Excerpt from the book “The Pearl of Great Price: The Life of Mother Maria Skobtsova, 1891-1945”. . .

Foreword by Metropolitan Anthony Bloom:  "Mother Maria is remembered in the context of the Russian migration, the French Resistance, or Ravensbruck concentration camp. But her achievement extends beyond the circumstances of her life, and it outlives them. For above all, by way of her Christian dedication and in her own distinctive style, she demonstrated what it means to be human.

In the process she sacrificed her personal serenity. Since her life was completely interwoven with the destiny of her contemporaries, their turmoil was hers, their tragedy was hers. And yet she was not swept away by it. She was anchored in God and her feet rested on the Rock.

Infinite pity and compassion possessed her; there was no suffering to which she was a stranger; there was no difficulties which could cause her to turn aside. .. Mother Maria is a saint of our day and for our day: a woman of flesh and blood possessed by the love of God, who stood fearlessly face to face with the problems of this century.
... 

"Meanwhile, her ways proved a stumbling block to the pious and respectable churchgoers of the Parisian emigration. Many were affronted by her rejection of conventions which they simplistically equated with Tradition. Was she not a nun? How then could one justify the irregularity of her liturgical life? Her familiarity with the underworld? The shabbiness of her attire? Her smoking (and in public, moreover)? Her cavalier treatment of fasts? Not only is the Rule ignored: even appearances are not maintained. Right-wing emigres felt that her behaviour smacked of socialism, if not communism. 'Apart from anything else,' wrote Mother Maria, 'for church circles, we are too far to the left, for the left we are too church-minded."

Even some of her close collaborators were inclined to doubt the relevance of her monastic profession to the work she had undertaken. Pianov and Berdiaev had expressed their doubts from the outset. In retrospect, Fr. Lev Gillet was also to suggest that monasticism added 'nothing essential' to her way of life. At least on the level of inessentials her monastic garb could play a useful role. 'Thanks to my being clothed as a nun, many things are simpler and within my reach', she observed. 'In state establishments it is always easier for a nun to cope with problems, to gain access to the administration or to bypass red tape.'

It is likely that had she been a deaconess she would have encountered less opposition to her work. There would certainly have been less of a gulf between the work and all that was expected of her. But although the possible restoration of the order of deaconesses was under discussion in the Russian Orthodox Church on the eve of the Revolution (and Evlogii, as a young bishop, was then in favour of such a restoration), the question was ultimately to be shelved. A study of the subject which was published at the time concluded that over the centuries the two distinct principles and life styles (cognate, but by no means identical) of deaconess and nun had merged into a single order, the nun's. The fact that Mother Maria was in some sense living the life of one within the framework of the other was no comfort to her critics. Even less easy to accept was her spurning of any framework, rhetoric or custom which might veil uncomfortable truths. In their time the saintly Fools for Christ's sake had sanctified comparable attitudes and procedures. It is not surprising that Mother Maria had a particular devotion for them. ...

Words spoken by Mother Maria at such meetings which she attended at Lourmel or elsewhere could not be expected to reach the ears of her distant critics in an undistorted form, if at all. The aid of print was needed. Mother Maria would lock herself away in her room for several hours to write an article or statement. Even such texts, however firm or fiery, were not bound to reach, still less to sway, her intended audience. But not to write at all would be irresponsible.

"Ultimately, Chrisy gave us two commandments: on love for God and love for people. There is no need to complicate them, and at times to supplant them, by pedantic rules. As for Christ, he is not testing us at present by our deprivations, by our exile, or by the loss of our accustomed framework. He is testing us - when we find ourselves deprived of our previous living conditions and our way of life, when we are granted our awe-inspiring freedom - to see whether we can find him there, where earlier we had never thought to seek him."; "Freedom calls us to act the Fool for Christ's sake, at variance with enemies and even friends, to develop the life of the Church in just that way in which it is most difficult to develop it. And we shall live as Fools, since we know not only the difficulty of this way of life, but also the great bliss of sensing God's hand on our work." ; .. "Whether it will prove possible to realize our hopes we do not know. Essentially, this depends on God's will. But apart from God's will, support and grace, demands are also made on each of us: to exert all our strength, to be fearless in the face of even the most daunting task, to generate the spirit of discipline, self-limitation, sacrifice and love, to lay down our lives for our friends, and to follow in Christ's footsteps to the Golgotha appointed for us."