Saint Thekla of AntiochToday in the Holy Orthodox Church, the twenty-fourth of September, we commemorate one of the holiest women of Antioch and of the Early Church, Saint Thekla of Antioch, who was a follower of Saint Paul and a bold witness among the pagan Greeks and Romans. The great deeds and holy life of Saint Thekla illuminated many thousands of souls in the Near East, and bore witness to the divine illumination and the unburning fire of Christ. She did this even as she repeatedly showed herself proof against the flames of lust and the flames of fire with which the pagans tried to scorch her. With great celebration together with the Christians of Syria we honour her memory today.
Saint Thekla [L. Thecla, Gk. Θέκλα, Ar. Taqlâ تقلا] was born in the city of Iconium [which is modern-day Konya in Turkey] in the year 16. Her parents were rich and illustrious, and Thekla grew up into a marvellous beauty whose affections were highly sought-after. Her parents found it not difficult at all to arrange a suitable match for her, a youngster by the name of Thamyris. When Saints Paul and Barnabas came into Iconium to preach the good news of Christ’s resurrection, Thekla was intrigued and wished to join the crowds to hear them. Her mother Theokleia, however, forbade it, and kept her confined to the house. However, the will of God for this his martyr could not be so easily thwarted. The young girl found that she could go out onto the balcony from her room, and the air carried the words of the Apostle from where he stood to the balcony where she sat, for three full days and three nights while he preached.
St Paul’s preaching enthralled and electrified Thekla, and she was especially drawn to Paul’s preaching on the subject of chastity. She began to desire with her whole heart to serve the Lord and to embrace Christ crucified and risen. Both Thekla’s mother Theokleia, and her betrothed Thamyris, noticed the abrupt change in Thekla’s demeanour, and they went to the governor of Iconium to complain about Saint Paul’s preaching. In order to pacify the crowd, which was growing more and more incensed by the preaching of the two apostles, the governor had Saint Paul and Saint Barnabas arrested and thrown into prison.
When Saint Thekla heard of this, she stole out of her house and used her golden bracelets to bribe Paul’s gaoler, and having gained admittance to his cell, fell at his feet and kissed the chains and shackles that bound him. She spent hours kneeling at the feet of the Apostle, listening to him discourse upon Christ, upon His good news to the poor, and upon the virtues of faith and hope and love. She was gone long enough that her mother and her affianced grew worried, and they asked her servant where she was. The servant said that she had gone to visit one of the strangers in Iconium, who had been imprisoned. From this they were able to gather that she had visited Paul. At this, Thamyris and Theokleia went again to the governor, in a crowd of mingled Jews and pagans, and demanded that Saint Paul and Saint Barnabas be stoned at once and expelled from the city (Acts 14:19). The sentence was carried out, and they were left for dead outside the city, but the Lord preserved them both.
The governor scolded Thekla for her foolishness, and ordered her to return home to her mother and to her fiancée. Thekla refused, however, saying that she wished to retain her virginity and to serve the Lord Christ always. Her mother implored Thekla with tears, and then breathed threats against her which mounted in their severity, but still her daughter refused to return home. This sent her mother into a rage, and she demanded of the governor that the girl be severely punished if she did not obey him. The governor granted Theokleia’s request, and threatened Thekla that if she did not return home at once, she would be burned at the stake. The young martyr, however, was not moved by such threats, and would not forsake her Heavenly Bridegroom.
The governor then arranged for a stake to be righted in the arena, and Thekla approached it herself without fear, seeing a vision of the Lord beckoning her to Him, giving her strength. She was tied to it, and the fires were lit under her. But no sooner was this done than black clouds began to brew above her, and the skies opened up with thunder and lightning, heavy rain and hail. The fire around her damped down and died at heaven’s command. In embarrassment and anger, the governor then commanded that Thekla be banished forever from the city, and thrown out at the same gate that Saint Paul had been.
There, Thekla met Saint Paul, and told him of her trial and of the wonder by which she had been spared from death by fire. She asked the Apostle to baptise her, but Saint Paul, having a præmonition, refused the young girl, saying that God would accomplish this in His own time. However, the Apostle allowed Thekla to travel with him to Antioch. As they were entering the great city, it so happened that a young man of means named Alexandros chanced to see Thekla’s face, and was consumed with a desire for her. Alexandros tried to force himself on her, but Thekla fought him off, and being protected by God the force of Alexandros came to nothing. He was publicly humiliated – by a young girl at that – in front of the city. His pride could not endure this. He went before the governor of Antioch and demanded that Thekla be put to death for having shamed a nobleman. This governor agreed, and declared that Thekla was to be fed to wild beasts in the colosseum. Thekla asked only that her virginity be preserved until then, which the governor allowed. She was given into the custody of a high-born woman named Tryphaina, who kept her in her house until her day of execution.
