Saint Xenia blessed "Petersburg"

In St. Petersburg, February 6 (January 24, old style) in the Orthodox calendar, a special date - believers honor the memory of Blessed Xenia of Petersburg ...

At the Smolensk cemetery, there is a modest chapel of Ksenia of Petersburg in it all year round a lot of people, and not just February 6th.

Pilgrims from all over Russia come here to touch the walls of the chapel and ask the holy blessed for help. Ksenia is revered throughout the country, but most of all in her native Petersburg.

Petrova Ksenia Grigorieva (future saint Xenia) - Russian saint. Ksenia was born between 1719 and 1730. There is no information about the date of birth, the childhood period of life and life before Xenia's wedding, but people's memory was able to retain memories of what kind of person she was and who she became. In 1913, Archpriest Yevgeny Rachmaninov in St. Petersburg was one of the very first lives of Ksenia of Petersburg.

It is known for certain that, when coming of age, Xenia ties herself to marriage with a court choir, Colonel Andrei Fyodorovich Petrov, who served at the court. Her husband died suddenly, Xenia was then only 26 years old.

Mosaic, the chapel of St. Xenia

During the funeral of her husband, Xenia, wearing the uniform of her husband, left her home. For days on end she walked through the streets and courtyards, begging for alms, assuring everyone that she was not Xenia at all, but her husband, Andrei Fedorovich, who had passed away, and his wife, Xenia Grigorievna, had died. I spent the night where I had to, mostly went to the edge of the city and prayed there all night, and sometimes on the porch of the Church of St. Apostle Matthew.

Ksenia distributed all her property to the poor, and gave all the money to the church for the repose of her soul. The house gave the woman who rented a room to her, Paraskeva Antonova, with one condition to give shelter to the poor. When the corpse's uniform of her deceased husband on Xenia got tired, people gave her clothes. Blessed accepted only green and red things, since these were the colors of the uniform of her spouse.

From 1780 to 1784, a new stone church was erected at the Smolensk cemetery. Ksenia secretly provided all possible assistance to the workers: under the cover of night she made her way to the construction site, dragged and laid bricks on the scaffolding. When, after some time, the builders found out that the holy fool was helping them, they asked her: “When are you sleeping, Andrei Fedorovich?”, - calling her her husband's name. "We will have time to sleep in the ground," she said.

As stated in the life of the saint, soon people noticed that the holy fool had the gift of insight.

Thus, according to the life of her former tenant, Paraskeva Antonova, the blessed woman told about the appearance of her son, ordering her not to hesitate to go to the cemetery: her child was waiting there. Paraskeva did not disobey, and at the very cemetery she saw a cab driver who had shot down a pregnant woman who had immediately given birth and passed away on the spot. Paraskeva took the child to raise themselves. The adopted son took care of and loved her all his life.

 Icon of Xenia the Blessed

Mothers rejoiced when Ksenia kissed their children. The cab drivers asked for permission to give her a bit of a lift - there was always revenue from that. Sellers in the markets tried to feed her with a roll or some kind of food, and if she took something foolish, then all the goods were sold out very soon.

One girl Ksenia helped to avoid a wedding with a former convict, who pretended to be the colonel he had killed. It is believed that the blessed foresaw the time of the death of the daughter of Peter I, Empress Elizabeth Petrovna.

Xenia wandered around St. Petersburg for about forty-five years and died at the turn of the XVIII and XIX centuries. They buried her at the Smolensk cemetery in St. Petersburg. Pilgrimage to her grave began in 1820. The strangers left money, with the help of which in 1902 a chapel with a marble tombstone and iconostasis was erected on Xenia’s grave. In 1978, the blessed were canonized in the Russian Orthodox Church abroad, and after 10 years, at the Local Council, Ksenia of Petersburg was canonized

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