The Life
Blessed Xenia was a young Russian wife in the eighteenth century. When her husband died suddenly without time to make confession, she was so undone by grief and so worried for his soul that she gave away her house, her money, and everything she owned, put on his old uniform, and walked out into the streets of St. Petersburg. She wandered there for forty-five years, sleeping in fields, praying through the nights, helping anyone who would let her. The whole city came to love her. She is now one of the most beloved saints in all of Russia, and Orthodox Christians everywhere call on her for help in the hardest moments of life.
Xenia Grigorievna Petrova was the wife of an army officer, a court singer named Andrew, and they lived comfortably in Petersburg. She was twenty-six years old when Andrew died suddenly at a party. He had not been to confession. He had not received Holy Communion. Xenia’s grief for her husband was deep, but her grief for his unprepared soul was deeper. From that day she would never look back to the world. Her sorrow opened a door, and she walked through it.
Xenia gave away her house. She gave away the money. She gave away every belonging she had. Her relatives were furious; they went to the authorities and tried to prove she had lost her mind. The officials questioned her, decided she was perfectly sane, and confirmed her right to do as she pleased with her property. Soon there was nothing left. She had no place to sleep. She refused to take a thing from her family. She was happy. She had been freed from the whole weight of the world.
Xenia put on Andrew’s old red-and-green army uniform and would not take it off. She insisted everyone call her by his name. She told them, "I am Andrew Feodorovich. Xenia is the one who died." When the uniform finally wore out, she dressed in rags of the same colors. To everyone who saw her she looked mad. But what she was doing was the deepest thing a wife can do: she was carrying her husband on her back, taking his name to heaven with her every step, praying for his soul as if she were him.
After a while, Xenia disappeared from Petersburg. For eight years no one knew where she was. The Church believes she went on a long pilgrimage through Russia, visiting holy elders and ascetics, learning from them how to live the spiritual life. She may have visited St. Theodore of Sanaxar, an elder who himself had been a soldier and who had turned to monastic life when a young officer died at a drinking party — perhaps that very officer was her own husband. We do not know. What we do know is that she returned to Petersburg deeper than she had been when she left, and the rest of her life poured out the grace those hidden years had filled her with.
A new church was being built in the Smolensk cemetery. Every morning when the workers arrived, they noticed someone had hauled the heavy bricks up the scaffolding overnight, ready for them to begin work. They could not figure out who. One night a worker hid and watched. He saw little Xenia, in her ragged red-and-green coat, climbing the scaffolding alone in the dark, carrying brick after brick to the top. She was sixty years old. She wanted no one to know. She just wanted the Lord to have his church.
As Xenia kept giving herself away, the Lord poured gifts into her. She could see things others could not see. She knew when to speak a word that would change a life. She prophesied the death of the Empress Elizabeth on Christmas Eve of 1761 — she walked through the city saying, "Bake pancakes; tomorrow all Russia will bake pancakes," and the next morning the Empress was dead. She loved children, and mothers begged her to kiss their babies, because everyone knew that Xenia’s kiss meant the Lord would bless that child. Cab drivers begged her to ride in their carriages, because everyone knew that having Xenia in your cab meant a good day’s work. Merchants gave her bread, because everyone knew that whatever Xenia accepted from a shopkeeper would mean blessing on his sales.
When people would mention her name or speak of her, Xenia would sometimes pass by and say quietly: "I am all here." It was her way of saying: there is nothing left to hide. The whole of me is given to God.
These are the words St. Paul gave us to understand what the Holy Fools are doing. The whole world looked at Xenia and saw a poor mad widow in a soldier’s coat. The Lord looked at her and saw the bride he had been waiting for.
Xenia lived forty-five years in her strange vocation, and when she was about seventy-one she fell asleep in the Lord. She was buried in the Smolensk cemetery, beside the church she had built brick by brick in the dark. Almost immediately people began coming to her grave to pray. Healings began to happen. So many pilgrims took dirt from her grave that the cemetery had to bring in fresh earth every year. By the early twentieth century a chapel had been built over her tomb. The Soviets put up fences to keep people away; the people slipped prayer notes into the cracks. Today the chapel is restored, and the line of pilgrims has not stopped.
Xenia is one of the saints Orthodox Christians call on most often in modern life. She is a particular helper for people looking for work, for marriages in trouble, for those grieving a death, for anyone who feels they have lost everything. The Russian Church’s love for her is enormous. Pilgrims still travel to her chapel in Petersburg every day, and people in every Orthodox parish in the world tell stories of how she answered them. She knows what it is to lose what you love. She knows what it is to start over with nothing. She loves you, and she will help.