Today, on the feast day of Blessed Xenia of St. Petersburg, we offer our readers the stories of some people who asked this saint for help and whose prayer requests were fulfilled.
“In ten years’ time, prayer services will be celebrated to her”
In the late 1970s, when I was studying at Leningrad State University (now St. Petersburg State University), I set myself the goal of visiting all the active churches in Leningrad. One day I came to the city’s Smolensk Cemetery, named after the Church of the Smolensk Icon of the Mother of God located there. During the service, and especially at the memorial service, I was struck by the fact that the same name was repeated in every intercession list: “Blessed Xenia.”
Chapel of Blessed Xenia of St. Petersburg at the Smolensk Cemetery
After leaving the church, I decided to wander through the snow-covered cemetery and soon stopped at a tightly boarded-up chapel. There was nobody around. I was about to leave when suddenly an old woman in very poor clothes came out from behind the chapel (which I had just walked around).
“What kind of chapel is this, Granma?” I asked her.
“My dear, there is a saint resting here, Blessed Xenia. Pray to her.”
“A saint? Why do people pray for her repose then? After all, prayer services are celebrated to saints.”
“But in ten years’ time prayer services will be celebrated to her,” the old woman replied, and while I was scrutinizing the chapel, she disappeared just as suddenly as she had appeared.
It was the winter of 1978. I remembered that meeting ten years later, when just before the millennium of the Baptism of Russia, the Local Council of the Russian Orthodox Church, held in the summer of 1988, canonized Blessed Xenia of St. Petersburg.
“We’ll name the children Xenia and Andrei”
I want to share my truly wonderful story. I was very unlucky in my personal life for a long time. I had a complicated relationship, followed by a difficult breakup, and then several years of loneliness. After the breakup, in 2005 (it also coincided with health issues and quitting my job), I decided to travel to St. Petersburg. I was going to a city that I had dreamed about for ages, but in a tourist group, because at the time I didn’t go to church, and earlier I hadn’t even heard of Mother Xenia.
On one of the guided tours around the city, our guide Irina, talking about St. Michael’s Fortress, mentioned St. Xenia and emphasized that she is the Heavenly patroness of St. Petersburg. She told us how the saint predicted Emperor Paul I’s imminent death. Since our group consisted mainly of young ladies in their mid-twenties, Irina stressed that Mother Xenia’s help is sought in a wide range of situations, especially in personal life.
So on the next to last day of our trip, my roommate and I went to the Smolensk Cemetery and submitted intercession lists with our prayer requests. While praying to St. Xenia, I first of all asked her to help me find a job, and only then about my personal life.
When I came back home, the fuss began with a new job search, and I, a sinner, forgot about Mother Xenia. Three months later I found the job of my dreams.
But there was still no progress in my personal life. So I was lonely for the three ensuing years, devoting all my energy to work. At the end of the third year, fueled by the sympathy of my friends and my parents’ complaints that they probably would not live to see their grandchildren, I remembered Mother Xenia. I read her Life and began to pray to her incessantly in my own words as best I could to send me my other half. I promised our intercessor that if she sent me a husband, we would name our children Xenia and Andrei. And I began to get ready to travel back to St. Petersburg and once again ask St. Xenia for help at her chapel.
But in the end I couldn’t go to St. Petersburg. Instead I went... to meet a man I had met online (but not on a dating site!), just in a miraculous way. We met online in March 2008, saw each other for the first time in May, and became husband and wife in January of the following year. On the feast of the Protecting Veil of the Most Holy Theotokos, in October 2009, we got married at the Church of Blessed Xenia of St. Petersburg in the city where my husband lived (as it turned out, he was a parishioner of that church). And in late October that year our daughter Xenyushka1 was born. Her brother, Andrei, did not take long in coming either—he was born just a year and a half later. And, to make our happiness fuller, a year and three months later the Lord sent us, through the prayers of Mother Xenia, another daughter—Maria. Since then my husband and I have been living in love and harmony; we’ve both started going to church, and our whole family are parishioners of the Church of Blessed Xenia of St. Petersburg and honor the memory of our intercessor at home! And the saint doesn’t forsake us; she helps us with everything we ask for if we really need it.
