Saint Martha, mother of Symeōn Stylitēs the Younger

Saint Martha of Antioch
القديسة مرثا الأنطاكي

The fourth of July is also the feast day in the Orthodox Church of another Holy Mother of Antioch, Saint Martha the mother of Symeōn Stylitēs the Younger. Saint Martha’s Life was probably composed first by one of the Syriac monks who lived on the Hill of Wonders as part of the monastic community around her son’s pillar, around the year 620, and from there it was transcribed into the Slavic Prolog. It is unique and valuable in Syriac hagiographical literature in that it relates the life of a sæcular, married saint who was neither a noblewoman, nor a martyr, nor a nun. Although Saint Martha was always closely associated with this monastery, her Life therefore attests to the virtuous striving and sanctity that even married couples ‘in the world’ can hope to attain.

Saint Martha [Gk. Μάρθα, Ar. Marṯâ مرثا] was born in Antioch, probably shortly after the year 500. As a young woman she went often to Liturgy, prayed unceasingly, and harboured the desire to dedicate her life to God in holy virginity. However, this was not meant to be. Her parents, meaning well and thinking of her well-being, arranged for her to marry a Syriac youth of Edessa: a chemist’s son named Yaḥyâ – that is, John. This decision was not to her liking, for she wanted to retain her virginity. She began making plans to quit her parents’ house.

However, it so happened that before she could put this plan into motion, she went to a shrine dedicated to Saint John the Forerunner, and was there visited by him. Saint John gave her a wondrously sweet-scented ball of incense. She prayed at that shrine again, and Saint John reappeared and told her that she must obey her parents. Putting aside her plan to flee, she was married to Yaḥyâ. Saint John further instructed her to sleep with Yaḥyâ, conceive from him, and bear a son to him who was to be named Sim‘ân – that is to say, Symeōn – to be named for the great High Priest (or possibly for Symeōn the God-Receiver?), for he too was destined to become a priest of God. Saint John gave her further instructions on how she was to raise little Symeōn, including using only her right breast to feed him. It happened that she disobeyed this last instruction once, when the boy was insatiably hungry, but her left breast began to shrivel and so she ceased. It also happened that whenever Saint Martha would eat meat, her son would refuse her milk. When the boy was older, she weaned him with bread and honey. She had her young son baptised in the Orthodox faith at the age of two.

Saint Martha’s husband Yaḥyâ died young – killed in one of the natural disasters that wracked Antioch during the 520s. Symeōn was at this time only a boy of five, and his frightened mother went out searching for him in the wreckage of the earthquake, fearing that her son had also been killed. Once again, the Forerunner appeared to Saint Martha in a vision, and pointed to her where her son was. It turned out that a neighbour had found Symeōn in the church and taken him into her house for a full seven days, and she told Saint Martha that the young boy had refused all food until his mother arrived. Soon afterward Saint Martha had a vision of herself offering Symeōn to God.

The loss of her husband and the unexpected deliverance of her son, together seem to have made Saint Martha even more observant, out of gratitude to God. The Slavic Prolog tells us: ‘She had the regular habit of rising at midnight for prayer. With great charity, she helped the needy and misfortunate, visited the poor, the orphaned and attended the sick.’ It was not long after the earthquake that Symeōn met a certain man dressed in white robes, who instructed him to follow out into the deserts beyond Antioch. Saint Symeōn was led into a monastery upon a mountaintop, where lived a stylite under whom the boy studied and soon began living an ascetic life on a pillar of his own.

Despite Symeōn’s life of seclusion and asceticism, his mother did not lose contact with him, but came to visit him regularly. On one occasion a certain woman named Juliana came to Saint Symeōn with her sister and her niece who was possessed by an unclean spirit. Saint Symeōn did not cure them, and sent them back to Antioch. Saint Martha came to visit Juliana, and soon ascertained that the reason that her son hadn’t cured her sister or her niece was because her sister had committed a certain sin that she had not confessed. Martha counselled Juliana and her sister, and they went back to Saint Symeōn and Juliana’s sister confessed her sin to him. Martha pleaded with her son to cure Juliana’s niece, and he did.

