Lyubov of Ryazan

Saint Lyubov of Ryazan (Lyubov Semyonovna Sukhanovskaya) was a fool for Christ, born on 28 August 1852 at Ryazan and died on 21 February 1921 (by other data, 1920), also at Ryazan. She is a locally venerated saint of the Ryazan diocese of the Russian Orthodox Church. She is commemorated on 8 February (21 February by the new calendar) and in the synaxis of the saints of Ryazan. The sources show no wider glorification.

Lyubov Semyonovna was born in 1852 in the district town of Pronsk, into a poor townsfolk family, that of Semyon and Maria Sukhanovsky (Sukhanov). Then they moved to Ryazan. Lyubov was paralysed and could not walk or stand on her feet. According to her life, at 15, when she was alone in the house, Saint Nicholas the Wonderworker appeared to her and announced to her that she should rise, walk and be a fool for Christ. After that she recovered. Preparing to take up the labour of foolishness, she spent 3 years in seclusion, enclosing herself at home in a partition between the stove and the wall. After that she came out to people. From 1903 until her death she lived, with her mother and sister, beside the house of their confessor, Archpriest John Dobrotvorsky, priest of the church of the Entry of the Lord into Jerusalem. The three occupied a room of about 9 square metres.

Lyubov began to visit all the churches of Ryazan, and loved also to be at the Kazan monastery. She was often seen in the streets, in the shops of merchants or in the houses of acquaintances. She prayed for people, gave advice, warned of dangers. The blessed Lyubov could go into the shop of a rich merchant and take without asking what she needed, but the merchant knew that trade that day would be good. The food she was given she gave to the needy. She was much loved by beggars and the poor. According to her life, Lyubov was clairvoyant: she called by name people she did not know and answered questions not yet asked. Often she showed her foresight on cut-⁠out paper figures: she cut out what was destined for each, if a journey, a little horse or a locomotive, if marriage, a wedding crown, if death, a coffin, and so on. When the scissors were hidden from her, she tore the figures with her fingers. The predictions came true. She bore with gentleness and patience the mockery. She liked the colour pink and even asked that after her death her coffin be covered with pink cloth.

In 1917, before the overthrow of Tsar Nicholas II, Lyubov walked the streets and repeated: The walls of Jericho are falling, the walls of Jericho are falling. In early 1920 or 1921 Lyubov caught cold and fell ill with pneumonia. She died on 21 February 1920 or 1921. Her coffin was covered with pink gauze bought by Elizabeth, who had known the blessed one well in her youth. At the funeral the streets looked like a living wall of weeping people. Soon a monument was set up over her grave. On 12 January 1987, by decision of Archbishop Simon (Novikov) of Ryazan and Kasimov, Lyubov was recognised as a locally venerated saint, and her name was entered in the Synaxis of the Saints of Ryazan. In 1992 the brethren of the Saint John the Theologian monastery set up a chapel on her grave at the Skorbyashchensky cemetery of Ryazan. In June 1998 her relics were found and moved to the Dormition cathedral of the Ryazan Kremlin; after the celebrations of the 800th anniversary of the Ryazan diocese, they were moved to the Nikolo-⁠Yamskoy church in Ryazan, where they are today. In 2006 the shrine with the relics of Saint Lyubov was moved to the left choir in the newly consecrated side chapel of the Entry of the Lord of the Nikolo-⁠Yamskoy church.