Continuing our theme of the wide variety of ways that saints live out their Orthodoxy, let’s take a few moments to think about St Matrona of Moscow.
St Matrona was born in 1881 as the fourth of four children to poor parents in Tula Province, Russia. Although she was born blind, by the time she turned eight years old, she had already manifested the gifts of prophecy and healing. After the 1917 Russian Revolution, she moved to Moscow, where she lived a life of homelessness, sheltering with friends and relatives in whatever apartment or basement they were living in. Although Matrona continued to preach Orthodoxy in a Communist era that was hostile to it, no one ever turned her in to the authorities. Instead they sought her advice. After she died in 1952, her grave became a site of pilgrimage, which it remains to this day, though her relics have now been translated to a chapel in Moscow’s Pokrovsky Monastery.
Holy mother Matrona, pray to God for us!
If anyone knows the iconographer of this icon, please let us know!