A saint's day
St Matrona of Moscow
Matrona Nikonova was born blind in 1881 to a poor peasant family near Tula, and God gave her spiritual sight, with the grace of prayer, discernment and healing. At seventeen her legs were paralyzed, and she bore this cross without complaint; in Moscow, persecuted by the atheists, she moved from one borrowed corner to another while an endless stream of people sought her prayers. She always pointed them to God, and she reposed in 1952.
The dates
- Kept on
- 2 May on both calendars
- Next
The New Calendar (the Greek, Antiochian, Romanian and Bulgarian churches, the OCA and most converts) keeps fixed feasts on the church date; the Old Calendar (the Russian, Serbian and Georgian churches, Jerusalem and Mount Athos) keeps them 13 days later. Pascha and the feasts that follow it are kept on the same day by both.
How the day is kept
Her relics rest in the Protection Convent in Moscow, where the line of pilgrims never ends, in summer heat or winter frost.
Before her death she told the faithful, “Come to me, all of you, and tell me your sorrows as if I were alive; I will see you, hear you and help you,” and they still bring her every household need: health, family, children, work and a home.
Her cult is above all Russian and Slavic, though she is now known in Greece; New-Calendar churches that keep her feast use the civil date.
Name days
These names keep their name day on this feast: