St. Elizabeth the New Martyr of the Communist Oppression

I've never been sure how to convert Old Calender to New Calendar, but I think this is the day Old Calendarists, such as the Patriarch of Moscow, celebrate the great victory of the New Martyr Elizabeth. I don't know much about St. Elizabeth other than what I learned six years ago in a book about her relative Holy Empress Alexandra the Passion Bearer. What I remember is that this devoutly Lutheran German Princess (and niece of Queen Victoria) was married to a Russian grand duke. After her marriage she remained Lutheran (Though she did venerate an icon once by doing a polite curtsy.) for some time, until she had examined the theology, history, and practice of the Orthodox Church. When after some years she decided to become an Orthodox Christian her noble husband, who had never asked her to convert, began to weep with tears of joy and thanksgiving.

When the Elizabeth's husband was killed by an anarchist's bomb (Terrorism is nothing new.) she became a nun and used her wealth to start convents and orphanages. With the nuns of her convent she went to the front lines to nurse the wounded soldiers fighting in the 1st World War.

When the God-hating Communists sized power they threw St. Elizabeth down a mine shaft together with some other Russian nobles. When the prisoners were heard singing the prayers the Communists threw hand grenades into the shaft. The next day Orthodox Christians retrieved the relics of these Martyrs, just as we retrieved the relics of the Holy Martyrs during the Roman persecutions. What they found was that St. Elizabeth had received her crown while tying bandages, torn from her habit, on the wounds of her fellow Martyrs.

Her relics, along with those of a nun named Barbara, who, I think, also died in the mine shaft, were smuggled to Shanghai, China, pursued by the Communists the whole way, and from there, by ship, to Palestine. Most of the relics are in the Church of Ss. Mary and Martha on the Mount of Olives. I don't know how or when but a fragment of a bone of St. Elizabeth was brought to San Francisco and is set in an icon on the south wall of the nave of Holy Trinity Cathedral.

In a cathedral full of icons and relics it is difficult to get to all of them to venerate them and pray. But I always venerate St. Elizabeth's relic. I suppose the reason for my affinity for her is obvious. Like me, she carefully examined Holy Orthodoxy before she left her Protestant faith, but she remained on good terms with her Protestant family.