ABBESS MARIA OF ASTEN, THE NETHERLANDS, REPOSES IN THE LORD
www.pravoslavie.ru – July 2016
On June 24, 2016, the highly respected abbess and founder of the Nativity of the Mother of God Convent in Asten, The Netherlands (near Eindhoven) reposed peacefully in the Lord after a long bout with cancer. The funeral service was held on Tuesday, June 28.
Mother Maria was born in The Hague, Netherlands on June 13, 1944. She converted to Orthodox Christianity from the Dutch Reformed Church in 1961, and became a novice in the St. John the Forerunner Convent in The Hague in 1965. After several years in a Serbian Monastery where she was a spiritual child of St. Justin Popovic, Mother Maria entered a monastery in Greece, where she lived for ten years and received the monastic tonsure. After receiving a theological education in Thessaloniki, Mother Maria was invited back to Holland to engender Orthodox monastic life, and in 1986 she returned, soon founded the convent in the southern, rural part of Holland known as the Peel. Seven sisters survive Mother Maria at her convent.
Mother Maria was known all over Holland, and not only in Orthodox circles. Her contribution to Orthodox life in Western Europe, especially Holland and Belgium, cannot be overestimated.
Memory eternal to our beloved Mother Maria!
For more information on the life, work, and monastery of Mother Maria see here.
[…] told the story of Mother Maria, the founder of the monastery, who was a native Dutch woman who came to Orthodoxy as a teen, soon […]