THOMAS THE FOOL

On May 7, the Church honors the memory of St. Thomas the Fool. The saint was a monk, abbot of the monastery, a prophetic seer and a miracle worker, through whose prayers people were healed not only and not so much from ordinary diseases, but from the epidemics that prevailed at that time. The saint was highly revered immediately after his death. However, his name was soon forgotten and in subsequent centuries, as, unfortunately, happens with most saints, it turned into a kind of “ordinal number.” To this day it remains only a “line” in the liturgical calendar.

Thomas was from Caesarea in Cappadocia. However, his entire life as an ascetic was connected with Syria. In Emesa, modern Homs, Thomas was the procurator of the monastery. In those days, such obedience meant the need to constantly be in search of alms for the needs of the monastery brethren in the cities. In those days, the monasteries’ economy corresponded, or were better contrasted, with the economy of parish churches. Their ministry entailed much greater responsibility, since the parish churches, according to the law, were truly entrusted with caring for the poor, sick, orphans and widows. The downside of this responsibility was often the considerable wealth that remained in their hands.

One day, Thomas came to Antioch for alms for the monks of his monastery and turned to the procurator of one of the capital’s churches, named Theophilus, that is, literally, “lover of God.” Annoyed by the requests of the ascetic, the “lover of God” hit him on the cheek. Thomas did not answer, remained silent, but only said that death was near. Whose death it was soon became known. The ascetic left and soon died on the way. This happened in the elite suburb of Antioch, the resort quarter of Daphne. Perhaps this death occurred as a result of injury from a slap in the face. After all, the blow of a strong and healthy man for a monk of that time, and, according to the monastic vocation, they were extremely thin and weak, could indeed be the last. In this regard, the ancient canons carefully warned the laity of that time against beating clergy.

But the death of the defenseless monk did not remain lonely. Soon the parish procurator shared his fate. So, as if in fulfillment of the Gospel images about the rich man and Lazarus, following Thomas the Fool, the priest died in the Capital of the entire East, which in ancient times was Antioch (cf. Luke 16:22). He died from an epidemic. Since 541, the Plague of Justinian raged in the Roman Empire. Thomas was buried in a place for the burial of strange and unknown people.

Following the sudden “dead tramp” - without a doubt, this is exactly what the death of a beggar monk looked like to “secular society” from the outside; they tried to “bury” two women one after another in the same mass grave of wanderers. Obviously, the gravediggers did not know that the ‘unknown dead’ was a monk. However, nothing came of this. For the “earth,” as it seemed, visibly threw out the bodies “buried” to the ascetic. These subsequent signs attracted the attention of the local church.

Patriarch Domnus III (545–569) learned about the circumstances. It is also important to remember that since 518 the Antiochian Church was split in two, there were two parallel hierarchies (!), each of which had its own Patriarch. The reason for this division, which continues to this day, was the rejection by a significant part of the monks and believers of the decrees of the IV Ecumenical Council in Chalcedon in 451. The opponents of Patriarch Domnus were then called “Monophysites.” They were predominantly not Greeks, but Syrians, and their positions were extremely strong. At the same time, almost simultaneously, the first plague epidemic in history began in the Empire. It seemed to many that the last times were approaching.

Patriarch Domnus transferred the body of Saint Thomas to Antioch, to the tomb of the martyrs. There, among the host of saints, rested the great bishop of Antioch - Saint Ignatius (c. 70). It soon became clear that Thomas had received the boldness from God to heal people and even stop the epidemic. An altar was erected at his new resting place.

In the liturgical calendar, Thomas is called “the holy fool.” Translated into Russian, this word literally means “madman”, “idiot” (cf. the title of Dostoevsky’s novel). In Orthodox worship, in the liturgy of John Chrysostom, holy fools could rightly be mentioned as a separate rank of holiness. How and why could a pious Christian people, whose worldview and, most importantly, sense of truth in those ancient times were especially close to the biblical understanding of righteousness, honor people who seemed or were actually insane?

The fact is that a person devoid of reason, and at the same time leading a pious Christian lifestyle, living in prayer, poverty and loneliness, was perceived in the context of New Testament and patristic anthropology. According to the classical philosophy of antiquity, and it is this philosophy that at all times has been and will be the matrix of all thinking, man consists of spirit, soul, and body. Moreover, the “spirit” was identical or almost identical to the mind. The Apostle Paul obviously agreed with this division of human nature, as he repeatedly testifies to in his Scriptures.

“May the God of peace himself sanctify you completely and may your spirit and soul and body be preserved completely without blemish at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ,” writes the Apostle to the Thessalonians (1 Thess. 5:23). So, the holy fool, the madman, “salos”, as the word sounded in Greek, for some special reason was “deprived” of his reason. Such deprivation could be congenital or voluntary. The main thing was the presence of faith and life inspired by the name of the Lord Jesus. Hence the more extensive name for the feat of the “fools”: foolishness for the sake of Christ.

When meeting the holy fool, people of that time knew that, in fact, he was not at all devoid of intelligence. He is visibly mad; however, this madness comes from the fact that his mind remains in heaven and stands before God. Therefore, the prayer of a holy fool, devoid of the barriers, obstacles and distractions inherent in the prayer of an ordinary person, is directly heard by the Lord. The “idiot’s” prayer immediately “rises before God and the Creator.” Fools were revered, their anger was feared, and they tried to help them in every possible way. ‘Take heed that you do not despise one of these little ones: for I tell you that in heaven their angels always see the face of the Father’ (Matthew 18:10). Fools - madmen, devoid of reason, idiots, children in mental development, losers, meek, born to lose - their word is absurd to the world, but it is heard by Jesus Christ (cf. Matt. 5:5). We must remember the holy fools to quietly ask for their intercession in our loud, crazy times.