Marie Skobtsova
1891-1945 20th century Feast day: July 20
Finding God in the face of the other: a hospitality that makes every open table a holy place.
Who was Marie Skobtsova?
A Russian poet twice married, caught up in the revolution and then cast onto the roads of exile, she lost her younger daughter in 1926, and her motherhood widened to embrace everyone. A nun in Paris without a monastery, she opened a house on rue de Lourmel where the hungry, the uprooted and the battered found a table before a sermon. Under the Occupation she hid Jews with Father Dimitri Klepinin; arrested in 1943, she died in Ravensbrück on the threshold of Easter 1945. The Orthodox Church canonized her in 2004.
In their own words
The way to God lies through love of people. At the Last Judgment I shall not be asked whether I was successful in my ascetic exercises, nor how many bows and prostrations I made. Instead I shall be asked, Did I feed the hungry, clothe the naked, visit the sick and the prisoners. That is all I shall be asked.
Each person is the very icon of God incarnate in the world.
No amount of thought will ever result in any greater formulation than the three words, 'Love one another,' so long as it is love to the end and without exceptions.