ that makes liberal use of invented events and characters to flesh out the story and the world of Jesus and his followers. Perhaps it is because we are a story telling people that we need stories and legends to make biblical characters real. The same is true of history, as the Ridley Scott movie Napoleon shows.
Anyway, I digress. Vote here.
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