Saint Athanasia

Description

Saint Athanasia is honored today, April 18, by our Orthodox Church.
Osia Athanasia was born in Aegina to pious parents in the 9th century and had a great calling for aunts. However, her parents, Nikitas and Irini, impregnated her against her will. A few days after the wedding, her husband was murdered by barbarian pirates, who at that time raided Aegina.
Then Osia, after becoming a widow, considered the moment suitable to fulfill her holy desire for the solitary state. And while she was preoccupied with this, a royal decree arrived in Aegina, by which all unmarried women and widows were ordered to marry gentile men. So Athanasia, against her will, entered into a second marriage.Always caring for the salvation of her soul, Osia prayed incessantly and generously offered from her riches to the poor and suffering. After some time, she convinced her husband to become a monk, although he was a gentile. He, having given up the virtues, after a while surrendered his soul to the Lord.Then Osia distributed her property to the poor and after receiving other pious women, she took refuge in an ascetic, where she lived with strict exercise and fasting. In this place there was a beautiful and ancient church of St. Stephen the First Martyr.After the lapse of four years, Osia was appointed Abbess of the hermitage, but she left for a quiet and unknown place and there with her fellow nuns she fought the good fight and was nourished by the labor she did.From there she visited Byzantium, where she practiced asceticism for seven years, and then returned again to the place of her peace. Saint Athanasia had a premonition of her falling asleep twelve days before, a fact she announced to the nuns and for which she expressed her thanks to the Lord in her prayer.He saw to it that their Abbess was elected, so that their coexistence could continue uninterrupted and the link of their brotherly love would be preserved. On the day of her sleep, she called the nuns to her, addressed them with consoling and wise words, and begged them to always preserve a soul and a heart.Then, after she and the nuns had chanted and while she had confessed and received communion of the Immaculate Mysteries the day before, she gave up her spirit in peace, declaring to those present that she was waiting for them up there.The news of her death brought many of the island’s inhabitants to the hermitage. There, all who had received help from her hands and consolation from her words knelt before her holy relic, mourning and weeping, and several sick people were healed at the time of her burial.