The Sacrament of the Neighbor

The rich and extremely diverse legacy of Mother Maria (Skobtsova, 1891–1945), canonized by the Ecumenical Patriarchate as the Martyr Maria of Paris, has recently become available to the Russian reader. One of the brightest heirs of the Russian Silver Age,... a religious thinker, poet, and artist, whose creativity has always been inseparable from her actions. There was no truth she expressed that she did not confirm with her own life, which was cut short in the gas chamber of the Ravensbrück camp. Our collection includes the most important texts of Mother Maria, focused on her main ideas – the service to the neighbor as a peculiar sacrament of the Church, freedom and joy as necessary criteria of true spiritual experience, sharing the suffering of the neighbor to its deepest extent.