By Fr. George Dorbarakis
This blessed and ever-memorable Xenia was from the glorious city of Rome, of an honorable lineage and zealous for the faith. When her parents wished to marry her and all preparations for the wedding had been made, the Saint arose and departed from the bridal chamber together with two other women, two handmaids. After boarding a ship and coming to know other lands, she finally arrived at the city of Mylasa. She was likely guided to that city by the divinely inspired monk Paul (who appeared to her from God in Alexandria and became her guide toward higher things). There she built a small oratory in the name of the Holy Protomartyr Stephen, and together with her two handmaids, as well as with some others who joined her, she lived patiently in great asceticism, abstaining from all sensual pleasures and following the path that leads to the heavenly city.
Thus she passed her life in the will of God, and after her holy and blessed repose she received testimony from God Himself. For at midday, when the sun was illuminating the earth, a cross appeared formed of stars. This cross was encircled and held at its center by another choir of stars, so that it appeared as a crown for the blessed Xenia, given to her by God for her fasting, her vigil, and her purity. And this became evident, for when her relic was laid beneath the earth, the choir and the circle of stars ceased to appear. The details concerning the Saint became known when one of her handmaids, at the time she was about to depart this life, recounted the homeland of the blessed one, her noble lineage, and the name she had received from her parents — for she was called Eusebia — which she changed to Xenia, because she strove to live in concealment.
It is therefore understandable that the Holy Hymnographer of Saint Xenia — whose life and encomium were composed by the great Father and Teacher of our Church, Saint Gregory Palamas — throughout the greater part of his Canon for her presents her sanctified life through her very name: Xenia (“the stranger”). And this is because the name gives him the opportunity first of all to associate the Saint with the Lord Himself, who is par excellence the “Stranger,” according also to the hymnography of our Church, whose life she sought, by the grace of God, to imitate; to highlight her longing for the “strange life that abides in the heavens;” to show that she lived as a stranger in foreign lands, precisely in the manner her name signifies; and even to beseech her to help us as well, who live as strangers to God, that we may become His own. One truly marvels at the inspiration of our ecclesiastical poet, as well as at his sound knowledge of the spiritual life. Certain examples from the hymnography of our Church confirm the above observations.
The Saint imitated the Lord who came into this world as a stranger. Her own exile — which the ascetical teachers of our Church regard as a most important virtue, leading to the foundation of all virtues, humility — constitutes participation in His exile and is a sign of her love for Him.
“Having gone into exile in a God-befitting imitation of Him who for our sake descended from above to us in order to raise up those who had fallen, you remain wise, unknown to your kinsfolk yet known to the pious.”
“Having conceived the strange life that abides in the heavens and does not pass away, you turned your calling into action, and you ran like a thirsty deer in the footsteps of your immortal Bridegroom.”
The Saint’s thirst for Christ leads the Hymnographer here to great heights of lyricism, as often occurs in similar cases of holy women. Following the love of the human soul for God, as it is portrayed especially in the Old Testament book Song of Songs, the Hymnographer even has the Saint, with the same love for Christ, converse with Him. “Like a heifer longing for the divine beauty of the Shepherd, you cried out: Where do You pasture Your flock now, O Bridegroom? Where do You rest? Tell me. I long to behold Your beauty, surpassing all, and I am consumed on every side.” And the Bridegroom Christ answers this search of Saint Xenia: “Desiring My beloved beauty, O chaste one, now radiant with virtues, seek Me in the heavens. There I pasture, and there I continually call My own sheep.”
Saint Xenia’s choice to live as a stranger upon the earth, so as to acquire within her soul the divine love of Christ who came to us as a Stranger — “living as a stranger in a foreign land, as your very name declares” — was not something that arose suddenly. Her decision to depart into exile was the fruit of a long inner process, which was simply revealed when circumstances became constricting for her through the marriage her parents prepared. From the very beginning, already in the first sticheron of her Vespers, the Hymnographer emphasizes this:
“Having already emigrated in disposition, O venerable one, and later confirming in action what you had resolved in your mind, you departed, O blessed Xenia, from the vain and slippery path of pleasures.”
Indeed, the Hymnographer makes here a serious observation of psychological and anthropological depth: what we enact in our lives is usually long prepared within our souls. And when circumstances become extreme, when matters grow tight, what has been conceived comes to birth. This is what our Church also notes regarding sin itself: the act of sin presupposes its inner process — sin begins when an assault is accepted as a disposition within a person; one begins to take pleasure in the thought, to be captivated, and eventually to reach the act. For this reason, even sinful thoughts are sin, not only concrete actions. The same, however, occurs conversely: a good deed is prepared inwardly, which means that even if it does not come to outward expression, it has already been regarded before God as an act.
It is, of course, unnecessary to note that the hymns of our Church also present the content of Saint Xenia’s ascetical conduct, as well as her influence on the other women who followed her. Especially her purity, as the mortification of sin within her, her self-control, and her tears are those which the Hymnographer does not fail to describe: “You brought to Christ as a dowry your purity, the mortification of your members, and the labors of self-control”; “You drenched your bedding with tears, O venerable one, and ate your bread with ashes” — that is, you lived repentance like the Prophet-King David. And on the other hand, “you became an example of good things and thus drew many souls to salvation, which had been torn away from the world’s impassioned attachment.”
Finally, the Hymnographer feels the need to entreat the Saint to intercede also for him — that is, for each of us — who through our sins become strangers to the commandments of God. “Make me, who have become estranged from the commandments of our God, His own through your prayers, O venerable one; and make me a stranger to dreadful Gehenna and to the passions that hold me captive.”
Source: Translated by John Sanidopoulos.