The earthquakes in Antioch continued – this was still before Patriarch Ephraim’s intercession on the city’s behalf, apparently – and Saint Symeōn was troubled by visions of the city’s destruction. He began writing penitential troparia from his perch on the pillar and handing them out to the monks to chant, in an effort to stop Antioch from being destroyed. Saint Martha came back to him then, and he told her about the visions of destruction that he had foreseen in Antioch and Constantinople, and Martha had become very afraid. She redoubled her prayers, and asked her son to spend an entire day in intercessory prayers for Antioch. The Patriarch too heard of these visions and prayers on the Hill of Wonders and was moved to intercede, and through their prayers the city was saved. On another occasion Saint Martha asked her son to intervene on the city’s behalf as it was struck by a period of civil strife and religious division, provoked by the Evil One.

A year before she died, Saint Martha received a vision of many angels bearing candles in their hands. From these, Saint Martha was able to ascertain how many days she had left to live. Upon learning this, she was not stricken with fear or despair, but instead resolved yet more intensely to devote herself to prayer and to materially benefitting the needy, feeding and clothing the poor, visiting the sick and burying the dead. She met her repose in the Lord peacefully and with contentment, on the fourth of July in the year 551. She was buried close to where her son still sat on his pillar, and the evidences of the sæcular woman’s great sanctity very quickly became apparent to Saint Symeōn and to his monks. Saint Martha appeared in visions to the monks and to the pilgrims who came to the Hill of Wonders; and it was always to teach them the correct way of prayer or of doctrine, or else to heal them of the sicknesses of body and spirit.

Her most significant appearance was to the abbot of the monastery on the Hill of Wonders, after she had been buried. The abbot had placed a candle over her grave with the intention that it should always be kept lit. But when the abbot fell ill, he neglected the candle and allowed its light to go out. After this happened, Saint Martha visited him in a vision and reproached him:

Why do you not burn a votive candle on my grave? Know that I am not in need of the light from your candle since I have been made worthy before God, the Eternal Heavenly Light, but it is needed for you. So when you burn a light on my grave, you entreat me to pray to the Lord for you.

Saint Nikolaj Velimirović adds the following commentary in the Prolog: ‘It is obvious from this that the goal of our veneration for the saints is to entreat them as those worthier than us to pray to God for us and for our salvation.’

It bears repeating that Saint Martha of Antioch was not an ascetic. She was not celibate. She was not a martyr. She was not born to wealth or to political office. She married a common-born chemist’s son. She gave birth to a child who turned out to have an extraordinary love for God. Sanctity is not only for monks, not only for rulers, not only for the witnesses to faith under trials and persecution. Sanctity is for all. Because: though not an ascetic, she suffered. Though not celibate, she loved and obeyed her husband. Though not a martyr, she showed Christ’s love to those she knew. Though not wealthy, she gave from her poverty to those who had nothing, and she was in that way richer than many who lack no material comfort. The virtues that Saint Martha displays throughout her life: love for her family and particularly for her poor and sick neighbours, faith in God, hope even in the face of personal tragœdy and loss – these are our true bread. These are exactly the things that Saint Paul told each and every common believer to possess. Holy mother Martha, praiseworthy and sweet intercessor for Antioch and for all those who pray, please pray for us today that Christ may have mercy on us!

Apolytikion to Saint Martha of Antioch, Tone 8:

The image of God was truly preserved in you, O Mother,
For you took up the Cross and followed Christ.
By so doing, you taught us to disregard the flesh, for it passes away;
But to care instead for the soul, since it is immortal.
Therefore your spirit, O venerable Martha, rejoices with the angels.

The monastery of Saint Symeōn the Younger, Antioch