Righteous Xenia of Petersburg

Blessed Xenia, born Xenia Grigoryevna Petrova, came from a noble family and was married to the court singer Andrei Fedorovich. After his sudden death, when Xenia was about 26, she gave away all her possessions to the poor, began answering to her deceased husband's name, put on his clothes, and took up the feat of foolishness for Christ's sake, which she carried for 45 years. She wandered the streets of St. Petersburg all day, occasionally visiting acquaintances where she would eat and converse before setting off wandering again; she spent her nights praying in a field outside the city. Through labor, asceticism, fasting, and wandering, she was granted by God the gifts of clairvoyance and wonderworking: if the blessed one took a sick child in her arms or blessed it, the child was sure to recover; if she took something small from a merchant's shop, his trade would prosper; if she entered a house, peace and harmony would reign there. She was buried at the Smolensk Cemetery in St. Petersburg, where a chapel was later built over her grave, remaining to this day a place of mass pilgrimage. In 1988, during the celebrations of the 1000th anniversary of the Baptism of Rus', the Russian Orthodox Church canonized Blessed Xenia in the rank of the blessed. Her memory is kept on January 24/February 6.