St. Xenia of St. Petersburg
Xenia Grigorievna Petrova (c. 1730 - c. 1803) was widowed at twenty-six when her husband, the army officer Andrei Feodorovich Petrov, died suddenly at a party without confession or Communion.
Grieving for his soul, she gave away her house and possessions, put on his uniform, answered only to his name, and for some forty-five years wandered St. Petersburg as a homeless fool-for-Christ, praying through the night in the fields and secretly carrying bricks for the church being built at the Smolensk cemetery. God granted her gifts of clairvoyance and prophecy, and after her repose countless miracles flowed from her grave, over which a chapel still stands. She was glorified by the Russian Church Abroad in 1978 and by the Moscow Patriarchate in 1988.
Bake blini, bake blini! Soon all of Russia will be baking blini! (her cry through the streets days before the sudden death of Empress Elizabeth in 1761, when blini were baked for funerals)
Here you are sitting and sewing your buttons, and you do not know that God has sent you a son! Go quickly to the Smolensk cemetery! (to her friend Paraskeva Antonova, who there found and adopted a newborn whose mother had just died)
I am all here! (her cheerful reply when visiting friends, for she owned nothing but the clothes she wore)
Troparion · Tone 5
Having lived as a stranger in the world, you outwitted the deviser of evil by your pretended foolishness, O Xenia. You received the grace from God to foresee and foretell things to come. Now, as you have been translated from earth to heaven, you are numbered with the choirs of the angels.
Kontakion · Tone 4
You gave your wealth to the poor, O Xenia, and accepted poverty out of love for Christ; having lived a life rivaling the angels, you were accounted worthy of glory on high.
Saints around January 24
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