Blessed Xenia was born between 1719 and 1730. We do not know anything about her parents, childhood and adolescence, we only know that the Blessed One's father was named Gregory. But every Christian honors the Day of Memory of Blessed Xenia, which is celebrated on January 24.

Upon reaching the age of majority, Ksenia married the court singer Andrei Fedorovich Petrov, who held the rank of colonel, but the young couple was not destined to enjoy family happiness for long — Ksenia was left a widow at the age of twenty-six. She was deeply shocked that her husband died without proper Christian preparation and did not have time to repent, so she decided to use her life's work to ask God for forgiveness for the sins of the servant of God Andrew.

On the day of the funeral, she put on her husband's clothes and told everyone who addressed her with condolences that it was not Andrei Fedorovich who died, but his wife Ksenia Grigoryevna. From that moment on, she truly died to the world, taking upon herself the most difficult feat of foolishness for Christ's sake.

Relatives and friends believed that the young widow had lost her mind because of the grief that had fallen on her shoulders. She donated her house, located in the parish of the Church of St. Matthew the Apostle on the St. Petersburg side, to her friend Paraskeva Antonova. She did not want to accept the gift and even asked Ksenia's relatives on her husband's side to protect her from such an act. Influential people talked to the widow, found her in perfect sanity and decided that she was well able to manage her property.

From now on, Ksenia had no permanent place of residence. During the day she wandered around the city, mostly on the Petersburg side, with extraordinary meekness enduring all the bullying and insults that she had to endure, and at night she went outside the city, into the field, and prayed all night.

In those years, a new stone church was being built at the Smolensk cemetery in the name of the Smolensk Icon of the Mother of God. Workers working on the construction of the church began to notice strange things — at night someone was carrying bricks to the scaffolding of the church under construction. And when they decided to find out who this volunteer assistant was, they saw that blessed Xenia was working at night.

For her great deeds, the Lord honored Blessed Xenia with the gift of foresight. She predicted the time of the death of Empress Elizabeth Petrovna and the young Emperor John Antonovich, helped one girl avoid marriage with an escaped convict posing as the colonel he killed. Residents of the St. Petersburg side noticed that if the blessed one took a sick child in her arms or blessed him, he would certainly recover, if he took some small change from the merchant's shop, the trade would be successful, if he entered the house, then peace and harmony would reign in the house.

One day, she told her old friend Paraskeva Antonova, the one to whom she had given the house, to go to the Smolensk cemetery immediately.: "You're sitting here darning stockings, and you don't know that God has sent you a son!" Paraskeva went in disbelief towards the cemetery and suddenly saw a crowd of people. It turned out that the crew had run over a pregnant woman who had managed to give birth to a boy before her death. Paraskeva took him in and, unable to find the baby's father, adopted him. Her adopted son revered her like a mother, and Paraskeva never tired of thanking the blessed one for her great joy.

Blessed Xenia performed the feat of voluntary insanity for 45 years and died around 1803. A stone chapel was erected on her grave at the Smolensky cemetery, which to this day is one of the shrines of St. Petersburg, attracting numerous worshippers.

After many years of popular veneration, Blessed Xenia of St. Petersburg, a fool for Christ's sake, was canonized in 1988 at the Local Council of the Russian Orthodox Church.

"Having loved the poverty of Christ, you now enjoy immortal meals, having denounced the madness of the world with imaginary madness, you have accepted the power of God with humility on the cross. For this reason, blessed Xenia, who has acquired the gift of miraculous help, pray to Christ God to deliver us from all evil through repentance" (Troparion, voice 7).