Blog Posts
The incredible variety across saints’ lives has kept me in the church. If a princess can grow up to be an honored empress (St. Theophano), a deposed queen (Sts. Alexandra & Valeria), an abbess (St. Elizabeth the New Martyr), or a runaway-turned-monk and in each case find her way to sainthood, then there must be a path to sainthood for me, too. This story is about the princess who ran away to be a monk, one of my favorites.
As we approach the middle of the year, it seems like a good time for a prayer inspired by our spiritual advisor, Judith Scott. This version includes our featured saints from 2023:
We walk in the company of the women who have gone before: judges, prophets, martyrs, warriors, poets, lovers, and saints, mothers of the faith, both named and unnamed, demonstrating how many beautiful and courageous paths we can walk together toward Christ.
We walk in the company of St. Marina, who understood deeply the communal nature of both brokenness and salvation and lived heart-wide, her hand over her mouth to cover her neighbors' faults.
We are glad to be able to share with you, by permission, a reflection by Abbess Katherine Weston–superior of the St. Xenia Monastic Community for over 30 years and the President of the Fellowship of St. Moses the Black–in which she considers the role of deaconesses and abbesses.
Today, because of the recent and conspicuous ordination of a female deacon in Zimbabwe, I want to start to say something about ordination.
“A ritual is the highest form of habit” is one of Dr. Ioana Popa’s signature phrases.
That is also how Dr. Ioana, a board-certified psychiatrist, trained spiritual director, and life coach, began her webinar, Space, Rituals and Your Mind: How to Support Sacred Habits Using Your Surroundings. The event, which Axia co-hosted for the first time with the Institute for Orthodox Christian Studies in Cambridge, began with an excellent introduction by Dr. Elizabeth Theokritoff, who set the context of Orthodox women’s challenges and opportunities - particularly in the UK, where they are based.
Why do you walk?
This opening question was asked by Jennifer Nahas during our most recent Axia webinar, How to Prepare for a Walking Pilgrimage. Participants answered with statements such as:
Walking helps to calm me and ground me and also to connect me to the beauty of creation and to God.
Walking puts something substantive on my habit of prayer and silence and being.
To reset and get perspective.
To connect with a saint or sacred place.
I walk to focus my attention (and feel free).
Eighteen years ago, on behalf of the Fellowship of St. Moses the Black (of which she is currently President), Abbess Katherine Weston, whom Axia spotlighted last July before the work premiered, began experimenting with using African-American Spirituals as a source or inspiration for Orthodox liturgical composition. She finished the entire Jubilee Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom in 2023 and premiered it at the Fellowship’s conference in Houston last October.
My pilgrimage to Patmos Island in Greece last fall really began on an earlier pilgrimage five years ago to England, sitting with Metropolitan Kallistos, who told our small group that “to 'pray without ceasing' is not something we should try to do as often as possible, but is something that we potentially 'are' ... to become a person who has been turned into prayer!”