On the 23rd day of the Coptic month of Tute we celebrate the life of Saint Thecla, also known as Takla.
On this day the church celebrates the commemoration of the first female martyr, St. Thekla, the bride of Christ. She was a deaconess and a disciple of the apostle Paul. She was an example of virginity and purity and a model for enduring strife and hardships.
Thekla was a very beautiful and well mannered only daughter to honorable pagans. Born and raised in the city of Iconium, a large city in Asia minor, she was to be engaged to one of the noblemen of that city. But when St. Paul came to Iconium, on his first missionary journey between 45 and 50 A.D., Thekla heard his preaching.
She marveled at his teachings and became a follower. Never before had she heard such words, and through these words she discovered and believed in the Lord Jesus Christ. She was baptized and vowed her virginity to the Lord, thus braking off her engagement. For all of her life Thekla believed in the importance of her physical beauty, now she was only concerned for her inner beauty.
Her mother noticed a change in her behavior. She asked her about the secret of this change, thinking that her young daughter had found a new love in her. Thekla indeed had found a new love, and told her mother that she had become Christian and vowed her purity to the Lord Christ. Her mother was enraged and tried to persuade her but Thekla refused. Her mother went to the governor of the city and asked for his assistance. He too tried to convince her to abandon Christianity and return to the worship of idols. Thekla refused to bow before anything or anyone but the Lord Christ. The governor ordered her to be burned to death but a storm put out the flames and she safely escaped death .
Thekla left her city and went looking for St. Paul. She found him and joined him in the city of Antioch. He left her there to serve among the women. The governor of the city seized her, and cast her to the wild beasts. But they did not harm her. Then the governor had her thrown into a pit full of poisonous snakes. They also did not harm her. Both exhausted and limited in intellect to explain such things, he ordered her to be released. St. Paul witnessed the Lord within her, sent her back to her birthplace of Iconium to preach to the people of her city about the life-giving faith. When she realized that her mother was still insisting her to return back to paganism, she left to the city of Tyre in Syria to pursue her ministry. Many believed through her words.
In the later part of her life, she lived in seclusion and contemplation, a perfect life of asceticism. God granted her the gift of healing and many were cured with her prayers. She was 90 years old when the Lord called her to her true home, and her body was buried in Seleucia, the port of Antioch. The church calls her “the martyr without shedding blood.”
Lessons from this story
In the very beginning of this story of a young and beautiful girl, she is referred to as “a model of strife and enduring hardships”. Life presents us with many hardships that are not measured by our physical suffering - which of course many saints have suffered from. But this title points not to the physical suffering for in hearing her story, we see she did not suffer any pain from the attempted tortures. Her struggle, her enduring struggle, was against the first nature of her life.
She left her physical beauty behind her and there is no mention of that life calling to her. But her mother pleaded with her to return to her pagan ways. You can almost imagine her mother showering her with gold, jewels, soft clothing, all the enticements the pagans had to offer. It was probably enough to cause her to leave her home town for the second time and preach in Tyre of Syria.
Our daily lives are bombarded with temptations, via phone, text, email, tv, radio, friends - you name it. There are enough physical attractions in this...