Venerable Pelagia

Life

A repentant sinner. Born a pagan in Antioch and endowed by God with great physical beauty, Pelagia used her beauty for the spiritual ruin of both herself and others. She had greatly enriched herself through fornication. Once, passing by the church of the Holy Martyr Julian, in which Bishop Nonnus was preaching, she turned into the church and heard the sermon on the Dreadful Judgment and the punishment of sinners. And that word so shook and changed her that she at once became disgusted with herself, feared God, repented of all her impure sins, and fell before Saint Nonnus with the plea that he baptize her. "Have mercy on me, a sinner, holy father, baptize me and teach me repentance: I am a sea of iniquity, an abyss of perdition, a snare and instrument of the devil." So this penitent woman with tears entreated the hierarch of Christ. And he baptized her. At her baptism, blessed Romana, a deaconess of that church, was her sponsor, and afterwards, as her spiritual mother, she firmly established her in the Christian faith. But Pelagia was not content with baptism alone. Feeling the burden of her many sins and the gnawing of conscience, she resolved upon a great ascetic struggle. Her enormous wealth, gathered through sin, she distributed to the poor, and she secretly departed for Jerusalem, where under a male name, as the monk Pelagius, she enclosed herself in a cell on the Mount of Olives, and there began a rigorous ascetic struggle of fasting, prayer and vigil. After three years, the deacon of Saint Nonnus, James, visited her and found her still alive, but when he visited again after several days, he found her body dead and honorably buried it. Saint Pelagia reposed in the Lord around the year 461. Thus this former great sinner, through repentance and toil, propitiated God, was forgiven her sins, and was sanctified. And her cleansed and sanctified soul was deemed worthy of the Kingdom of God.

From the Hymn of Praise

Pelagia was sinful,Then she repented,And by knowledge of the true faithHer soul was illumined.