Mother Marie Skobtsova (1891-1945) was an intense Orthodox nun who served a community of Russian expatriates in France during World War II. She rescued hundreds of Jews but eventually was captured and taken to the Ravensbruck concentration camp. During the last days of her life, she traded her bread for thread and embroidered an icon of the Mother of God carrying a crucified Jesus in her arms. This substantive volume in the Modern Spiritual Masters Series contains selections from her writings translated from the Russian by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky. In his introduction, Jim Forest provides an illuminating overview of her unusual life and ministry.
Born in 1891 in Riga, Latvia, Elizaveta Pilenko, the future Mother Maria, became a promising poet, a gifted amateur painter, a theological student in St. Petersburg, and a mayor all before becoming an Orthodox nun in 1932. Following the death of one of her children, she felt obliged to "become the mother of everyone." This desire to empty herself in service of others was at the core of her vision of the monastery in the world. Mother Maria saw each person as "the every icon of God incarnate in the world." Her settlement houses in France embodied the spiritual practice of hospitality; in this regard her work was similar to Dorothy Day's in America. Mother Maria was devoted to saints classified as holy fools, such as St. Basil the Blessed whose feast day was on August 2. What are the trademarks of a fool for Christ? Humility, freedom, and the wild extravagance of love.
The excerpts in this paperback convey her zeal for renunciation and personal sacrifice. She believed that one who is materially poor can be a treasure source of gifts. Some of the best pieces are those on the Second Commandment, the mysticism of human communion, insight in wartime, and the imitation of the Mother of God.
