Venerable Xenia of Rome (Xenia of Mylasa)

Venerable Xenia, who bore a different name in the world, came from a noble senatorial family of Rome and lived in the 5th century. Unwilling to enter the marriage arranged by her parents and desiring to devote herself wholly to Christ, she secretly left her family home together with two faithful servants, taking the name Xenia ("stranger," "foreigner") to conceal her origin. She traveled by sea to the island of Kos in the Aegean, where, hiding her noble birth, she settled and received monastic tonsure from the local bishop Paul. Soon afterward, Bishop Paul, seeing a miraculous sign — a pillar of fire descending upon Xenia during a service — recognized her spiritual worth and appointed her abbess of a women's monastery dedicated to the Protomartyr Stephen, which she herself had founded on the island and which she governed wisely to the end of her days, raising the sisters in strict piety. Shortly before her death she was granted a revelation of the day of her repose. The exact date of her death is not established.