Barbara of Ostrov

Holy Venerable Barbara of Ostrov (Vassa), a schemanun, was, together with her husband Sergius (in the world Stephen), the righteous parents of Venerable Alexander of Svir. They were people of the old Obonezhskaya pyatina of the Novgorod land, where the Karelian and Vepsian tribes, who had accepted Orthodoxy as early as the eleventh century, had lived for ages. In the world they were called Stephen and Vassa and lived in the village of Mandery on the river Oyat, opposite the ancient Ostrov Monastery of the Entrance of the Mother of God. They seem to have been born at the beginning of the fifteenth century, at the latest in 1420. Stephen was pious and God-⁠fearing, shared his goods with the poor and loved to do good works, and Vassa did not fall behind.

Their marriage was blessed with children at first, but a time came when God did not give them the joy of a child, though they longed for one with all their soul. Praying God for a son, they made many vows and persevered still more in good works. One night, rising to pray at midnight, Vassa asked with unwavering faith for a son. Then the couple went to the nearby monastery of the Entrance of the Mother of God and stayed there a long time, praying. One night, as they both prayed, they heard a voice: "Rejoice, good marriage. Behold, God has given you a child of consolation, for by his birth He will comfort His Churches." Learning later that Vassa had conceived, they understood that the vision was true and resolved to abstain from married life for the rest of their lives. On 15/28 June 1448 the long-⁠awaited child was born, named Amos after the prophet Amos, whose name means "consolation".

Amos grew, learned with difficulty, but received a voice at prayer before the icon of the Mother of God: "Arise, do not fear, and what you asked you shall receive", and from then on he progressed. From childhood he kept his body in strictness, eating only bread, and not to satiety, and sleeping little. When the time came for marriage, his parents wished to look for a wife for him, but he dreamed only of the monastic life. Learning from monks who came from Valaam about the monastery on the island of Ladoga, he left, asking his parents' blessing to go to a neighbouring village, and reached Valaam, where he was tonsured with the name Alexander, at twenty-⁠six.

Stephen and Vassa searched for him and mourned him as dead. After three years they learned from some people from Karelia that Amos was a monk at Valaam. Stephen, now old, set out for Valaam and asked to see him, and Alexander, grieved, did not wish to come out. Stephen threatened to kill himself at the monastery gates. Alexander agreed to meet him, and seeing him Stephen wept and begged him to return. His son told him to go home in peace, to go to the monastery of the Mother of God at Ostrov and take the tonsure there, and that if he did not he would never see his face again. The father left in anger, but at his son's prayer he turned back and said that he would do so.

Returning home, Stephen put his affairs in order, left the household to his children and went to the Entrance Monastery on the Oyat, where he was tonsured with the name Sergius. Vassa, accustomed to follow her husband in all good deeds, took the tonsure in the same monastery with the name Barbara. They did not live long after that. They died in peace in the monastery in which they had received so many blessings. Venerable Alexander did not forget them and, as abbot, sent seven of his disciples to Ostrov, calling it "the monastery of my parents". Tsar Feodor Ioannovich, in a charter of 1597, granted the monastery "where lie the parents of Alexander of Svir the wonderworker".

Until the beginning of the eighteenth century the tombs were in the lower floor of the Entrance church. In 1721, by order of Peter I, the relics, which survived only as bones, were examined by Archimandrite Cyril of the Svir Monastery and placed in new wooden shrines. Saint Sergius wore an iron paraman of three and a half kilograms, and Saint Barbara wore down her aged flesh with two crosses on chains of a kilogram. The local people and pilgrims have venerated from ancient times the memory of the parents of Venerable Alexander, and at the beginning of the twentieth century in the niches of the bell tower were painted Saint Sergius of Radonezh and the Great Martyr Barbara, with whose names they had been tonsured. From the seventeenth century they were already called wonderworkers.

She is commemorated on 28 June, and on 11 July (a movable date) in the Synaxes of the Saints of Novgorod and of Saint Petersburg, in the new style.