St. Olympias the Deaconess

Olympias was born around 361 into one of the great families of Constantinople, the granddaughter of a prefect and heiress to an immense fortune. Left an orphan, she was raised under the guidance of devout relatives and married a young prefect of the city, Nevridius; but he died within a year or two of the wedding, and Olympias, still very young, resolved to remain a widow and to consecrate herself wholly to God.

The emperor Theodosius, wishing her to marry a kinsman of his, placed her property under guardianship when she refused; but she bore the deprivation with such joy, thanking the emperor for relieving her of the burden of administering her wealth, that he relented and restored all to her. From that time she poured out her riches without measure, endowing churches and hospitals, ransoming captives, feeding the poor, and supporting clergy and monastics throughout the East.

The Patriarch Nectarius ordained her deaconess of the Great Church, though she was barely thirty, and in that ministry she served the women of the Church, the sick, and the needy. When St. John Chrysostom came to the throne of Constantinople, he found in her a daughter and a fellow-laborer; she gathered a community of devout women about her near the cathedral, living in fasting, prayer, and works of mercy.

When Chrysostom was driven into exile, Olympias remained steadfastly loyal to him, and for this she was persecuted, slandered, fined, and at last banished from the city. From his exile the saint wrote her a long series of letters, seventeen of which survive, comforting her in her afflictions and bidding her not to grieve. She died in exile at Nicomedia around 408, worn out by sorrow and labor; the Church honors her on the twenty-fifth of July as a deaconess and a confessor.