Posted on 01/10/2005 12:36:47 PM PST by It's me
CHENNAI (ICNS) – The tsunami waves have subsided, but a miracle is being talked about across Chennai. It is the story of how St Thomas’ miraculous post kept the invading waves away, sparing the newly renovated Santhome Cathedral.
The Cathedral, the world’s second basilica built on an apostle’s tomb, has been giving shelter to hundreds of tsunami victims ever since the waves ravaged many buildings across the coast.
But even though the killer tsunami waves devastated the Chennai coast, Father Lawrence Raj, the parish priest of the Santhome Cathedral Basilica, says “the sea did not touch our church.”
The reason? “We believe the miraculous post of St Thomas prevented the sea waters from entering the church,” says Father Raj.
The church that sits at the site where St. Thomas, one of the 12 Apostles of Jesus Christ, was buried after his death in the year 72 is located a few metres from the sea. While all the buildings on either side of the church were hit by the tsunami waves, the Santhome Cathedral remained unaffected.
Local people now say it is the St Thomas’ miraculous post that has kept the sea away on December 26.
According to Father Raj, the legend is that when St Thomas planted the post at the top of the steps leading to the Cathedral, he said the sea would not pass that point.
The priest saw from the terrace of church the angry sea in action, as it surged across the road and flooded the huts in front of St Thomas’ post, which is an innocuous looking log of wood, mounted on a cement pedestal.
The belief goes that a village in the Mylapore area was flooded when a huge tree trunk fell across the river. The local king brought a royal pachyderm to lug it away, but the task seemed impossible.
Then, according to legend, St Thomas came along, removed the girdle from his waist and handed it to a bystander and asked him to yank the log with it. He did so and the log was moved easily.
A mural in the Cathedral museum illustrates this incident. Father Raj says the current post is believed to be from that same log of wood.
Hundreds of homeless survivors who have been staying in the church ever since the tragedy hit them have prayed to St Thomas for saving them.
“It is St Thomas who has saved me. This church was untouched by the waters because of the miraculous power of the St Thomas post,” said K Sebastiraj, a fisherman who sought shelter in the Santhome Cathedral.
See
Faith ‘halts’ nature in its tracks
Vedaranyam (Tamil Nadu), Dec. 31: Faith won over nature on Sunday when a special puja conducted after 50 years is said to have helped save Vedaranyam town, 48 km from Nagapattinam, from the tsunamis.
At least five nearby fishing hamlets, including Arcot Thurai, were devastated that morning but not this town, once notorious as a point for smuggling by LTTE sympathisers to the rebels in northern Sri Lanka, which is 30 nautical miles from here.
“Around 8.30 am on December 26, we first got to hear about the tsunami attack in other coastal parts of the state. After the first tsunami hit the Vedaranyam coast around 9 am, people flocked to the temple,” said Thyagarajan Gnanaguru, the executive officer of Sri Vedaraneeshwarar Swami temple built by the Chola dynasty.
The first giant wave had almost wiped away the nearby hamlets and killed two persons in the town itself, which is the southern-most tip of the worst-hit Nagapattinam district, according to Gnanaguru.
Immediately, the temple priests, including Sundaramurthy Kurukkal, Sivaraja Kurukkal and Kalyanasundara Iyer, revived an age-old practice of offering “special puja” to the shrine of Goddess Durga. The deity’s idol is believed to have been installed by Lord Ram on his way to Sri Lanka to retrieve his wife Sita. The shrine faces south, towards Sri Lanka.
Gnanaguru said that after the puja, the priests carried in a procession the “pottu karai (a piece of gold from the goddess’ taali or mangalsutra), a flower garland that adorned the deity, parivattam (silk cloth that draped the deity), sacred ash, vermilion and sandal paste and immersed everything at the shore directly facing the temple’s entrance.
