Martha of Suzdal

Blessed Martha of Suzdal (Martha Yakovlevna Sonina, † 10 August 1803, at eighty) bore the foolishness for Christ for sixty years. Her modest grave lies near the north doors of the monastery cathedral in Suzdal. From a family of townspeople, she was orphaned at ten and worked until twenty for her married brothers; she refused good suitors, went on pilgrimage to Solovki and twice to Kyiv, and then settled for life in the house of the poor widow Evdokia Izyumova.

Her foolishness

She wore a long white shirt and went barefoot, ran through the streets, and children teased her; she was never angry but gave them rolls given her by merchants. Passing her parents' house she cried at the window to repent and live in peace, and her brothers became poor and died as she had foretold. She read to people from holy books, gave the sick Epiphany water, and children's illnesses passed. When praised, she laughed and flung herself about like a fool. Merchants, landowners and especially ladies from Kostroma and Yaroslavl came to her, and she told them the truth to their faces. A princess brought her two hundred rubles; she refused them and urged her to pity her own poor. She wove costly lace through whole nights and gave it to the poor or brought it to church for the candles of the Venerable Euphrosyne. To the monastery's nuns she said to give up vanity and gossip, or the Venerable would leave them for Lazarus; on 13 August 1769 the monastery burned and the saint's relics were carried to the church of Saint Lazarus.

Illness and end

She came daily to the early Liturgy and prayed before the shrine at the north doors. On the feast of Saint Elijah she fell face down and was left with paralysed legs. She lay seven years in her friend's house, served in turn by nuns and given Communion on Saturdays by her confessor, Father John. When he grieved that his son had vanished in Saint Petersburg, she assured him the boy would return; and after some years he came back, rich, having gone round the world on English ships. She gave her icons to those near her, received Communion and holy oil, listened to the canon for the departure of the soul, blew out her candle herself and fell asleep quietly. Her body had no odour, though it was warm, and the grave remained a place of prayer: in 1850 a landowner was healed there of a nervous illness.

She is commemorated on 6 July, in the new style, in the Synaxis of the Saints of Vladimir.