Commemorating St. Irene Chrysovolantou, Aug. 10/July 28.

Saint Irene Chrysovalantou was born in the middle of the 9th century in Asia Minor. Her father Filaret was a patrician of Cappadocia. He was a favorite of the Byzantine emperor Theophilus and a confidant of his wife, the blessed Empress Theodora, the same one who restored the veneration of holy icons. Theodora was looking for a suitable bride for her son Michael, the future emperor, and her choice fell on Irina. Irina accepted the proposal of the royal marriage with humility, and went to Constantinople. On the way, she stopped near the Little Olympus in Bithynia to take a blessing from Ioannikios the Great, a desert dweller of those places. The monk, enlightened from above, said to her: “Go to the capital, to the monastery of Chrysovalantu, to shepherd the virgins found there.”

The prophecy of Joannikius the Great was fulfilled. When St. Irene arrived in Constantinople, Michael had already married Eudokia Dekapolitissa. The Lord saved his chosen one - Michael, later nicknamed the Drunkard, was one of the most dissolute and mediocre rulers of Byzantium. Irene was delighted with this turn of fate, her old dream of monasticism, backed up by the revelation of Ioannikios the Great, began to come true. Her father himself took her to the convent of Chrysovolantu on the outskirts of Constantinople.

Having begun her monastic asceticism, Irene changed her rich dress to a sackcloth, and her magnificent palace to a wretched cell, here she imitated the exploits of St. Anthony the Great: at night she prayed with raised hands, being immobile. Demons appeared to her in thoughts and visions, and once they almost burned her, setting her clothes on fire, but by the grace of God they were defeated by her. During her holy life, she acquired abundant gifts of the Holy Spirit, such as teaching, clairvoyance, miracles. She was elevated to the rank of abbess of the monastery by the holy Patriarch Methodius.

St. Irene attached great importance to confession and every morning invited the sisters to confess. She was often visited by the laity to ask her for guidance. Irene prayed that a gift would be sent down to her, for a vision of what the confessor hides in his heart. One morning, when Irina went to the temple to pray, she saw an Angel in front of her and heard the following greeting from him: “Rejoice, servant of the Most High, Irene. I will always be by your side to show you what secrets human hearts hide." From that moment on, the Angel was always by her side and showed the inner world of people who came to St. Irene for advice.

St. Irene loved to go out of her cell to pray on starry nights. Once one of the nuns spied how ast. Irene towered about a meter above the ground, and two tall cypress trees bent before the saint, as if they were praying with her. When the old woman completed her prayers, she crossed both cypress trees, and they returned to their normal position. The next time, the nun, carefully, so that the abbess would not notice, made her way to the cypresses, tied a white scarf to the very top. Then this miracle was revealed to all the sisters of the monastery.

Just as miraculously, she received three heavenly apples from St. John the Theologian, which were brought to the monastery by sailors from the island of Patmos, they told how a certain old man, who passed through the waves as if on dry land, blessed this fruit for her. This divine gift was an invitation to Heaven. The saint ate one apple piece by piece during Great Lent (while she did not eat any other food), she gave the other to the sisters, and left the last one for herself for the last days of her life.

On Good Friday, while reading the service of the Passion of the Lord, she was honored to see the Savior himself with a host of angels, He presented a beautiful expensive veil to cover the Holy Throne and the world on it. Knowing in advance the time of her death, the saint reposed in the Lord as a deep old woman at the age of 104.

Saint Irene is always depicted in the clothes of an abbess, holding three heavenly apples in her right hand. The angel, who helped her in the salvation of souls, is in front of her and holds a scroll in her hands, where it is written: "Rejoice, servant of the Most High, Irene...". On some icons, the saint herself holds a scroll with the words: “The light of the monastics is the angels, the light for the world is the monks…”. Next to the saint, two bent cypress trees are depicted, the tops of which were tied with white scarves, and on the other side, the Chrysovalantou monastery itself is depicted.