Xenia of St. Petersburg - Named Image Collection

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

After reaching adulthood, Xenia married the court choir Andrei Fedorovich Petrov, who was in the rank of colonel, but the young couple was not destined to enjoy family happiness for a short time - she was a widow for twenty-six years. She was deeply shocked that her husband had died without proper Christian preparation and had not had time to bring repentance, so she decided to pray for God's forgiveness of the sins of the slave of God Andrew.

On the day of the funeral, she put on her husband's clothes and everyone who addressed her with condolences said that it was not Andrei Fedorovich who died, but his wife Ksenia Grigorievna. From that moment she really died for the world, assuming the most difficult feat of the foolishness of Christ for her sake.

Native and familiar believed that the young widow lost her mind because of the grief that fell on her shoulders. She gave her house, which was in the parish of St. Matthew's Church on the Petersburg side, to her acquaintance Paraskeva Antonova. She did not want to accept the gift and even asked Xenia's relatives from her husband to protect her from such an act. Influential people talked with the widow, found her in perfect intelligence and decided that she could quite manage her property.

From now on Xenia did not have a permanent place of residence. In the daytime I wandered around the city, mostly along the Petersburg side, carrying with meekness all the humiliating and insulting things she had to endure, and at night went out of town, into the field, and prayed all night.

In those years, at the Smolensk cemetery, a new stone church was built in the name of the Smolensk Icon of the Mother of God. Workers who worked at the construction of the church began to notice strange things - at night someone bricks were carried on the forests of the church being built. And when they decided to find out who this volunteer aide was, they saw that blessed Xenia was working at nights.

For great feats the Lord honored blessed Xenia with the gift of foresight. She predicted the time of the death of Empress Elizaveta Petrovna and the young Emperor John Antonovich, helped one girl escape marriage with a runaway convict who pretended to be a colonel who had been killed by him. Residents of the Petersburg side noticed that if the blessed one takes a sick child in his arms or blesses him, it will certainly recover if he takes some small thing from the merchant's shop-trade will be successful, if he enters the house, peace and harmony will reign in the house.

Once she told her old acquaintance Paraskeva Antonova, the same one that she gave the house, so she immediately went to Smolenskoye cemetery: "Here you are sitting here and darn stocking, but you do not know what God sent your son to!" Paraskeva in perplexity went to the side cemetery and suddenly saw a crowd of people. It turned out that the crew had crushed a pregnant woman who had managed to get rid of the burden before the end of the boy's life. Paraskeva took it herself, and, not finding her father's baby, adopted. The adoptive son revered her as a mother, and Paraskeva did not tire of thanking the blessed one for the great joy.

Blessed Xenia carried the feat of voluntary insanity for 45 years and died about 1803. At her grave in the Smolensk cemetery was erected a stone chapel, which to this day is one of the shrines of St. Petersburg, attracting numerous worshipers.

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

"You have loved the misery of Christ, have now enjoyed your immortal meal, you have disguised yourself as an insane imagination of the frenzy of the world, you have accepted the power of God with humility. This is for the sake of the gift of miraculous help that has been acquired, Blessed Ksenia, pray to Christ God to deliver us from every evil by repentance "(Troparion, Tone 7).