Life of Saint Athanasia of Aegina (Commemorated April 12/25) #
The island of Aegina is one of the Aegean Islands, closest to the mainland of Hellas, lying south of Salamis. It was here that Saint Athanasia (+860 AD) was born and labored in asceticism. The name Athanasia in Greek means “immortality.”
Saint Athanasia was the abbess of a monastery on the island of Aegina. She was born into a devout Christian family to parents Niketas and Marina. By the age of seven, she had already memorized the Psalter, which she recited frequently with heartfelt devotion. One day, while working at the loom, she beheld a radiant star descending from above. It reached her bosom, illumined her entire body, and then vanished. From that moment on, the maiden was enlightened in spirit and resolved firmly to enter the monastic life.
When Athanasia turned sixteen, her parents implored her to marry. She obeyed them, but her married life lasted only sixteen days: on the seventeenth day, Arabs invaded the island, and her husband was killed in battle.
Widowed, Saint Athanasia sought to fulfill her long-held desire for monasticism. However, at that time, Emperor Michael II the Stammerer (r. 820–829) had issued a decree requiring young widows to remarry soldiers. Thus, Athanasia was forced to marry again. In this second marriage, she led a pious and virtuous life: diligently keeping house, aiding the sick and needy, and offering hospitality to strangers. On Sundays and feast days, she would gather relatives and acquaintances to read the Holy Scriptures to them. So moved was her husband by her example that he entered a monastery himself and granted her permission to be tonsured.
Saint Athanasia distributed her possessions, took the monastic habit, and withdrew to a secluded place with a few devout women. In time, the sisters entreated her to become the abbess of their small community. She accepted this as a special service to God and her fellow sisters. In all things, she set an example of meekness and humility, correcting the faults of others with love and never with anger.
Though she bore the title of abbess, she regarded herself as the least among the sisters and never forgot the Lord’s commandment: “Whosoever will be chief among you, let him be your servant” (Matthew 20:27). She would not even allow the sisters to pour water over her hands.
She wore a hair shirt, and over it a coarse garment made of rough sheep’s wool. She slept little, spending the greater part of the night in prayer. During the day, she labored alongside the sisters. She ate only once in the evening—a piece of bread and some water. She permitted herself oil, cheese, and fish only on the feasts of the Nativity of Christ and Holy Pascha. During fasting seasons, she ate raw greens once every two days. She lived in this manner for four years in that monastery.
On Aegina there also lived a certain elder monk, the venerable Matthew, who had once been an abbot. He undertook a great ascetical labor: each night he read through the entire Psalter, adding to it many prayers. He slept sitting up and only for a very short time. Whenever he chanted the psalms, prayed, or offered the Bloodless Sacrifice, he could not restrain his tears. He wore only a coarse hair shirt and through extreme self-denial and ascetic labor had utterly withered his flesh. He had a special love for the holy Apostle John the Theologian. On one occasion, while celebrating the Divine Liturgy, he was vouchsafed a vision of the Apostle standing upon the altar. The venerable elder healed a paralyzed man by covering him with his mantle, corrected the distorted face of a man afflicted by a demon with the sign of the Cross, cast out demons, and performed many other miracles.
Venerable Matthew blessed Saint Athanasia to withdraw with her sisters to an even more secluded place. She established a monastery on a desert mountain of the same island, near an ancient church dedicated to the Protomartyr Stephen.
The blessed abbess taught the sisters to repent before the Lord sincerely and not to conceal any ailment of the soul from their spiritual father out of false shame, lest it lead to their spiritual ruin. She often reminded them of the ancient law of God regarding priests: “According to the sentence of the law which they shall teach thee, and according to the judgment which they shall tell thee, thou shalt do: thou shalt not turn aside from the sentence which they shall shew thee, to the right hand, nor to the left. And the man that will do presumptuously, and will not hearken unto the priest that standeth to minister there before the Lord thy God, or unto the judge, even that man shall die” (Deuteronomy 17:11–12). Toward herself, the venerable mother remained as strict as before, but toward others she became all the more humble and kind. News of her asceticism spread throughout the island.
