Venerable Theophilus the Confessor (VIII)

The Venerable Theophilus the Confessor was a Bulgarian. He was born in the neighbourhood of the city of Tiberiopolis (later Strumitsa, in Macedonia). At the age of thirteen the blessed one secretly left home and made his way to a lavra on Mount Selentia. Three years later he was tonsured a monk. When the saint’s parents learned where their son was, they came to the house and asked the abbot to let Theophilus go with a few brethren to Tiberiopolis, to found a monastery near their home. To learn the will of God the abbot ordered a strict fast and intensified prayer in the monastery. On the third day a voice sounded in the church, giving the superior a blessing to let Theophilus go, for he was to shine in the new house with great spiritual labours.

When the iconoclast emperor Leo the Isaurian (717–741) ascended the throne, the holy father openly rose up against the heresy of the iconoclasts. For this, by order of the lawless autocrat, he was led bound through the streets of the city like a criminal. Then the emperor handed the Lord’s chosen one over to a high-ranking courtier, Hypatius. Hypatius tormented the saint for a long time, but could not win him over. It was Theophilus who changed the mind of Hypatius himself: he reminded the man who had gone astray of how Moses raised up the brazen serpent and fixed the cherubim on the Ark of the Covenant, and at last recalled how the Saviour sent His Image Not Made by Hands to Abgar, king of Edessa. Hypatius persuaded the emperor to release the blessed father. The confessor returned to his house. He did not live long after this: he committed his soul to the Lord in peace in the eighth century.