The first tsunami had forced the sea to advance about 750 metres inside up to the railway gate, the temple officer said. But after the “special puja” and the immersion, “the sea did not advance further into the town and no casualties were reported here after that” during the second tsunami strike around 11 am, Gnanaguru said.
Namasivayam, who sells coconuts outside the temple, said Durga was last invoked to stave off a major catastrophe way back in 1955, when the town was threatened with a similar deluge.
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So the Christian God just saved one church, while Durga saved a whole town, and not once but twice!!!!!!
But I suppose you will tell me the church story is a real miracle but not the Durga one.
You have proven you are falacy with your windmill crusade...
Not a chance! The errors I speak of are not due to books of the canon but pagan errors in the church which are totally anathaema to the design Christ had for His followers;
Maryology, celebate priests, adoration of the host, titles & vestments, veneration of priests, papal infallability, crucifix worship, transusbstantiation, worship of the "queen of heaven", production and sale of idols & "holy water", etc, etc. All of it from the spirit of Jezebel and the marriage of babylon to catholisism under Damasas. Shalom
bookmark bump
Oh ye of little faith.
Ah, but it is my understanding that that mosque was inundated with water. The water went in and around it. This lovely Cathedral was not.
The 450-year-old church, located a few metres from the water, remained unaffected by the tsunamis even though buildings in line with it on either side were ravaged by the waves. The belief, says Father Lawrence, is that when St Thomas planted the post at the top of the steps leading to the cathedral, he said the sea would not pass that point. ‘‘But that is the legend,’’ stresses the father, ‘‘nobody knows whether it is true.’’
The priest sounds wary of declaring it a miracle. Puzzling, considering his job and that he gives visitors what he jokingly calls ‘‘credit cards to heaven’’ - neat little plastic cards laminated with a pinch of soil from St Thomas’ tomb that fit into your wallet. He offers logical explanations, like - perhaps it is because the church is built on a higher level. ‘‘But then,’’ he reasons, ‘‘the lighthouse is on roughly the same plain, and the water reached it.’’
Your notion of Christianity is a peculiar one indeed: apparently Jesus' "true ideas" had no power to last much beyong his lifetime, and indeed were largely lost to history, until the two dozen or so people who think like you do recovered the truth in the last handful of years. How lucky for the rest of us that you came along.
As a Catholic, I thought the thread was about God's hand in saving people in St. Thomas Cathedral. I understand the Cathedral was built in honor of St. Thomas on the site where he is buried. Ultimately, it is God that holds all of us in his hand whether or not we do anything with it.
I see that scripture only thing, but Paul says scripture and tradition. So its hard to go with the OSC on that one. And I knew how to find that verse, not the one you asked for.
I see we are in agreement. Maybe there were others who want to see that God's hand is not in this. IMHO, some (not you) are just wanting to take it to Catholics for our belief in scripture and tradition. For some reason, though, they don't want to listen to what Paul had to say about tradition. I thank you for finding that helpful verse in your earlier post.
Look deeply into your heart and explore where words like this are birthed.
Not likely at all. It would be a 'miracle' for a piece of wood to last that long.
My sincere apology. I posted to the wrong person in haste.
Rather than teach a Bible class here, I would direct you to II Timothy 2:15. You will benefit more by being the one who does the work.
ampu
it is two words in the greek Para -- is ussually translated as: in, near, by, or from. However the word means bsedie or alongside implying the source of which anything proceeds.
the second word is dosin which comes from the word didomi to give bestow or present.
So to sat that Paradosin should be translated as the word tradition is incorrect. The word tradidtion would be a biased interpretation not a translation
And what did the apostles give the Thessalonians? Tradistions of their own making, their opinions and private interpretations? No time after time they tell us they gave them the gospel, the word of truth, the testimony of Jesus christ. And what do they say about other teachings other traditions? They say they are other gospels, other goseples then the one that they taught them.
Of interest is the word tradition because it does not appear in only New American Standard Version. While I know that you may not be able to look up the Greek you can go to Bible Gateway and see how many translations have the word tradition inserted specifically in this verse cited.