Saint Athanasia was granted by God the gift of healing. After she healed a man suffering from an eye ailment, many people began coming to her seeking healing from both physical and spiritual afflictions. With the many offerings brought to the monastery by the faithful, the saint built three churches within the monastery: one in honor of the Most Holy God-bearer, one in honor of the Holy Prophet and Forerunner John, and one in honor of Saint Nicholas the Wonderworker.
But the growing fame weighed heavily on the saint. She took two spiritually close sisters, Maria and Eupraxia, and secretly departed for Constantinople. There, living as an ordinary nun, she entered one of the monasteries and spent seven years in prayer and obscurity.
Yet even there, her holy life could not remain hidden. People soon learned of her sanctity, and even Empress Theodora desired to receive her counsel. Though her presence in the capital was, under the circumstances of the time, spiritually beneficial to many, the clamor of courtly intrigues was grievous to her desert-loving soul. She sorrowed that she had been driven away from her quiet monastery. Eventually, the sisters from Aegina found her and came with persistent entreaties, begging her to return to the monastery she had founded. She rejoiced at their coming.
Thus, the sisters of the Aegina monastery, having discovered where their abbess had gone, came and earnestly pleaded for her return. Obedient to the Providence of God, Saint Athanasia returned to the monastery she had established. Soon after her return, she was vouchsafed a vision of two radiant men who handed her a scroll and said, “Behold thy release; take it and rejoice.”
For the final twelve days of her life, Saint Athanasia remained in unceasing prayer. On the eve of the feast of the Dormition of the Most Holy God-bearer, she gathered the sisters and said that she had only managed to read the Psalter up to Psalm 19. She asked them to read the remainder of the Psalter in church on her behalf. The sisters went and fulfilled her request, then returned to bid farewell. She blessed them and asked that they celebrate the Dormition joyfully and festively, to prepare a feast for the poor and needy, and, after the Divine Liturgy, to bury her body. With these words, Saint Athanasia departed to the Lord, as peacefully as if falling into ordinary sleep. This occurred on August 14, in the year 860.
On the fortieth day after her repose, during the Divine Liturgy, two pious sisters were granted to see Saint Athanasia appear before the royal doors. Two radiant men adorned her head with a crown bearing crosses, gave her a shining staff, and led her through the royal doors into the altar.
Before her death, Saint Athanasia had instructed that the poor should be fed in her memory for forty days. However, the sisters failed to fulfill her command and only held memorial meals for nine days. Saint Athanasia appeared to several sisters and said, “It is in vain that you have not fulfilled my command—for the forty-day commemoration of the departed in church and the feeding of the poor greatly helps sinful souls, and from the souls of the righteous, heavenly mercy is bestowed upon those who perform these commemorations.” Having said this, she thrust her staff into the ground and became invisible. The next day, the staff left behind sprouted and became a living tree.
A year after the repose of the venerable one, a demon-possessed woman was brought to her tomb. When the earth was dug up and the grave opened, a fragrant aroma filled the air. Upon touching the coffin, the afflicted woman was instantly healed. When they opened the lid of the coffin, they beheld the incorrupt body of Saint Athanasia, from which sweet myrrh flowed. She appeared as though peacefully asleep: her face shone with grace, her entire body remained incorrupt and supple, and even her hands could be bent.
The priests decided to place her body inside the church. When they transferred her body into a new reliquary, the nuns removed the hair shirt from her relics and wished to clothe her in silk garments. But the hands of Saint Athanasia were pressed tightly against her chest, and the sisters were unable to dress her in the new garments. Thus, even after death, the saint revealed her love for poverty. Then one of the sisters, kneeling down, prayed to the saint, saying: “Our lady, as thou didst obey us without protest when thou dwelt among us, so now, be pleased to listen to us and accept this clothing, our humble offering to thee.” Saint Athanasia, as if alive, lifted herself up slightly and stretched out her hands toward the garments. They clothed her, and she lay down again peacefully in the coffin.
The holy relics of Saint Athanasia, placed in the new reliquary, became a source of many miraculous healings.
