Maria of Diveevo

Blessed Maria of Diveevo (Maria Zakharovna Fedina) was a fool for Christ, the third of the three canonized blessed ones of the Seraphim-⁠Diveevo Monastery. She was born around 1870 in the village of Goletkovo, Elatma district, Tambov province, and reposed on 8 September 1931 in the village of Bolshoye Cherevatovo, Nizhny Novgorod province. On 31 July 2004 she was glorified among the locally venerated saints of the Nizhny Novgorod diocese. Her relics were found on 14 September, and in October, according to the source, the Council of Bishops of the Russian Church decided on her veneration in the whole Church. Our calendar gives the commemoration on 26 August, which comes, by the old calendar, to 8 September.

She was born into a peasant family. Her father died when she was thirteen, and a year later her mother Pelagia also died. Once she set out with other women toward Sarov and remained to wander between Sarov, Diveevo and Ardatov. In any weather she went barefoot. She often visited the Seraphim-⁠Diveevo Monastery. Some sisters loved her, sensing in her an extraordinary person. Maria Ivanovna took spiritual guidance from Blessed Praskovia Ivanovna (Paraskeva of Diveevo, Pasha of Sarov), to whom she came for advice; she blessed her to remain in the monastery.

On the very day of the death of blessed Pasha, the nuns, vexed by the blessed one's oddities, drove Maria out of the monastery, but called her back at once. When she returned, Praskovia Ivanovna lay in the coffin in the church. The blessed one entered and, turning to the elder sacristan, Mother Zinovia, said something to her. From then on she settled finally at Diveevo. The room was cold and damp. She lived in it eight years. People came to blessed Maria for advice, and the abbess of the monastery allowed her to be moved to Pasha of Sarov's little house. The house stood right by the gate, and the Soviet authorities, seeing the great crowd of people, raised persecution against the blessed one, so that in the end she was moved to a separate room at the almshouse, where she lived until the closing of the convent.

Mother Maria foretold the closing of Diveevo, in 1927, and its revival after many decades. When it was said to her "You keep saying, Maria Ivanovna, a monastery. There will be no monastery.", she answered, striking the table with all her might. Bishop Barnabas blessed her to settle in the village of Puza, where a cell was specially built for her. In 1930 she was moved to a farmstead near the village of Pochinok and finally to Cherevatovo, where she reposed on 8 September 1931. She was buried in the village cemetery.