Parasceve and Anastasia

This refined Russian icon of the Novgorod school represents two holy martyrs who were contemporary with each other but who did not know each other. Both were killed under the emperor Diocletian, one in 303 and the other in 304. They are often depicted and remembered together, especially in the Orthodox liturgy, because of their names, which have made them, over the centuries, two symbolic figures .

In fact "parasceve" in Greek means "preparation" and we find this term in the Gospel, at the moment of Jesus' deposition from the cross (Jn 19.31). It therefore indicates Friday , day of the Passion of our Lord. In fact, tradition says that she was born on a Friday and that she "experienced the cross of Christ" with her martyrdom. She was probably born in Iconium, then a Roman province, to a rich family, who passed on the Christian faith to her, and after the death of her parents, she used her great inheritance to help the poor of the city, a service which she combined with the testimony of her faith and her love for Christ. This disturbs the emperor, who first has her tortured to force her to recant and, not achieving her goal, condemns her to beheaded.

Anastasia instead derives from the Greek word "resurrection", and is therefore linked to the day of Sunday. She is of Italian origins (Rome), after the death of her husband she went to Sirmium, now Serbia, to help persecuted Christians and treat those in prison. For this reason she is depicted with a bottle of ointment in her hand and nicknamed "Farmacolìtria" (Healer of poisons). She was burned alive on December 25, after refusing to renounce Christianity.

Parasceve is always depicted with the white veil on her head, symbol of conversion and chastity, the red maphorion covering her head, shoulders and arms, the color of martyrdom, of her blood shed together to the blood of Christ. Anastasia, usually with the maphorion tending towards green, invoked as a healer, healer, liberator from imprisonment. She is still today a symbol of union between the Catholic and Orthodox worlds because she is venerated by both Churches. Represented together, Parasceve and Anastasia become figures of profound Christological meaning: symbols of the passion and resurrection of Jesus.

Apart from the red which has vital value in itself, their clothes are so bright and crystalline because they want to indicate how much their people were crossed, permeated, by the light of God's grace, the only one that can give true love, which gives strength in trials, courage in faith, constancy in martyrdom.

Two saints venerated by Christians since the fifth century, who, although they do not know each other, are united by their love for Christ, by their history, and by their names, which have made them become emblems (today especially for the Eastern Church) of popular female holiness, of everyday holiness.

Contemplating this icon then, despite its bare simplicity, we can stop and ask God too to be able to be crossed by his grace, to make us welcoming to his Spirit, who wants to give us too, every day, on every occasion, in our small or large daily martyrs, in situations and relationships that are close to us and in which, due to responsibility, we must stay, precisely where we struggle most, he wants to give us too the grace of patience, of dominion over ourselves, of holy detachment to always seek the deepest truth, and love, the true one, the one that never says enough, that is consumed until the end, that loves not to be loved but to love the one by whom we come, the one who already loves us with eternal love and to whom we all belong, to thank him, and perhaps, console him even a little.


Chiara Dal Corso
NP November 2023