Thekla was led to the arena, and a lioness was loosed upon her. Instead of attacking her, however, the proud animal instead went to her feet and curled up like a tame house-cat. The crowds were astonished. Next a bear was set loose upon Thekla, but as the animal attacked her, the lioness reared up and did battle with the bear, killing it. A lion was then set loose, and the lioness again did battle to protect Thekla, but though she managed to kill the lion, the lioness herself succumbed to her wounds. Then all manner of beasts were unleashed upon Thekla, who by this time had managed to free herself and dove into a pool where the aquatic predators were kept. In this manner she was baptised in Christ, and the water animals left her alone. Alexandros asked that the saint be given over to him, and he had her strung between two bulls to be torn apart. However, as this punishment was being prepared and the bulls were urged in opposite directions, by a wonder of God the bonds that held Thekla slid free of her wrists and ankles, and she emerged from them unharmed. She was again released into Tryphaina’s custody, where the noblewoman took care of her for eight days more. Thekla preached the good news of Christ to the noblewoman, and Tryphaina sought to be baptised along with all her house. Tryphaina gave Thekla many rich presents when she departed – gold, jewels and silks of immense worth.
Again Thekla went to seek out Saint Paul, who was then preaching in the town of Myra on the Lycian coast (now Demre in Turkey). She told him of everything that happened to her since they had come to Antioch, including her baptism in the pool full of aquatic beasts. Saint Paul marvelled at Thekla’s faith, and blessed her. Thekla gave to Paul all of the gold and jewels and precious things that Tryphaina had given her, to be distributed among the poor and hungry and homeless as the Apostle saw the need. She then departed back into Syria.
Saint Thekla lived for many years in the Syrian mountains, in holy solitude and prayer and vigil. She passed her life in such a way, præfiguring the disciplines of many great ascetics and anchoresses who would come to grace the Syrian deserts. However, clearly she retained much of her beauty well into middle age, and despite the harsh mode of life that her discipline enjoined upon her. She was seen by a pagan youth as she was praying amongst a lonely outcrop of rock, and inflamed by an evil desire the young man attempted to rape her. As he cornered her, Thekla prayed to Jesus Christ that He would protect her as He had done so often before. At that moment a cleft opened in the rock behind her, and Thekla was able to slip through it and out of the reach of the evil-minded young man.
Saint Thekla continued in her devotions until the age of ninety, praying in seclusion in a cell on a lonely mountain pass in the southwest of Syria. Her bodily needs were met by a holy well that sprang up there as she prayed, whose waters had restorative properties. She was not unknown to the people there, and she gave wisdom and comfort to the people who came to her, and in particular the young women. She managed to convert many of the outlying villages and towns to Christianity. When she reposed in the year 106, a group of young women came to her cell to honour her, and built a complex around her anchorage where they could live as virgins consecrated to the Lord. This complex would become Dayr Mâr Taqlâ, a Patriarchal Monastery of the Church of Antioch consecrated in 1935, situated in the Christian village of Ma‘lûlâ in southwestern Syria – one of the few places on earth where Aramaic is still spoken as a living, vernacular language. It has long been a site of pilgrimage for Orthodox and other Christians in Syria, and is registered as a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
Saint Thekla is venerated broadly throughout the Christian world, however, not just in Syria. She is taken as a symbol of feminine strength by the Christian women of Ægypt, many of whom went on to preach the gospel of Christ to their fellows. Among the Catholic and Anglican Christians of the West she is honoured as well, being the patron of Tarragona in the Catalan country of Spain, of Chamalières in France, as well as of a cathedral in Milan, Italy. Her cultus even spread as far as Wales – not an unknown thing by any means – where there is a Llandegla and a holy well named in her honour in the Welsh northeast, in Clwyd. It is and ought to be a matter of deep shame for the Christians of the West – including those of the UK and France – that the neoconservative and neoliberal elements in their governments all colluded in a brutal attack on Saint Thekla’s earthly homeland, and funded and supported the Sunnî radicals who would murder her followers and despoil her resting-place.
Because this was one of the holy sites of Christianity which was most affected by the civil war in Syria. The three thousand Christians of Ma‘lûlâ were persecuted and forced out of their homes in September of 2013 by the radical militants of Jabhat an-Nuṣra, who burned and looted the homes and holy places of the people living there – and the Dayr Mâr Taqlâ was not exempt. Many priceless icons and relics dating back hundreds of years were smashed or plundered. An-Nuṣra also kidnapped twelve of the nuns of the Dayr, though forty of them stayed in the monastery until the town could be liberated in April of the following year by the soldiers of the Syrian Arab Army and Ḥizbu’llâh. Our selfless Shi‘ite and ‘Alawî brothers restored the monastery of Mâr Taqlâ to the Orthodox nuns; we owe them our deepest thanks, and the faith of these followers of ‘Alî ibn ’Abî Ṭâlib puts to shame the faith of us Christians in the West. Forgive us sinners, Saint Thekla! Holy mother of the Church, equal to the Apostles, pray unto Christ our God that we may be saved!
Apolytikion to Saint Thekla, Tone 4:
You were enlightened by the words of Paul, O Bride of God, Thekla,
And your faith was confirmed by Peter, O Chosen One of God.
You became the first sufferer and martyr among women,
By entering into the flames as into a place of gladness.
For when you accepted the Cross of Christ,
The demonic powers were frightened away.
O all-praised One, intercede before Christ God that our souls may be saved!
Dayr Mâr Taqlâ
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