Many eagles ride the wind currents above the Dharmaram. The seduction of Western Empirical Scientific method is to trap dissect and measure the animal. The eastern style is to write the Windhover. So let me tell you herstory.Once upon a time Mar Thoma came to India. He was a mysterious carpenter who built seven and a half churches here and was a wonderworker who performed many miracles. He was put to death by a lance from which spilt water and blood and he was buried. But when they came to look for his body the tomb was empty. Some say his followers had taken his remains to the West. This much is revealed to us in the Purana or Acts of St Thomas the Apostle. The Syrian Church fathers speak of his coming to Edessa where there too he mysteriously overcame death and still worked great wonders for the people. He appears later as a wanderer through Europe and later America known in one version (that of Michael Lewis in the Monk) as the Great Moghul of India who travels under a curse and can never settle in any one home for the foxes have their holes and the birds of the air their nests but he has nowhere to lay his head. Demons and ghosts fear him he does good wherever he wanders and is known by the fiery cross burning upon his forehead. Finally in 1878 at the Loretto Chapel in Santa Fe New Mexico a mysterious carpenter completed a miraculous spiral staircase in answer to the Loretto Sister’s prayer for help. http://www.funtripslive.com/santa_fe/miracle_staircase/staircase.htmMar Thoma Slihe is the Blessed Twin who is sent. In the Gospels he appears as Thomas Didymus, Hebrew and Greek for Twin the Twin. In Mark 9:1 Jesus states that there are some here present who will not taste of death until the Kingdom had come in power. This was taken to mean that some of the apostles may not die before the parousia (cf John 21: 21-23). It is an equally plausible reading that the prophecy is that Apostolic Churches cannot be completely destroyed if read with Matthew 16:18. From the beginning the herstory of Indian Christianity has been a story of Twins. As the Purana is retold over the centuries imposter twins emerge. Hence some argue that it is Bartholemew not MarThomas who evangelizes India. Or it is Thomas of Cana a merchant in the 5th century. And as recapitulation of the Twin deep structure he has a wife and a mistress each providing a parish of true and imposter Mar Thoma Nasranis.Both the purana of Mar Thoma and the legend of the Wandering Jew highlight an essential theandric truth, that if you believe in Christ you will not die, and if you die believing in him he will raise you up. The karmic cycle of Samsara from the Hindu legacy of the Mar Thoma Nasranis is a typology of the eternal life of the Spirit. The Wheel is replaced by the Mar Thoma Sliba. Pentecost is our Moksha.
On a structural level Purana catechize Indians through the four arthas, Kama, xxx , Dharma and Swargam/Moksha, Love, Wealth, Duty and Liberation. The Purana of Mar Thoma takes the typology of Hindu Catechesis and retells them through broken myth. Thus Mar Thoma is given wealth by King Gondolphes but instead of making more palaces for him as his architect he gives the money to the poor. Instead of a building buildings to praise the king, he builds people for his greater glory. When he gives talks to the King’s harem instead of teaching them to be obedient buxom concubines he encourages them towards greater self-determination and introduces proto-feminist catechesis telling them that they are in control of their own bodies and that sex is not just a pleasure for the King. Dharma is the life of Mar Thoma to live the gospel in love and truth fearles of the consequences. And the Swargam/Moksha that derives from these three are not in another world. In this world he is liberated into the kingdom, the Ramraj. In this world he begins eternal life and hence leaves no rotting corpse.
In terms of the myth of the eternal return. If the agricultural cycle happened only once it would be happenstance. It is because it is a repeatable cycle that the coming of the monsoons derive gravity become part of the theandric truth instead of floating away into dark space. Indian culture knows these cycles as the three yuga. Avatars continually arise as prophesied in the Mahabarat, the Ramayana, the Bhagawad Purana, and the Acts of the Apostle Thomas.
At the heart of the Purana of Mar Thoma and the Legend of the Wandering Jew is the truth that true faith is always a stumbling block, one which the builders reject. The story of the true church has always been one of persecution responded to with the joy of the spirit of life, and the alleluiah of the Resurrection. In addition they hint towards the eschaton whereby all will be reunited in Christ. Thus the twins Mar Thoma in India has been the Hindu Brahmins and the original Christian converts of the first century. Then they were the twin families of Thomas of Cana the forward and backward castes of Indian Christianity. During the imperial age of colonization they became the two lungs of the Church the Padroado Christians and the Mar Thoma Nazranis.The Purana itself shows a way forward. To escape death Mar Thoma at first transforms into a peacock the symbol of the local God. Syncretism is the norm in India. During the annual Shakti festival in Kerala pilgrimages are made to both Temple and Church. A wise lay Hindu woman puts it thus when we light a candle at the Church it is seen to flicker also in our Temple and vice-versa. There is only really one flame. In simple words an expression of the Advaita philosophy, or Rahner’s theology of anonymous Christianity.Mar Thoma is a Slihe one sent. His children of the first covenant the Nasranis have traditionally treated all India as their mission territory. Traditionally the Padroado Christians of the second covenant were sent as missionaries to the portugese African colonies, and through the Goan diaspora to the coastal ports throughout the world. But we are sent out enduring the sorrows of white martyrdom solely that the joys of our return may be magnified. Having involved ourselves in the world of the Other we joyfully return to enrich our own in our continuing evolution into supramental life everlasting.
The wandering Jew of Lewis though a force for good cannot settle in any one place as he is. The contemporary Indian Christian cannot survive for long as they are. They are in need of the Hindu heart the heritage of the Vedas, the Yoga of Pantajali of the liberators and founders of the Indian Nation Gandhi-Ji and Sir Aurobindo the rightful heritage that we must reclaim. And we must learn to breathe with the lungs of the Western and Eastern rites. From the West they take the scalpel of low knowledge, the necessary suffering of the Via Dolorosa, and breathing with the Eastern lung, they draw on the spirituality of the pneumatic Christ and the joy of a Resurrection people. Outwith the lung of the Padroado the Eastern Church might forget Social Justice. Outwith the lung of the Mar Thoma Nasranis we lack a mystagogy to save us from unfettered materialism.
The Mar Thoma Sliba is a beautiful rendition of this mystery. Why do you seek the living among the dead. The cross of Mar Sliba is not empty it is flowering, flowering on a bed of lotuses, and soaring as a windhover is the Spirit of Life animating the kingom with the flowering cross at its centre and periphery.
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