Her veneration spread quickly. The oldest manuscript of her detailed Life is found in a codex dated 916, under April 13. A short Life of the saint appears under April 18 in the Greek Synaxaria and the printed Menaion. In the first half of the 14th century, a brief Life of Saint Athanasia was translated into Old Church Slavonic as part of the Poetic Prologue. A more detailed Life appears under April 12 in the Volokolamsk Menologion (Chetii-Minei) of the 15th century, presumably going back to a 12th-century original. In the Great Menaion Reader (Velikie Minei-Chetii), her Life is placed under April 11, while the brief version from the Poetic Prologue is placed under April 12.
Narrative of Agapios, a Monk of Crete (16th Century)
It is fitting and proper to include here the narrative of Agapios, a monk of Crete, concerning an event connected to matters that weighed heavily on the soul of the blessed Athanasia.
It must be noted that Emperor Michael II the Stammerer (r. 820–829) lived as a pagan, without faith in the life to come. For him, all religions were of equal (and negligible) worth; he denied both immortality and the existence of spirits, and a corrupt, fleshly life was, in his eyes, a sinless one.
This background explains the significance of the posthumous sermon attributed to Saint Athanasia, as well as the event related by Agapios.
“There was,” he writes, “a certain woman who was kind and pious. She gave alms, fasted, and did many good works. But, poor soul, she had committed one grievous sin and never confessed it. Time and again she tried to reveal this sin to her spiritual father—but while confessing other sins, she became ashamed and could not bring herself to confess it. Thus she left her confessor still burdened. She often prayed before the icon of the Mother of God with bitter tears, begging for protection. In the end, she died without ever confessing her hidden sin. Her relatives, especially her sisters, wished to bury her in a special place, and the funeral was arranged for the third day after her death.”
“During the funeral service in the church, the dead woman suddenly rose, sat up on her bier, and cried out: ‘Great is Thy power, O Immaculate Lady!’ She summoned her spiritual father and confessed before him the sin she had long concealed. Then she addressed all present, saying: ‘Woe is me! Because of shame, I hid one sin and died unconfessed. Yet every day, with deep contrition, I prayed to the Most Holy Theotokos, begging not to be condemned. When my wretched soul parted from my body, dark, malicious spirits assailed me, accusing me of my hidden sin and rejoicing as if I were their prey. But the Queen of Angels appeared, and with her light she scattered the evil spirits. She rebuked them, saying, “The Lord hath not given you power over this soul.” Then she led me to the Lord and pleaded for mercy on my behalf, saying, “She hath shown much love and faith.” The Lord said, “Let this soul be reunited with her body, that she may confess her sin as is meet.” Then my guardian angel restored my life.’”
“Therefore,” she concluded, “I beseech you, my beloved sister and all my kinsfolk, do not weep for me—for your lamentations bring me no benefit—but instead, offer Liturgies and give alms in my memory.” After saying this, she once again peacefully departed to the Lord.
Saint Cyril of Alexandria, in his time, rebuked those who claimed that “there is no need to offer sacrifice for the dead.” If, he taught, it serves no purpose and is of no benefit to honor the departed with our offerings, then even in our simple prayers we ought not to commemorate them. But if you trample underfoot the laws of love and, counting the dead as nothing, abandon them to perish, then you reveal yourselves to be soulless stones and inhuman people. He then recounts the Gospel story of the healing of the centurion’s servant, saying: “Behold—one was healed through the faith of another. Why then do you reproach us with greed, when we—though innocent of the dead’s sins—seek to draw down heavenly mercy upon those who have died in the faith, and offer for them the Mystical Sacrifice, so filled with blessing, by which death was overthrown and hope of eternal life shone forth?”
Saint John Chrysostom wrote: “It is not in vain that the Apostles decreed remembrance of the dead during the fearsome Mysteries. They knew that great benefit comes to the departed thereby.” Another great teacher of the Church said: “We must not dismiss the belief that the souls of the dead receive relief from the piety of their living kin—when the Intercessory Sacrifice is offered for them, or when alms are given in the Church for their sake… Indeed, there is a manner of life so upright that it needs no help after death, and there is a life so depraved that no help can aid it. But there is also a kind of life that, though not entirely pure, can be helped by such offerings, and another not entirely lost, which can still receive some benefit. For those to whom prayers are useful, they are useful either so far as to gain full forgiveness of sins, or at least enough that the condemnation becomes bearable.”