Forest in the district of Daphnē near Antioch
The twenty-fourth of April is the feast-day of Saint Thomas, a monastic fool-for-Christ of Cappadocian origin, who died and was popularly venerated in Antioch. Saint Thomas is noted as a protector of his city against plague, and it therefore seems meet and fitting to commemorate him now when all across the world people are suffering from the novel coronavirus.
The venerable Saint Thomas [Gk. Θωμᾶς Σαλός, Ar. Tûmâ توما] was a member of a poor and deprived monastery in Cæsarea of Cappadocia (modern-day Kayseri in Turkey). His abbot placed him under the obedience of collecting alms for the monastery, and he journeyed under this obedience to the city of Antioch in Syria. It was here that he began to take on, for the glory of God, the appearance of folly.
He came to one of the churches in Antioch to beg, but that church’s steward, a man named Anastasias, lost patience with the monk Thomas and struck him in the face. Those who were in the church restrained Anastasias and upbraided him for his rudeness and cruelty in dealing with a fool like Thomas. However, Saint Thomas quieted them down by pronouncing: ‘From this moment I shall accept nothing further from Anastasias, nor will Anastasias be able to give me anything further.’ The people in the church were calmed, but they did not understand what Thomas meant by these words.
As it turned out, Saint Thomas’s words proved to be prophetic. The steward Anastasias fell ill and died the following day. And Saint Thomas, having started the long journey home to Cæsarea in Cappadocia, also reposed in the Lord, while he was staying at a church dedicated to Saint Euthymios in the outlying district of Daphnē (famous for a cypress park dating back to præ-Christian times), five and a half miles south of Antioch. He was buried in a plot of the Church graveyard reserved for strangers.
After some time they buried another stranger on top of Saint Thomas’s grave. Four hours after the workmen had left the gravesite, they returned to find that the grave had been dug up and the earth piled up beside the open grave once again. They covered the stranger’s grave again, but the next morning when they returned they found the open grave again with the earth strewn aside. They took the stranger away and reburied him in another place. This same thing occurred at a later time when two women were buried in the plot where Saint Thomas lay. The people of that Church then realised that Saint Thomas did not wish to share his grave with a woman, and they reported this occurrence first to the priest and afterward to the Patriarch of Antioch, who was Domnos III (546-561).
Patriarch Domnos decreed that the relics of Saint Thomas should be dug up and translated to Antioch proper. This was done, and the body of the holy monk was interred in a church graveyard which was preserved for the holy saints and martyrs. Here his relics began to work wonders. The intercessions of Blessed Thomas proved effective when they stopped a deadly plague which had been ravaging Antioch; his veneration is noted from this time forward in that city. Blessed Thomas, fool for Christ and protector of Antioch from plague, we ask that you offer your prayers in our own day of pandemic for the health of our bodies and the salvation of our souls!
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