In today’s world we are often hearing about certain incidences which take place during childhood, whereas young men and women are abused. Well, today’s saint, Thomaïs, commemorated on April 14, falls into that category, and it’s a very harsh story, but one that of course has a wonderful ending. She is, after all, a saint.

She was brought up by parents who were faithful to the Church and to the Lord, and she was also the same way. When she had come of age, she was given in marriage to a young man who was a fisherman. Living with them at the time was her father-in-law, who evidently was one of the fathers at a nearby monastery. We’re not sure why he was living there—the Life does not go into that kind of detail—but he was in fact there. And, as it turned out, he developed a terrible lust for Thomaïs and began kissing her more often, which at the time she just took as fatherly love, because she began to think of him as her own father.

Well, one day, her husband left to go out fishing, and at that point the father-in-law began to get very aggressive with her, ripping at her clothes, kissing her, and attempting to rape her. She got away from him and chastised him for this behavior, saying, “This is not good for your soul. This is certainly not good for me. You need to stop.” But he wouldn’t give in. In fact, he became more violent and more insistent, and he grabbed a sword that was hanging over their bed, a sword that belonged to her husband, and he threatened her yet again, and she said, “There is no way I am giving in to you, no way at all.” So in his rage he took this sword and he cut her in half, leaving her lying in a pool of blood at the foot of the bed.

Not long after this happened, just a matter of moments, the old man went blind, and he was scuttling about the room trying to find the way out, and he couldn’t. A little bit after that, some people came to the door, looking for Thomaïs’s husband, and he said that he wasn’t there, that he had gone fishing. They finally broke open the door and came in and saw what the father-in-law had done to this young girl. They shackled him and took him to the authorities, where he did admit that the is the one who killed Thomaïs. This of course was very upsetting to many people in the area.

As it turned out, this father-in-law received a fearful sentence, one of decapitation. Later, a certain abba from another monastery in the Alexandrian area, Sketis, who was named Daniel, who was also a saint of the Orthodox Church—Daniel heard about this travesty, and he came to the home, and he wanted to take the relics of Thomaïs with him so that they might receive proper burial. He was allowed to do this, and he proceeded back to the same monastery that the father-in-law was from. He told the brothers, “I have the body of this young woman who was murdered for the sake of her chastity and her marriage. I would like to bury it here among the fathers.”

Some of the brothers were not happy about this, first of all because she was a woman who had no business being buried in a male monastery, and also because she suffered such a violent death: she was murdered. But he prevailed on them, saying, “Look, this woman suffered for chastity, the same chastity that all of you are supposed to be cultivating, too.” So they gave in and allowed the burial, which took place with all reverence and dignity, and an oil lamp was set by her grave. Abbot Daniel then went back to his monastery.

As it turns out, in that same monastery where she was buried, there was a monk, a father who was having terrible, terrible trouble with fornication and thoughts along these lines. One night after anointing himself with oil from the lamp that was put by St. Thomaïs’s grave, she appeared to him in a dream, and after that dream all the problems he had with fornication were taken away from him forever.

This is a brutal story, but I’m sure not uncommon during that time, but the Lord has allowed us to hear it in order that we may see the absolute beauty of this young girl in her refusal to give in to this lecherous old man who was besought and instigated by the devil. We also see, too, the importance of treating with great reverence and dignity the holy lampadas that are by the graves of the saints, because not only was this man healing by this oil, but we know of many, many more stories from saints old and new that when people are anointed with the oil that burns by their sacred relics, they, too, are healed of very many diseases and afflictions.

All of us should take heart in the wondrous story of Thomaïs, who dedicated her life to the Lord even unto death, and show all of us today what true love for him really is.