FRAMINGHAM -- On July 27, 1946, St. Alphonsa of the Immaculate Conception said, "Tomorrow there will be a great battle."

St. Alphonsa, born Anna Muttathupadathu in Kerala, India, was a Franciscan Clarist nun who worked as a teacher despite years of battling excruciatingly painful illnesses. Her local bishop asked her how she could handle sleepless nights spent in agony.

"I am loving Jesus in my suffering," she said.

The morning after she made the cryptic pronouncement about her "battle," she lay in her cell, mumbled "Jesus, Mary, Joseph," and died. She was 36 years old. Pope Benedict XVI canonized St. Alphonsa in 2008, making her the first saint of the Syro-Malabar Catholic Church.

The Syro-Malabar Church is the largest of the 23 Eastern Catholic Churches, which have their own liturgies and hierarchies while remaining in communion with Rome under the jurisdiction of the pope. The church follows the Syriac Rite and is the largest of the Eastern Churches, with 5.5 million members.

According to tradition, the church was founded by St. Thomas the Apostle when he came to India to spread the Gospel in the first century A.D. The church retains a strong devotion to St. Thomas, and Syro-Malabars are traditionally known as St. Thomas Christians. These St. Thomas Christians interacted with the East Syrian Church, and the two developed a shared rite.

Despite India's separation from the Western World, the church remained in communion with Rome for many centuries. The St. Thomas Christians were shepherded by East Syrian bishops until Portuguese missionaries brought the Latin Rite to India in the 16th century.

Some St. Thomas Christians wished to preserve their traditional liturgy and broke off into a separate church. In the late 1800s the Roman Curia designated this group as the Syro-Malabar Church. Since then, the church has spread from India to the U.S., U.K., and other countries with an Indian diaspora.

Seventy-nine years after St. Alphonsa predicted her "great battle," St. Thomas Church in Framingham, the only Syro-Malabar parish in Massachusetts, marked her feast day with a Holy Qurbana (Mass) celebrated by Pastor Father Dijo Thomas.

"We need to understand she did not do anything in the secular world on Earth, any extraordinary things, but she lived a life for Jesus Christ," Father Thomas said in his homily. "Even in her suffering, she was loving Jesus Christ."

He said that St. Alphonsa never complained about her pain because she found strength in the image of the crucified Christ. He noted that Catholics often pray for an end to their sufferings, when really they should offer their suffering as a gift to God like she did.

"She started to suffer for Christ," he said. "Then, her suffering was to share the suffering of Jesus Christ, within his passion and death."

Father Thomas said that a true Christian never prays for a life without suffering, because there is no such thing. Instead, he told the assembly to offer their sufferings to God through the Holy Qurbana.

"We need to learn to face the suffering, how to manage, face them," he said. "That is only with Jesus Christ."

Father Thomas said that the Qurbana has more emphasis on singing than the Roman Catholic Mass. At St. Thomas, the Qurbana is an electric mix of musical styles, including classical Indian melodies, modern praise bands, smooth jazz, and electronica. The consecration of the Eucharist is done facing the altar, how it was once done in the Latin Rite prior to the Second Vatican Council.

"That is a liturgical requirement, and in the Eastern Rite, there is a teaching that we look toward the East," Father Thomas told The Pilot. "So that's why turning toward the altar, and looking forward for the second coming of Jesus Christ."

The church was filled with women wrapped in colorful saris. On one side of the altar was a statue of Mary cradling the baby Jesus, the lower half of her face shrouded in shadow. Mary stood between crystal candlesticks atop a shimmering blue-sequined tablecloth. A wreath of dried flowers held Madonna and child together. On the other side of the altar was a statue of St. Alphonsa, shaded by a red and gold umbrella, with wreaths of flowers draped around her neck. Lush bouquets surrounded the bier on which she was carried in a procession through the church. Father Thomas blessed the statue with incense and holy water. Parishioners lined up to venerate a relic of St. Alphonsa before sharing Indian food, ice cream, and cake (it was also Father Thomas's 46th birthday) in the parish basement. A cartoon about St. Alphonsa's sufferings played on a big screen.

About 100 families worship at St. Thomas each Sunday, but that number dips to the 60s or 70s during the summer, when parishioners travel to India. Some come from as far as Vermont, Rhode Island, and New Hampshire, where St. Thomas celebrates Qurbana once a month for that state's Syro-Malabar population. The church is overseen by the Syro-Malabar Eparchy of Chicago, which is celebrating a Jubilee Year in honor of its 25th anniversary.

"People are very welcoming, very active, and here in church seem to be very energetic," said Father Thomas, who became pastor of St. Thomas on July 1. He was born in Kerala and came to the U.S. in 2017, serving in Syro-Malabar parishes in Pennsylvania before coming to Framingham.

The first Syro-Malabar Catholics came to the U.S. in the 1970s. They and subsequent Keralan immigrants were attracted by freedom and economic opportunity. Many, including Depin Suja, a member of the parish Board of Trustees who immigrated to the U.S. in 2011, came to work in the burgeoning IT industry. He likes New England for its friendly people, cultural diversity, and the changing seasons -- though his wife prefers Kerala's warm climate. He said the parish is "where we can send our kids to learn our history."

"The fellowship and the community we have, all the traditions, what we follow in our Catholic traditions," he said. "The foremost is the family."

Syro-Malabar Catholics in New England did not gather regularly until the Kerala Catholic Prayer Group was established in the 1990s. Visiting priests would celebrate Qurbana in living rooms before the early 2000s when, with the help of the Archdiocese of Boston, they traveled from church to church.

St. Thomas was officially established in 2004. At that time, Qurbana was being celebrated in the Walter E. Fernald State School chapel in Waltham. The church received its permanent home, the former St. Jeremiah Parish in Framingham, in 2008. The archdiocese had closed that parish in 2005, and sold the property to the Syro-Malabars in 2011. From 2008 to 2011, the Syro-Malabar community had to share the parish with vigilers occupying the building in protest of its closure. There are some remnants of St. Jeremiah's former life, such as a dramatic Old Testament mural over the altar and memorial plaques on the walls bearing the names of former Irish, Italian, Polish, and French parishioners. Now, the church has become a spiritual beacon for a newer immigrant community. That's why Suja makes sure he's at Qurbana every Sunday.

"The main thing for me," he said, "it's just for me, I can't say about the others, is the communion, the friendship."

Editor's note: This article is a part of an occasional series focusing on the Eastern Catholic Churches with a presence in Eastern Massachusetts.