Saint Xenia of Saint Petersburg, Fool for Christ
Blessed fool-for-Christ, widow
- Feast day
- January 24
- Lived
- c. 1719–c. 1803
- Patronage
- Widows, those seeking housing or employment, marriages
Widowed at twenty-six, Saint Xenia gave away her house, put on her dead husband's uniform, took his name, and wandered the streets of Saint Petersburg for forty-five years as a fool for Christ.
Life
Her husband Andrei Feodorovich, a court chorister, died suddenly without confession. Xenia, convinced that she must answer for his soul, distributed everything, insisted she was Andrei Feodorovich and that Xenia had died, and refused all shelter, spending the nights in the fields outside the city in prayer.
She was mocked for years, then recognised. Labourers building the church at the Smolensk cemetery found bricks carried up the scaffolding overnight — it was Xenia. Her words to shopkeepers and mothers, apparently nonsensical, repeatedly proved to be warnings or promises that came true within hours.
Veneration
The chapel over her grave at the Smolensk cemetery in Saint Petersburg was never closed for long even in the Soviet period, and notes with petitions are still left against its walls in their thousands. She was glorified in 1988.