Mother Maria by Jenna Funkhouser, volunteer 2021

Those who read Mother Maria’s prophetic and sometimes fiery words, myself included, find them both a painful challenge and a beacon of light…….

In 1923, a refugee arrived in Paris after a dangerous journey through eastern Europe. Her name  was Elizabeth Pilenko. Elizabeth and her family had been forced to flee Russia in the midst of civil war, and were some of the many Russian immigrants trying to make a new life in France.

 Elizabeth’s new life in Paris was filled with struggle, and within several years she witnessed the death of both of her daughters (also leading to the dissolution of her marriage). In her grief, she wrote, “However hard I try, I find it impossible to construct anything greater than these three words, ‘Love one another’ —only to the end, and without exceptions: then all is justified and life is illumined, whereas otherwise it is an abomination and a burden.”

These words would turn out to be the summary of the rest of her life’s work. Soon after this experience, Elizabeth decided to take monastic vows and received the name Maria. Eventually, she would be known as “Mother Maria (or Marie) of Paris”. She had, she wrote, become “aware  of a new and special, broad and all-embracing motherhood…[I saw a] new road before me and a  new meaning in life, to be a mother for all, for all who need maternal care, assistance, or protection.”

 Mother Maria had experienced first-hand the widespread poverty and despair among other Russian immigrants, and soon after professing monastic vows, she rented her first home to offer as a place of hospitality. Soon other homes followed, some for men, some for families, some for elderly women. But the hub of religious and social activity remained 77 Rue Lourmel in Paris. Here over 120 meals were served daily, and several dozen guests lived at any given time. Religious services and regular prayer times were held in a converted chapel, and weekly  philosophy and theology discussions were held in the evenings.

 “If our approach to the world is correct and spiritual, we will not have only to give to it from our  spiritual poverty, but we will receive infinitely more from the face of Christ that lives in it, from our communion with Christ, from the consciousness of being part of God’s body”, Mother Maria  wrote. “About every poor, hungry and imprisoned person the Saviour says ‘I’: ‘I was hungry and thirsty, I was sick and in prison.’ To think that he puts an equal sign between himself and anyone  in need...I always knew it, but now it has somehow penetrated to my sinews. It fills me with awe.”

 In 1940, the Nazi occupation of France came. Mother Maria and several others from their home worked as part of the resistance, aiding and harbouring many Jews. In 1943, she and three others were discovered and sent to concentration camps - her son Yuma, co-worker Pianov, and priest  Father Dimitri to Buchenwald, and Mother Maria to Ravensbruck. Surrounded by brutality and  nightmare on every side, she nevertheless organised intellectual discussions, created art, and formed groups of mutual aid that kept the flame of dignity and humanity alive even in the most  inhumane of conditions

On March 30, 1945, Mother Maria was one of many who were selected that day to perish in the gas chambers. Although it cannot be verified, some witnesses say that she offered herself in place of another who had been chosen. Either way, up to the moment of her death, Mother Maria continued to “love to the end, without exception.”

 Mother Maria arrived in France as a refugee, much like those who come through the doors of Maria Skobtsova House today. And yet at the end of her life, she had enriched the city in which she lived and changed the course of hundreds of lives forever. How many other saints live and walk among us, eager to share their gifts with the world, yet finding themselves surrounded by barbed wire and closed doors?

 Mother Maria inspires me because her calling was to a holistic life among the poor that celebrated all they had to offer alongside their obvious needs. In Rue Lourmel there was food, clothing, and shelter offered, yes —but also poetry, communally created religious art, university  classes, and theological and philosophical discussion groups. She was committed to the dignity but also the giftedness of all people, and retained a sense of joy and creativity even in the midst of much suffering.

Those who read Mother Maria’s prophetic and sometimes fiery words, myself included, find them both a painful challenge and a beacon of light. But I believe that her life’s witness is not just about dying to self, but of discovering the hidden spring of life. While volunteering at Maria Skobtsova House this fall, my husband Ben and I made a short pilgrimage to Mother Maria’s original residence, Rue 77 Lourmel, and the street in Paris that is now named after her. While there, I sensed a glimpse of the joyful invitation that drew her on. Do I truly believe that my greatest source of life is bound up in the well-being of the lives of my neighbors - that we rise or  fall together? Or do I keep the door shut tightly to my individualistic world, and thereby close myself off from love and from life?

 This invitation is open to each of us, each day, especially here in Maria Skobtsova House. Mother Maria’s legacy is a continuing reminder that each person in this home has a unique and precious gift to bring - that each is an irreplaceable icon of God, living here among us. Each time we hear the bell ring and open the door, our hope is that the spirit of Mother Maria’s radical love  and hospitality lives on in the lives of those who pass through it.