Saint Lydia of Thyatira

Saint Lydia of Thyatira was a dealer in purple cloth of whom the Acts of the Apostles tell. In the Macedonian city of Philippi she was the first to believe the Gospel preached by Saint Paul the Apostle, and she was baptized together with her household. The Church remembers her on May 20.

All that we know of her comes from the sixteenth chapter of the Acts of the Apostles. The years of her birth and death are unknown. She came from Thyatira, a city in western Asia Minor, and traded in purple cloth. Saint Luke calls her “a worshiper of God.” This was the name for Gentiles who worshiped the one God of Israel without keeping all the precepts of the Jewish Law.

Paul came to Philippi, a leading city of that district of Macedonia and a Roman colony, after a vision at Troas in which a Macedonian implored him, “Come over to Macedonia and help us.” On the sabbath the apostle and his companions went outside the city gate along the river, where they expected to find a place of prayer, and spoke with the women who had gathered there. Lydia was among them. Luke records that the Lord opened her heart, so that she listened attentively to what Paul was saying.

Lydia was baptized together with her household. Then she asked the missionaries, “If you consider me a believer in the Lord, come and stay at my home.” She insisted until they agreed. Soon afterward Paul and Silas were beaten with rods in Philippi and thrown into prison. When they were released, they went to Lydia’s house, saw the brothers there, encouraged them, and left the city.

Here ends what Sacred Scripture says about Lydia. We do not know how the rest of her life unfolded or when she died. Pope Francis, reflecting on her story in 2019, saw in her conversion and hospitality the testimony of Christianity’s arrival in Europe. Lydia lived at a time when there were not yet any canonization processes. The Roman Martyrology remembers her as the one who was the first at Philippi to believe the Gospel preached by Paul.