Hello, everyone. On February 7, the Orthodox Church celebrates the memory of a wonderful ascetic who was named Mastridia. She lived in Jerusalem, and not a lot is known about her life, but this life does indicate to us that she contested in ways that surpassed even most of the male ascetics of the day. Of course, in Christ Jesus there is no male or female, and the differences that are there reside only the body and not in the soul, as the Synaxarion tells us.

Mastridia really desired the life of our Lord Jesus Christ, wanted to live his life in her as best she could, and spent many, many years attempting to achieve this. But before she entered upon her great ascetical exercises, she was bothered by a certain impudent young man in the city of Jerusalem who simply wouldn’t leave her alone. He kept bugging her. He kept wanting to be with her. And she really didn’t want to do. Now, there’s probably a lot of ladies out there who have been in a similar circumstance and know exactly what she was talking about.

However, she also had great love for everyone, and simply didn’t want to hurt this young man in any way. So what she did: She decided to go into the desert, to go into a dry and moisture-less land and try to attempt to live the life that Jesus Christ wanted her to live. She took a bowl of beans and put them in some water and carried that out into the desert with her. During the following years in this dry land, which was very rugged and very difficult, she attained to incredible spiritual heights through her exercise of asceticism according to the will of the Lord. During that time, these beans that she took with her never ran out. They were the only thing that she would eat after all those years. And the clothing, the garments, that she had on her back when she left, also never decayed at all.

Bringing her life to an end in the year 580 AD, and, as the Synaxarion again tells us, absolute divine radiance. She is not one that is known to a lot of people, and there are probably many like her that are known only to the Lord. But yet the Lord has also given us but a brief glance into this life of this marvelous woman who so loved our Lord Jesus Christ that she thought that she could do all things in him, including the most difficult ascetical efforts.

So again as the Synaxarion tells us, we, too, should beg her blessing and her intercession and even all of those like her that remain known only to the Lord, that yet to this very day continue to pray for us, to intercede for us, and desire nothing but the best things in our Lord Jesus Christ for us.

Many of the women martyrs and many of the women ascetics are not as well known in Orthodoxy. This is probably because of the inherent modesty that they had. They would not trumpet themselves—not that the men did this, the men ascetics—but those that came after that recorded the lives would often make a very, very big deal out of the things that they saw. For the women, for the most part, they left them alone, to be known only to God. And certainly our beloved sister-in-Christ would also do this, too.

So let’s ask for her prayers. Let’s beg her that we, too, may become like her, if only in a small way, if only in our own small ascetical exercises, but great in the love that she also possessed for our Lord Jesus Christ.