COMMEMORATED ON APRIL 12
Saint Athanasia was abbess of a monastery on the islet of Aegina in the ninth century. She was innate trendy a stanch Christian extraction, and her parents were named Nicetas and Haven. In the past at seven soul of age the girl studied the PSALTER, which she read constantly and with sweetheart. Just the once, such as working at the weaver's lie over, St Athanasia saw a glowing star coming down to her from more than, which touched her bosom and faded all her individual, and next left. From that small, the maiden was illumined in place and she fleeting resolute to input a monastery.Such as St Athanasia reached the age of sixteen, her parents entreated her to marry. She consented, but at the rear of sixteen days her companion was killed by barbarians who invaded Aegina.
St Athanasia crucial to run off with nice of her abnormal dispensation and devote herself to God. So the queen Michael the Stammerer (820-829) issued a adjustment ordering all naive widows and virgins to run off with husbands. Fittingly, St Athanasia was inevitable to marry another time. It is made-up that her race companion was a Moslem, whom she won over by her holy way of life.
She led a stanch and good life. She did housework, helped the nauseous and population in entreat, and took in wanderers. On Sundays and feastdays she invited extraction and contacts to her home and read the Revered Scriptures to them. Numb her heave, her companion entered a monastery, and progressed in decency and holiness. Tersely, he left to the Noble.
The saint gave to a different place her resources, became a nun, and founded a women's monastery in a desolate place. Whilst four soul, the sisters asked St Athanasia to become the abbess of the cramped community. In grumpiness of her posture, the saint surpassed all the others in meekness and reticence. She asked about the infractions of the sisters with love, not rile.
Even if St Athanasia had the baptize of abbess, she regarded herself as the smallest of the sisters and endlessly had in wristwatch the authority of the Savior: "Whoever would be youthful plus you, let him be your servant" (Mt. 20:27). The saint never permissible the sisters to sojourn on her, not even to be effusive water best quality her hands.
St Athanasia wore a hair-shirt, and best quality it clothes of unsophisticated sheep's locks. She slept very bit, and prayed maximum of the night. By day she edgy together with the sisters. On maximum days she ate truthful cash and water, and that in ceiling, and truthful at the rear of the ninth hour of the day. She never ate cheese or acquaintance put aside on Pascha and on the twelve Stalwart Feasts. Done Lent, she did not eat cash or swallow water. She would truthful eat some vegetables every other day.
On the islet of Aegina lived a noticeable priest named Matthew, who had been an igumen. Respectively night he read the whole PSALTER, and alike read prayers. The saint slept present up and truthful for a steal time. He could not tinkle from snuffle in the past the Psalms were chanted, such as reading prayers, or submit the Bloodless Sacrificial victim.
He wore truthful a unsophisticated hair-shirt, and miserable his soberness and struggles his body type became totally done in. He had a special love for St John the Theologian. Just the once, inside the the Spiritual Liturgy he saw the Apostle standing by the altar spreadsheet.
The saint healed a paralytic with his mantle; by making the Tablet of the Navigate he corrected the guise of a man faint by the events of the devil; he cast out demons and worked a mixture of other miracles. St Matthew blessed St Athanasia to go to a further detached place with her sisters. She built a monastery on a harsh rise of the islet nearly an ancient church of the Protomartyr Stephen.
St Athanasia was established the gift of healing by God. Whilst she healed a man afflicted with a malady of the eyes, a bag of people began to flock to her in order to kind healing from their infirmities of place and body type. From the deep gifts brought to the monastery, she built three churches at the monastery: one reliable to the Greatest Revered Theotokos, several to the holy Prophetic John the Forerunner, and the third to St Nicholas the Wonderworker.
Her going up consider angst-ridden the saint, and she took the two sisters next to her in spirit (Maria and Eupraxia) and went in secret to Constantinople. Dowry, as a simple nun, she entered one of the women's monasteries, somewhere she lived for seven soul.
Anew, her holy life involved regard. The sisters of the Aegina monastery perceptive somewhere their abbess had gone, and they went to her beseeching her to return. Submitting to the movement of God, she returned to the monastery she founded. Tersely at the rear of this she had a scheme of two shining men, giving her a document which said: "Award is your dispensation, run off with it and wallow."
St Athanasia dead the twelve days former her death in continual prayer. On the eve of the Dormition of the Greatest HolyTheotokos she summoned the sisters and made-up that she was effective to read the PSALTER truthful as far as the twelfth Psalm. The saint asked them to locate reading the PSALTER for her in church. The sisters went to church and donate carry out her advise, and next they came to bid the saint send-off. She blessed them and asked them to indicate the Chow down of the Dormition of the Greatest Revered Theotokos fatally and indifferently, and alike to perform a banquet for the imperfect and pitiable. So, at the rear of Spiritual Liturgy, they could fail to disclose her body type. With these words, St Athanasia split asleep in the Noble on Admired 14, 860.
The saint predicted that she would kind accept in Illusion forty days at the rear of her death. On the fortieth day, two pious sisters were established to see St Athanasia and two shining men standing former the federation doors of the iconostasis. They honest her with a purple robe inflated with gold, pearls, and indigestible stones. They set a emblem on her front, handed her a bright staff, and led her miserable the federation doors trendy the altar.
Since her death, St Athanasia orderly the nuns to stuff the imperfect for forty days. The sisters, while, did not observe her advise and set out the testimonial banquet for truthful ten days. The saint appeared to some of the sisters and made-up, "Let one and all know that alms set for a left place for forty days at the rear of death, and give obtainable to the gluttonous, appease God. If the left souls are naughty, they kind reprieve from God. If they are honest, next the good activities bring God's clemency on the souls of population who perform them.
So she gash her staff trendy the arena and became hardly noticeable. The staff consumed set down sprouted the at that time day and became a living tree. A court at the rear of the saint's death, they led a hyper mortal to the despairing. Such as they dug up the arena, they next noticed a detect and irreverent the casket. Whilst she touched it, the demoniac was speedy healed. So they opened the lid of the casket and saw the saint's incorrupt body type, from which myrrh flowed.
St Athanasia looked get pleasure from she was asleep. Her guise shone severely, her body type was sealed incorrupt and pale yellow, and even her hands were tough. The priests crucial to place her body type in church. Such as they transferred the body type trendy a new casket, the nuns irreverent the hair-shirt from her holy corpse and long-awaited to dress her in silky-smooth clothes, but the hands of St Athanasia were so fleeting clasped to her bosom, that the nuns could not dress her in the silky-smooth garb. Uniform in death the saint displayed her love for like. So one of the sisters knelt down and began to pray to the saint, saying, "O member of the aristocracy, trap us as you heard us in the past you lived with us. Now authorize to be honest in these clothes, our shame gift to you." St Athanasia, as whereas in the flesh, lifted and slow her hands trendy the clothing.
The holy corpse of St Athanasia were put trendy a leap and became a grounding of healings.
The Essence of St Athanasia is found in Vatican codex 1660, which dates from the court 916.
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