Paraskeva

Paraskeva (in the world Praskovya Semyonovna Dybina) was a Ukrainian Orthodox nun with the riassa, a fool in Christ, an Orthodox saint. She was born on 15 (or 27) October 1867 at Novoakhtyrka and died on 30 October 1942 at Lysychansk. She must not be confused with Saint Parascheva.

She came from a peasant family of the Kharkov province, the eldest of five children; she had younger sisters, Anna and Epistimia, and brothers Cosmas and Jacob. According to the hagiography, already in childhood she had the gift of foretelling the future and said of herself that she would spend her whole life alone. At twelve, according to tradition after a wondrous vision, she left her family and entered as a novice the monastery of the icon of the Mother of God "Joy of All Who Sorrow" at Starobelsk. Her parents tried several times to take her out of the monastery, but the girl hid from them. In the monastery she began to lead the life of a fool in Christ. In an unknown year she was tonsured into the riassa, after which she continued the same way of life. Predictions are ascribed to her about the October revolution and the coming of the communists to power in Russia, as well as about the destruction of the monastery in which she lived.

In 1924 the monastery at Starobelsk was closed. The nun Paraskeva settled in the monastery of Saint Thomas, the Dormition of the Mother of God and Saint Seraphim of Sarov, near Svatova Luchka, and stayed there until the closing of the monastery in 1928. Then she lived in various places, working, according to tradition, miracles and healings.

In 1933 Paraskeva was arrested and sentenced to exile at Kotlas. After a few years she returned to Lysychansk. She began again to give spiritual counsel to the Orthodox faithful. She guided spiritually a group of men and women who wanted to lead a monastic life. She recommended the faithful to read the Psalter regularly and forbade them to clean their houses on feast days, saying that such behaviour brings illness upon people. She went on foretelling the future. In 1938 she was arrested a second time, but was released after five months. In the last years of her life she lived at Lysychansk with the nuns Cherubina and Nadezhda. After her death an unofficial veneration of her continued to exist.

On 30 October 2008 her relics were translated. The decision on her canonization was taken on 19 June 2014, at a session of the Holy Synod of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church. On 7 October 2014 Metropolitan Onuphry of Kyiv and All Ukraine canonised Paraskeva (together with Father Dimitry Gorsky). The act of the synod on this was read by Metropolitan Mitrophan of Luhansk and Alchevsk. The veneration of Paraskeva covers the area of the eparchy of Severodonetsk.