In Praise of Holy Women

in St Petersburg (Leningrad, as it was called then; the city reclaimed its
original title in 1991), and also in Moscow (not to mention Ukraine and
elsewhere throughout Russia) – this religious memorial was to cap a series
of political events that had unintentionally and inadvertently led to a rapid
decline in communist Russia’s seventy-year experiment with atheism. Over
the course of the next thirty years, tens of millions of people would openly
profess their faith or come to faith 3 and thousands of churches and hundreds
of monasteries would be rebuilt or reopened. (By contrast, State celebrations
commemorating the hundredth anniversary of the Bolshevik Revolution
– March-November 1917 – would be restrained almost to the point of
indifference.) As church bells once more resounded across the nation, one
could easily imagine a faint smile crossing the lips of that old, Russian nun
interred in Tashkent, for she was no stranger to irony and paradox.
* * *
A propensity for paradox is commonplace among Christians; however, in the
case of Julia Nikolayevna Reitlinger, as she was known in the world, it was
virtually the norm. Indeed, this theme in her life was noted quite early by her
spiritual director, Father Sergius Bulgakov, who remarked in a letter dated
18 August 1931, about 11 years after their first encounter, that:
Your fate touches and moves me. In its extraordinary paradox and sacrifice
lies the seal of some kind of election. It is true, you do not always endure it.
[T]hen … I feel [your burden as] heavy and terrible, since like you, I too am
only human. Nonetheless, a life of sacrifice is most pleasing to God, not a
successful one. Lift up your hearts to the Lord! 4
Julia, who was born into an aristocratic family and was waited on by
nannies, governesses and servants for nearly twenty years, served as cook
and housekeeper for her spiritual teacher, S.N. Bulgakov and his family for
twenty-two years; she, who as a child was physically weak with breathing
problems, breathed in the spirit of Orthodoxy from her youth and lived to
90; she, who since adolescence increasingly wrestled with deafness, was
fluent in several languages, and taught them; she, who is often called ‘the
first woman iconographer,’ worked at a vocation that traditionally was the
exclusive domain of men 5 ; she, who after mastering traditional iconography,
3
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Russian_Orthodox_Church; while those figures
might represent only 15% of the total population (http://www.pewforum.org/2017/11/08/
orthodox-christianity-in-the-21st-century/) this rapid resurgence is nevertheless remarkable if
not miraculous.
4
BOUL, 131. ‘Lift up your hearts to the Lord,’ from the Eucharistic Prayer in the Liturgy of St
John Chrysostom, but also to be found in most liturgies throughout the world.
5
Yazykova, I.K., Hidden and Triumphant: the underground struggle to save Russian iconography,
tr. Paul Genier, Paraclete Press, 2010, p 72. ‘Modernity came late to Russia…Be that as it may, women
now number among the most prominent of iconographers–both inside and outside Russia.’
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