Today the Holy Church honors the memory of the Holy Equal-to-the-Apostles Princess Olga. More than a millennium has passed, but the name of this saint is carefully preserved in the people’s memory.

Equal-to-the-Apostles Olga laid the foundation for the establishment of the Christian faith in Russia. A pagan by culture and upbringing, Olga had to stick to her past for political reasons, because she was at helm of a pagan state. However, once she found faith in Christ and was baptized in Byzantium, Olga undertook efforts in secret to have the Russian people accept the true faith. She didn’t enforce it despite having the power to do so, but the Princess gently admonished and instructed her people using her life as an example. During her lifetime, dozens of Orthodox churches were built in Kiev and other places in a still formally pagan Rus.

According to a long-standing monastery tradition on July 24, the commemoration day of Grand Princess Olga, the nuns of the Diveyevo monastery who received the name Olga in holy baptism or at tonsure took part in the patronal feast in the Znamensky Skete of the Seraphim-Diveyevo monastery. One of the side chapels at the skete’s church is dedicated to the Holy Princess Olga. The All-Night Vigil, a prayer canon to the Mother of God with water blessing prayer service and the Divine Liturgy were celebrated there.

Hegumenia Sergia, the abbess of the Seraphim-Diveyevo monastery prayed at the services.

At the end of the liturgy, the clergy of the monastery, matushka hegumenia with sisters and parishioners walked around the church in a procession.