The word paradosin is used quite a few times in the New Testament yet it has miraculously been given a meaning of "tradition" in this verse.
Let me give you verses that contain this word: Matthew 4:12 Matthwew 5:25 Matthew 10:4 Matthew 10:17 In these verses the word has been trnasalted in its rootmeaning to give to hand and to deliver The translaters then tell us that they have added an attribute to the word and translate it to commit and intrust Matthew 11:27, Matthew 25:14 but the word has not changed the translaters have changed to word from "To Give" to an emphasis on the one who recieves -- certainly one may argue that God does not speak or give to just anyone but when we alter the meaning of words to improve them we violate what the writer wrote.
If we were to make Shakespeare a new updated translation some would like it but most people would be up in arms that some self apponted scribe would chose to arbitrarily insert their opinion into the words of Shakespeare.
The word is translated to commit, and to commend: in Acts 14:26 (recommended to KJV -- the King James is utterly mistransalted here.) and 15:40 (being recommended KJV again this is very bad. Does the church recommend to God or does the church select someone whom God already has his hand on and prays for his grace upon them?)
It is translated "to yeild up" in John 19:30 ("And gave up" KJV) 1corinthians 15:24 ("Delivered up" KJV) The word in no way contains the word "up" in it the word give and yeild are not really the same Give implies free will in my mind and yeild implies giving in unwillingly, surrendering or forking over something under duress. This may or may not be in the context but the word paradosin does not change.
And unfortunately we see the translators continue to alter this word. it is translated "to abandon" in acts 7:42(gave them up KJV) eph 4:19 ("given themselves over" KJV)
In 1 Corinthians 11:2 They say the word means: To deliver as a matter of injuction or doctrine Now I praise you brethren that ye remember me and keep the Paradosin (Ordinances KJV) as I Paradosin(ed)(delivered KJV)then to you. We can start to see with the insertion of the word Ordinances (My Greek interlinear inserts the word traditions) that the translaters are now altering text by inserting a word that would imply what the apostles are giving is man-made or a set of laws or if we put both translators opinions together we now have the apostles giving a set of man-made laws.
Now this issuance of traditions doctrines and precepts of men is one of the things that Christ spends the greatest amoung of words speaking against in the gospels. Sometime between 250 and 250 years after Christ's dath some men in the church first began to presumed that traditions man-made doctrines and precepts were just as good as or better than Scripture and the words of Christ.
In further examining this concept of traditions and man-made doctrines and precepts of men we find that the apostles and particularly paul says again and again that if we wreceive any other teachings words doctrines traditions and or Gospels that they have given they are to be . . . rejected and for that fact they say over and over again tha men that had fallen away had devised their own teachings traditions and Gospels so that there was only one that was true and that all others were to be rejected.
So that at the time of the Apostles the Apostasy had begun and Paul names names and the Apostollica father name names
If we have gone to a Gospel that embraces the traditions of men the Doctrines of men and the precepts of men we have crossed into what Christ and the apostles clearly rejected and railed against -- how can we say on the word of men that were not Christ or the Apostles that they are now good? I will leave you to come up with the conclussions of what this means on your own.
Jesus created HIS Church, not a denomination.
NO ONE denomination has the right to claim to be the only believers.
The Crusaders proved once and for all the fallacy of the Catholic Religion. It is not the church Christ created. That church died with John.
The church is still alive... it just might not be in the form most people expect it. But as for a more natural explanation, you're probably right to wonder there. still though... miracles do still happen. God Bless.
Think of all the Mayans and INcas, where are they?
They had HUGE and intelligent civilizations, but they disappeared. No one knows why.
It very well could be because of their sin.
And God is merciful on those who turn to Him, and that may be why He is patient with us, we still have a small remnant who are working at believing what He said! :)
So does this make 2 Catholic churches spared?
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