“ Holiness has at once a timeless and therefore universal dimension, but at the same time it is rooted in time.”, Bishop Gabriel of Comane.
Holy Mother Maria, pray to God for us!
By the sufferings that the saints endured for Thee, // O Lord, be entreated // and heal all our infirmities: // we beseech Thee, O Friend of mankind, (troparion, tone 1).
As witnesses of the truth and preachers of piety, // let us honour worthily with divinely inspired songs // Dimitri, Maria, Georgy and Elie, // who endured bonds, sufferings and unjust judgment, // and who by martyrdom received the unfading crown,(kontakion, tone 8).
Mother Maria Skobtsova: love incarnate. Today we celebrate the memory of her death at Ravensbrück (31 March 1945).
The renown of Mother Maria Skobtsova (1891-1945), a saint of our time, canonised by the Orthodox Church in 2004, has long since gone beyond confessional and religious boundaries. A leading figure of the Russian emigration in Paris between the two wars – poet, artist, revolutionary, Orthodox nun, then resistance fighter, prisoner of the Ravensbrück concentration camp, who died a martyr in 1945 – she has drawn tributes from many different quarters. The Soviet authorities released a film in 1982 about the last years of her life, the Yad Vashem Memorial awarded her in 1985 the title of “Righteous Among the Nations”, the Catholic Workers’ Movement gave her name to one of its houses in Calais, and the city of Paris gave her name in 2016 to a street in Paris.
Her life, rich and inspiring, and her strong character, which shook the confining and stifling walls of Russian society before the Bolshevik Revolution, the insensitivity of modern society to the social suffering of Russian refugees, the formalism and clericalism of the Orthodox Church, and Nazi barbarity are presented in a documentary film that reveals the person of St Maria of Paris.
Mother Maria is one of the 16 women whose paths are presented in the temporary exhibition “ Deported to Ravensbrück, 1942-1945 ” organised by the National Archives from to .
The parish of Our Lady of the Protection of our Archdiocese safeguards the memory of St Maria of Paris, cooperating with the Memorial of the Internment and Deportation in Compiègne.