She was
born about 1730, and as a young woman married an army colonel named Andrei, a
handsome and dashing man fond of worldly living. When she was twenty-six years
old, her husband died suddenly after drinking with his friends, leaving Xenia a
childless widow. Soon afterward, she gave away all her possessions and
disappeared from St Petersburg for eight years; it is believed that she spent
the time in a hermitage, or even a monastery, learning the ways of the
spiritual life. When she returned to St Petersburg, she appeared to have lost
her reason: she dressed in her husband's army overcoat, and would only answer
to his name. She lived without a home, wandering the streets of the city,
mocked and abused by many. She accepted alms from charitable people, but
immediately gave them away to the poor: her only food came from meals that she
sometimes accepted from those she knew. At night she withdrew to a field
outside the city where she knelt in prayer until morning.
Slowly,
the people of the city noticed signs of a holiness that underlay her seemingly
deranged life: she showed a gift of prophecy, and her very presence almost
always proved to be a blessing. The Synaxarion says "The blessing of God
seemed to accompany her wherever she went: when she entered a shop the day's
takings would be noticeably greater; when a cabman gave her a lift he would get
plenty of custom; when she embraced a sick child it would soon get better. So
compassion, before long, gave way to veneration, and people generally came to
regard her as the true guardian angel of the city."
Forty-five
years after her husband's death, St Xenia reposed in peace at the age of
seventy-one, sometime around 1800. Her tomb immediately became a place of
pilgrimage: so many people took soil from the gravesite as a blessing that new
soil had to be supplied regularly; finally a stone slab was placed over the
grave, but this too was gradually chipped away by the faithful. Miracles,
healings and appearances of St Xenia occur to this day, to those who visit her
tomb or who simply ask her intercessions. Her prayers are invoked especially
for help in finding employment, a home, or a spouse (all of which she renounced
in her own life). A pious custom is to offer a Panachida / Trisagion Service
for the repose of her husband Andrei, for whom she prayed fervently throughout
her life.
Saint
Xenia was first officially glorified by the Russian Orthodox Church outside
Russia in 1978; then by the Moscow Patriarchate in 1988.
Source: https://www.holytrinityorthodox.com/calendar/los/September/11-10.htm
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