Holy Martyr Thalalaeus

Life

From Lebanon by birth, the son of Beruchius and Romilia, an eighteen-year-old youth, beautiful in appearance and physical stature, with reddish-blond hair. A physician by profession. He suffered for Christ in the time of the reign of Numerian. When he courageously confessed his faith in Christ the Lord before the judge and torturer, the latter ordered two executioners, Alexander and Asterius, to drill through his knees with an auger, to pass a rope through the pierced bones, and to hang him from a tree. But an invisible power of God seemed to take away the sight of the executioners, so that instead of Thalalaeus they drilled through a plank and hung it from the tree. When the torturer learned of this, he thought the executioners had done it on purpose and ordered them flogged. Then Alexander and Asterius, in the midst of the flogging, cried out: "As the Lord liveth, from now on we too become Christians, we believe in Christ and suffer for Him!" Hearing this, the torturer ordered them beheaded with a sword. Then the torturer himself took the auger to drill through Thalalaeus's knees, but his hands went numb, and he was forced to beg Thalalaeus to save him, which the guileless martyr of Christ did through prayer. Then Thalalaeus was cast into the water but appeared alive before the torturer. (For within himself Thalalaeus prayed to God not to let him die at once but to prolong his torments.) When he was cast before wild beasts, the beasts licked his feet and fawned around him. At last he was beheaded with a sword and departed to the eternal life in the year 284.

From the Hymn of Praise

Before the gaze of men and angels,In torments and at the point of death,Thalalaeus prayed to the Lord:— O Lord, Creator of the world,