There was a hard period in our family when my husband was fired from his job. All our money went into moving to another city. How much time and effort was spent on writing a resume and on interviews, but the much-desired job offer was never received. And then, with his last money, my husband went to Mother Xenia in St. Petersburg. He only went for a couple of days, returned late in the evening, and no sooner had he crossed the threshold of our home than his phone rang and he was told to go to work the next day! The work sent by the Lord through the prayers of St. Xenia of St. Petersburg helped us greatly to improve our financial situation at that time.
And these are not all the stories of St. Xenia’s miraculous help in our family! Mother Xenia, thank the Lord for us! Glory to God for everything!
“As soon as I had read the Akathist, my phone rang!”
In 2007, we were starting our business in the field of law. And we were on a journey towards faith together. There were many difficult months when there was just enough money to cover the rent for the office, and I had to earn extra money by giving private lessons. I did not turn to Blessed Xenia in prayer, believing that she was from St. Petersburg, so she would not help Muscovites. Such was my convert attitude.
The shrine with Blessed Xenia of St. Petersburg’s relics. Smolenka.spb.ru
One very tough day, when the question arose of closing the office (the burden of responsibility for which we had been carrying with difficulty for a long time), saying goodbye to our dreams and plans and looking for new employment, I decided to read the Akathist to Mother Xenia from the bottom of my heart. I wept as I read it, without really believing she would help. And once I had read the Akathist, my phone rang; it was a new client from St. Petersburg! But that was not all. We ordered legal documents for him from Latin America, as he requested. Imagine our astonishment when they arrived three weeks later and we started checking them! The signatory, an employee of that Latin American country, was named Mrs. Xenia Munoz, Blessed Mother Xenia’s namesake! Such are miracles! We should all always turn to saints in all matters and situations, ask for their help and believe in spite of everything! Holy Blessed Xenia, pray to God for us sinners!
“And blessed Xenia asked… for two at once”
Blessed Xenia has helped our family and me personally many times. We continually feel her prayer and intercession before God. Blessed Xenia is actually our “family saint”, as it were, and on her feast-day we celebrate not only one of our daughters’ name days, but also something like Krsna Slava (a family patron-saint’s day) in Serbia.
I’ll share just one story—the most important one. After the birth of my son, for various reasons I did not have children for a long time, but I really wanted to. I had always dreamed of a large family. And so, among other pilgrimage trips, I made one that changed my life radically. I went to my beloved saint—Blessed Xenia. At the Smolensk Cemetery in St. Petersburg, I prayed to Blessed Xenia to ask God for another child. And since I already had a son, of course, I wanted a girl more (although I would have been very happy to have a second boy as well). I vowed that if I had a girl, I would name her Xenia.
And Blessed Xenia asked… for two at once! It was most probably done so that I might not be too distressed about the previous nine years when I had no children. In short, we soon had not only Xenia, but also Sophia, which no one had expected at all! Already pregnant, but not yet knowing that there would be twins, I once again traveled to St. Petersburg to thank St. Xenia for her prayers.
Mosaic depicting Blessed Xenia of St. Petersburg on the facade of her chapel. Smolenka.spb.ru
And shortly before my pregnancy, I wrote to a friend: “I’d love to have a girl. Or even better—two at once!” But certainly I dared not hope for such happiness (if only someone would be born!)… Besides, there had never been twins either in my family or in my husband’s family. In fact, it’s even fearful when God fulfils all your most cherished desires, which you dare not even ask out loud. The Lord truly reads in your heart: “Did you want many children? So here are a lot for you all at once.” My husband then said, “You prayed to Blessed Mother Xenia—that’s the result!” Indeed St. Xenia helps radically!
By the way, my twins will turn five very soon—in February. They are smart, beautiful, very kind girls and my helpers. Of course, they already know the story of their birth, because every day we all pray together to God and Blessed Xenia with words of gratitude.
