Athanasia of Aegina
Eighth Day of Easter
Year A
I want to tell you about this saint named Athanasia of Aegina.
Athanasia was a very busy woman both before she died and afterwards too!
Before she died, she was born to the nobility and she was a pious girl, as saints often are. There is a story about her enlightenment that when it happened a star suddenly appeared and settled over her heart and, bam, just like that, she was enlightened.
Despite this early evidence of spiritual talent her parents asked her to get married and so she married an army officer who was killed in battle 16 days later. After that she wanted to enter religious life but there was an imperial edict stating that all single women had to get married to soldiers. See, this business of men controlling women’s bodies is really not anything new. Anyway, Athanasia got married again but this guy wanted to be a monk and Anathanasia, thanking her lucky stars, gave away all her stuff and became a nun.
As Athanasia was approaching death she gave orders that the poor be fed in her memory for forty days. The thing is that the other nuns didn’t do it. They only fed the poor for nine days. That is when Athanasia got busy. She came down from heaven and appeared to them. She said:
“It was wrong that you did not fulfill my testament, the forty-day commemoration in church of those who have fallen asleep and the feeding of the poor greatly helps sinful souls, while heavenly mercy is sent down from righteous souls to those who carry out the commemoration.”
Then, she jabbed her staff into the ground, and became invisible. But, the next day the staff had sprouted and become a living sapling.
Forty days after her actual death, Athanasia appeared to two of the other nuns during mass and they saw that Athanasia was at the gates of heaven and two radiant men placed a crown on her head and they gave her a brilliant staff and led her through the gates to the altar. I guess that was to replace the staff that had turned into a sapling. Apparently one needs a staff in heaven.
Also, some people were healed when they went to her grave. One time some people brought a woman who was possessed to her grave and for some reason they thought that it would be helpful to dig up some of the dirt, you know, to get closer to the actual corpse. (Makes you wonder, I know.) So, as they dug they smelled perfume coming from the grave and what they did is they just dug the whole thing up. When they opened her coffin, they found Anathasia had not decomposed and perfume was coming out of her.
So, after that, the other nuns wanted to put her in a better coffin and put some fine silk clothes on her because she had been buried in a hair shirt. This seems to me like another good reason to be cremated: Some jackass might bury you in a hair shirt. Anyway, as a sign of their poverty and to promote a life of penance a lot of people wore hair shirts in those days and apparently Athanasia liked hers because when the nuns tried to put the new silk clothes on her she developed severe rigor. That is, she went all stiff. But one of the nuns commanded her to obey them and be clothed with the new clothes and she did.
See, I told you she was very busy.
It’s all just stories, of course. That’s what hagiography is, stories that help us reflect on the life of someone who tried to live a life close to God. Here’s what I am thinking, though. I don’t want to be that busy after I die. Once I am gone, ya’ll just carry on without me. I hope to be somewhere else, maybe not in a place at all, maybe just everywhere, or nowhere, or not at all. So, I think I need to start relinquishing control of this life now so that when it’s time, I’m free to move on. So, I am trying to think of some little areas of control I could give up.
Happy Easter Day to those who observe according to the Orthodox calendar. I hope one day we can all celebrate on the same day. I am always happy to change! It’s the others that are the problem. Christos Anesti!
Out and out plagiarism came from here:
“Saint Athanasia of Aegina“. CatholicSaints.Info. 18 April 2017. Web. 19 April 2020. <https://catholicsaints.info/saint-athanasia-of-aegina/>
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