Although the Apostle Paul names several women among the many coworkers and converts mentioned in his letters, St Thekla is not one of them. Church Tradition, however, identifies St Thekla as an early convert, disciple, and coworker of St Paul.
Born in Iconium of Asia Minor (modern day Konya, Turkey), Thekla enjoyed a life of privilege and ease as the exceptionally beautiful daughter of wealthy nobles. When she came of age, her parents arranged for her marriage to a suitable young man, and she was on the cusp of living the same sort of reputable life her parents lived, and having her children of her own who were as special as she was to her parents.
But then she fell in love with another Man.
St Luke describes St Paul’s visit to Iconium in Acts 14. Whether during that visit or at some other time, Tradition tells us that young Thekla heard St Paul’s preaching about Christ and came to love the Lord Jesus so much that no other love would suffice for her anymore. She decided to break off her engagement and live her life in virginity out of love for God, becoming a disciple of St Paul.
This did not sit well with her family or her fiance, who complained to the local authorities about St Paul’s interference in their family affairs. St Paul was promptly thrown in prison. Thekla’s family may have assumed this was the end of a phase she was going through and that their lives and plans could return to normal.
And then she went missing.
Her family, their servants, and others searched for her everywhere, but she was only found after three days. She was at St Paul’s jail cell, listening to his preaching for three days, having bribed the guards to allow her to stay there by selling her jewelry (possibly part or all of her dowry) and giving them the money. This enraged her family all the more, and they brought her home.
She didn’t stay long. After St Paul was tried and condemned to exile from Iconium, she decided to follow him, resisting her family’s urgings to abandon her Christianity and return to her comfortable life. Jesus had captivated her heart so much that no family ties, no friendships, no riches, no threats and intimidations could make her turn away from him.
So her furious mother demanded the court to condemn her to burning at the stake. The executioners did not need to drag her to the fire: she walked freely, blessing the flames with the Sign of the Cross, and they did not harm her. Rather, Christ appeared to her, blessing her, and sending rain to put out the flames. Released from her death sentence, she left the city and found Paul, with whom she began traveling, listening to his teachings, and working with him in preaching the Gospel.
In the course of those travels, St Thekla caught the attention of another man, who was attracted by her beauty and wanted her for himself. Just as with her fiance Thamyris, so also with this man Alexander, she refused, preferring the love of Christ. He reported her to the authorities as guilty of the crime of being a Christian, and again she was condemned to death. But this time, the wild animals sent to tear her to pieces and devour her instead became docile, sitting meekly at her feet and affectionately licking them. After this and other tortures ended in failure because God delivered her from them, the people themselves confessed publicly the greatness of Thekla’s God, and the city authorities released her and allowed her to live in peace.
St Thekla retired to a remote location, spending years in prayer and fasting, preaching the Gospel, and healing the sick. She converted many people, including pagan priests, who saw her love for Christ and came to love him through her. Many times in her life, enemies tried to attack her, particularly targeting her virginity, but she was delivered from them all and continued her work undeterred.
Finally, at the age of ninety, she was attacked by pagan healers, who were angry that she was more successful at healing the sick and was doing so for free, robbing them of their lucrative business. They sent men to rape her, but she cried to the Lord for help, and he caused a rock to open and she entered its shelter, giving up her life and being buried in the earth by the Lord’s providence.
St Thekla became popularly venerated as a saint thereafter, and Tradition considers her the first female martyr just as St Stephen was the first male martyr. Due to her evangelistic work and close association with St Paul and St Barnabas, she was also regarded as “Equal to the Apostles”. Her life of virginity dedicated to the Lord became an example for numerous female martyrs and nuns in East and West in subsequent generations, many of whose lives and sufferings are remarkably similar to hers.
St Thekla is not merely a hero for people of ages past, however. Her life speaks a profitable word to the men and women of our own day. We see in her the embodiment of the Gospel’s teaching about the importance of loving Christ more than we love our parents and spouses or significant others. She teaches us that we can only truly be Christians by partaking and having communion not only in the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, but also in their sufferings. She balances the Christian’s call to evangelical engagement in communities and societies with the call to retreat from the world for communion with God in prayer, fasting, meditation, and growth in personal holiness. Her life-long chastity encourages us to live lives of purity and single-minded focus on God in an age which cynically ridicules and condemns these virtues. She models love of enemies by her strength and resilience in the face of sexual violence and her patient endurance through family betrayal and religious persecution. Far from being an obscure character in the annals of first century Christianity, she is perhaps more relevant than ever in the Church of the twenty-first century which lives in a post-Christian age not unlike the pre-Christian age in which she lived. Now as then, we are in need of her example and intercession.