Source: St. Elizabeth Monastery
July 20, 2022
The grave of the blessed Anastasia at Tbilisi’s Kukija Cemetry continues to attract scores of believers coming for veneration and prayer. Some knew her during her lifetime, and others found out about her after her departure. A visitor to her grave exclaimed, tearfully, “Love can work wonders, but how deeply one must love another to sit down and pray for them without stopping! How big must be her heart!” The blessed Anastasia’s life story may sound incredible to some, but witnesses to her ascetic exploit are still around, and miracles still happen to those who invoke her name in their prayers.
Early life
There are few known details about her life before her exploit. Her full name was Anastasia Nikisheva, and she was born in Russia in 1886. Her father, an engineer, brought his family from Saint Petersburg to Georgia, where extensive railway construction had begun. Parcels of land were distributed among the employees of the locomotive depot, and her family received a plot nearby the Church of the Nativity of the Theotokos. There, they built their family home. The Lord took her mother at an early age, and she was left with her two other sisters in the care of her father. Soon, he remarried, but her stepmother disliked Anastasia. She envied her beauty and became openly hostile after her father’s death.
Anastasia was kind and pious. She went to church and sang in a choir. She had many suitors, but she chose a poor officer whom she had met at a ball at Vorontsov’s Palace. The officer proposed to her.
... Read the rest at St. Elizabeth Monastery.
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