I grew up in a house where we did not have icons, none that I can remember, and where we did not talk much about God, the Theotokos or saints. My grandmothers taught me to say a few prayers and took me to church on a couple of occasions.
As I grew up, icons started to enter our house, but by
then I was a very rebellious teenager so did not make any friends among the
saints. When I moved to Lancaster, although I always had faith, I brought no
icons with me. In fact, I felt a strange opposition to having traditional icons
in my room or in my house later on. A streak of rebellion and ignorance in fact
made me hide away in a drawer the icons which I received for my wedding. It is
very painful to remember this and the fact I actually damaged one of them by
accident. A friend told me then to make sure I keep the icons because when the
time was right, I would treasure them.
A few years later, I started feeling guilty about
having the icons hidden away and put a couple up in my bedroom. I was still
unsure about it, but it started feeling wrong to have them in a drawer. They
were just one of Christ and the Theotokos.
Then… the saints started arriving. And I discovered
that saints are tenacious and come into your home uninvited. If you refuse to
welcome them, they will knock again and again. And every time I had a slightly
unkind thought about a Saint, they came to befriend me. I am a constantly
reluctant and continuously repentant friend of saints as the few stories which
follow will tell. I felt that, being such an unworthy and sinful lover of
Saints, I had to talk about them, so other people might come to know them a
little better and love them a little more and I would like to hear other
people’s stories of saints, so my circle of holy friends may grow.
Saint Filofteia
First came Saint Filofteia (or Philothea). I had never
heard of her and did not invite her. It was a gift from Father Bogdan when he
visited Lancaster about 13 years ago. I myself thought is was an unusual icon
to be bringing, but it immediately struck a chord with me because Filofteia was
the name of my grandmother who first talked to me about God and Christ and
taught me to say a prayer before bed. So many times in my child-hood and
growing up, I thought it was a very strange name. It seemed to me at the time
old and old fashioned, from a different era and I had often thought that I had
never met anyone else by that name and mused on how her parents had come up
with it. And how foolish I was, since her name means lover of God in Greek.
As the icon of Saint Filofteia arrived and was
temporarily placed in the kitchen, where it still is, overlooking the hub of
activity of the house, I started reading about the Saint. Another thing which
resonated with me was the fact that her relics are to be found in Romania at
the monastery Curtea de Argeş, where my other grandmother always wanted us to
go on a trip. Sadly, we never made it because she passed away. But Saint
Filofteia makes me remember my two grand-mothers with great affection and
gratitude for the seeds of faith they planted when I was a child. But beyond
that, as I read about her brief life, I felt such love for the little saint who
lived at the beginning of the XIII century in Trnovo modern day Bulgaria. She
was born in a family of peasants. Filofteia’s mother was a pious woman and
taught her to read the Scriptures, fast and pray. She often went to church.
Sadly, her mother died when she was only young and her father remarried. Her
stepmother disliked the child and her piousness, but Filofteia continued in her
Christian upbringing, despite constant beatings and scoldings. She had a very
compassionate heart and gave every-thing away to the poor and the hungry. One
of her daily duties was to take her father’s lunch to him in the fields where
he was working. But on the way, she saw some hungry children and, as was her
habit, gave them some of her father’s lunch. Her father saw her and became so
angry that in a fit of rage he threw his axe at her and killed her on the spot.
She was 12 years old. Immediately repentant, he tried to lift the body but was
unable to move it and he was further terrified by the fact it shone with a
white light. He ran to the city and came back with the local archbishop and
many people. They all marvelled at how the body shone and read prayers and
glorified God.
It is not entirely clear when her relics arrived in
Romania, but most likely they were taken over the Danube for protection during
the Turkish invasion of Bulgaria around 1393. The saint is revered both in
Romania and Bulgaria and her feast day is the 7th of December. She is the
protectress of abused children and children in general and many are the
miracles attributed to her, especially for the sick.
By Alexandra McC.
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