Saints & Martyrs: Part 1

I love writing a series for Tirzah every year. This time, as I was praying, I really wanted to share a part of my childhood I enjoyed. Growing up, we would read stories of different people all over the world who did special things for God. Most were called “missionaries” in these books. Some call them saints. It just depends who you talk to and where they are from.

Every month I’m going to share about a new person who did cool things for Christ. Obviously, the focus of Tirzah is women - so I’m choosing different women for each month.

As I was visiting churches this week for work, I met a priest of an Orthodox church here in Kentucky. He was explaining what it meant to be Orthodox and took me on a tour of his church. I was struck by the beauty - and the pictures of saints everywhere. This father ended up explaining to me the Orthodox tradition of incorporating saints that have gone before them into every area of their church and traditions.

One of the women pictured in his church was “Grand Duchess Elizabeth”. She lived in the early 1900s and was Protestant. Saint Elizabeth converted to Orthodoxy and was married to the governor of Moscow. Her husband was killed by an assassin in 1905. This gracious woman visited her husband’s assassin in prison and asked him to repent.
After marriage, she moved into a more monastic life with nuns. Instead of continuing in nobility, she chose to live her life helping sick and wounded soldiers on the battlefield. She was known, even while being a noble, as a woman who helped other women organize to help others. In the end, she was thrown down a mineshaft, with several others, and grenades were sent down too! It is said that she could be heard singing hymns.

You can read more about her here:

https://www.oca.org/saints/lives/2000/07/18/101915-grand-duchess-elizabeth