Western Churches
St. Thomas Sunday is so called because the Gospel reading always relates the story of "Doubting Thomas," in which Thomas the Apostle comes to believe in the Resurrection of Jesus only after being told by the resurrected Christ to place his finger in the nail marks and his hand in His side. In the Gospel accounts, this event takes place on the eighth day after the Resurrection, hence their significance for this Sunday (John 20:19-29).
The name "Low Sunday" is sometimes said to derive from its relative unimportance compared to the solemnities of Easter Day. Traditionally, the newly-baptised would receive baptismal gowns that would be worn until this day, and the official Latin name is Dominica in Albis , "Sunday in White Garments". Hence "White" and "Alb" Sunday—which is also the etymology of Whitsunday (Pentecost). Those who had been baptized at Easter now receive their first communion and then laid aside the white robes which they had worn throughout the week. Long before the Reformation, confirmation was observed on this Sunday in Germany.
Read more about this topic: Octave Of Easter
Famous quotes containing the words western and/or churches:
“For twenty-five centuries, Western knowledge has tried to look upon the world. It has failed to understand that the world is not for the beholding. It is for hearing. It is not legible, but audible. Our science has always desired to monitor, measure, abstract, and castrate meaning, forgetting that life is full of noise and that death alone is silent: work noise, noise of man, and noise of beast. Noise bought, sold, or prohibited. Nothing essential happens in the absence of noise.”
—Jacques Attali (b. 1943)
“Science is neither a single tradition, nor the best tradition there is, except for people who have become accustomed to its presence, its benefits and its disadvantages. In a democracy it should be separated from the state just as churches are now separated from the state.”
—Paul Feyerabend (1924–1994)