Homily for the Commemoration of Saint Xenia of Petersburgh
By Fr. Daniel Sysoev
By Fr. Daniel Sysoev
In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit!
I congratulate you all on the feast in honor of our beloved Saint Xenia of Petersburg! Even in Soviet times it was completely impossible to stop the stream of pilgrims to the grave of Blessed Xenia. The very phenomenon of Saint Xenia is remarkable: it is, of course, an example of how a person can serve God when it seems that life itself is entirely unfavorable to this. She lived in the eighteenth century, in the terrible post-Petrine era of widespread apostasy from God; in this respect even the nineteenth century was more pious. The eighteenth century was an age of debauchery and the degradation of Russian society (especially the upper classes), when such things were not only concealed but even flaunted.
It was in this time that the family of Andrei Fyodorovich and his wife Xenia lived. They were quite young: Andrei Fyodorovich was thirty years old, Xenia twenty-six. He held the rank of lieutenant colonel and was also a singer, singing with a magnificent tenor in the choir of the palace church (in the Winter Palace). Everything seemed to be going piously enough, but during one ball organized by Empress Elizabeth Petrovna, Andrei Fyodorovich was made very drunk; he went off to a female singer, and when he was walking away from her along the street, he was struck by a carriage.
He was brought to his wife Xenia, and he died in her arms—without Christian preparation, without repentance for his sins. Out of love for her husband, she decided to undertake an ascetic feat: she put on men’s clothing and said that Xenia had died, and that Andrei Fyodorovich was herself. She sold all her property, gave it to the poor, and herself began to walk about the city in men’s clothing, responding only to the name Andrei Fyodorovich, and praying to God for the salvation of her husband’s soul. During the day she went about asking for alms, but it is known that she did not accept money from everyone. People laughed at her and mocked her, but she paid no attention. And for this the Lord endowed her with great gifts.
The Lord often accepts those who undertake the inconceivable feat of holy foolishness. Holy foolishness is a person’s voluntary renunciation of God’s greatest gift — the intellect — the art of pretending to be insane while being completely healthy. Yet a person, for the sake of love for God and neighbor, can even take up this ascetic labor. Such a person seems to fall out of this world; he becomes an outsider, completely alien.
And such a person can receive from God gifts that an ordinary person could not bear. People are bound in many ways to this world, but holy fools are bound by nothing. Xenia extinguished fires by sprinkling water in the direction of the blaze. She would stroke an infant on the head, and the child would recover. That is, the gift of discernment and prophecy that was given to her was precisely hidden beneath her feigned madness. Why undertake such a terrible ascetic feat at all? We know that Xenia took it up out of love for her husband, in order somehow to atone for and save his soul. But other holy fools took it up out of love for the Heavenly Kingdom, in order to become completely alien in this world and thus to manifest the otherness of Christ.
Christ is a stranger to this world, and we see this clearly. If a Muslim is persecuted, there is immediately an outcry and shouting; if a Jew is persecuted, the outcry is even greater; but when a Christian is persecuted, there is deathly silence. Why? Because Christ, whom the Christian confesses, turns out to be alien to this world. And this understanding gives rise to holy foolishness.
Such a person understands that the mind of God is completely different from the human mind. God’s design is different from human design. And the feat of of holy foolishness arises not from human reason, but from the mind of God. The feigned madness of Xenia did not hinder her in any way from becoming the greatest helper to all of us. Gathering on this day, let us pray that Blessed Xenia may teach us not to cling to this world. Even when we come into the house of God, we often remain fully immersed in worldly concerns.
There is a well-known story about Blessed Pasha of Diveyevo: once a venerable archimandrite came to her after a service, and she asked him how things were going at the construction site. He replied that he had spent the entire day praying in church. Blessed Pasha answered him that he had not been praying at all, but had been thinking about the construction site throughout the whole service. And so we too bring worldly bustle into the church. Xenia teaches us that we must learn to despise worldly vanity.
Let us, by the example of Blessed Xenia, learn to set our priorities so that God is in first place and everything else in second. Then love for our neighbors will enter into harmony with Divine love. Xenia’s love for her husband was transformed into a divine fire of love that saved her husband as well.
May the Lord help us all through the prayers of Blessed Xenia of Petersburg!
Source: Translated by John Sanidopoulos.
