This is a scene out of a horror film:  imagine you are an 18-year-old girl running into the jagged rocky shore of the sea with no one around to hear your screams for help.  You are running frantically to escape a pursuer who is intent on raping you.  He has been following you for years with his advances getting only more violent and more intense.  To escape him, you saught refuge in the forest outside the city limits and hid in a bush.  To snuff you out, he along with a herdsman set fire to the wood.  After suffocating from smoke and nearly burning to death from falling branches, you are at this point fleeing frantically to the seashore as there is no other cover.  He takes aim with his bow and in one fell swoop it penetrates through your breast.  You look behind you and see the jagged sea rocks dyed red with your blood. What makes this nightmare even more grotesque is that this pursuer has been a vital part of your life: he is your father.

As you make a desperate scramble, caught as you are between the devil and the deep blue sea, you call out to God from the depths of your soul, “Lord help me from a fate worse than death.”  Your lecherous father, the one who should have supported you, who should have protected you against the advances of evil men, mad with lust and fury, will stop at nothing to have you and know you carnally in one of the most repugnant acts men can perform against women, this act made even more morose and disgusting because he is your father. And there before your impending foot fall, the earth opens up in a crater and you fall in.  To your amazement, the earth and sand envelope around you and you are buried waist deep.  Once he reaches you, your attacker in rage at not being able to consummate his lust, wields his saber and in one swift swerve slices through your neck, dislocating your head from your body.  He hacks the rest of your members.  The azure sea around your broken body is soaked into a deep crimson red and boils from your Passion.  The salt of your tears mixes with the salt of the sea as your head floats away into the great deepening blue of the horizon.

This is not a scene from a B- grade horror film.  This is the final episode in the life of the God-pleasing virgin martyr whose feast day is celebrated July 22nd in our Orthodox Church.  This is the martyrdom of Aghia Markella of Chios.  She stands as a consolation for all those young women who suffer the great crime of incest, rape, and sexual exploitation at the hands of their fathers.

As her bio states, she was born in the town of Volissos, Chios during the 14th century.  As is a common pattern in incest cases, her mother, a Christian passed away, leaving her to the care of her pagan father.  Once the girl came of age and displayed exceptional beauty, her father became infatuated with her.  Yet she following in the deep devotion of her mother and decided at an early age to become a bride of Christ. After her martyrdom, the place of her murder flowed with springs of holy water, sweet fresh water as I am told, not the salty water of the sea.  Her head eventually floated to the shores of Komi. Years later Italian sailors navigating the shores of the island at night saw a consistent bright light.  Drawing near they discovered her head floating in the water illuminated by a wreath of candles.  They realized thus was a miraculous find and, like the relics of St Nicholas, took the head back to Italy (where apparently it still resides).  That site eventually was the foundation of a church dedicated to her.  This site has become a pilgrimage destination for many who seek healing and blessing to the present century.

On her feast day, when the priest sings the Paraklesis in her memory, the water around the rock where she died starts boiling.  The rocks where she was killed reveal her blood on certain moments during her feast week.

St Markella is a saint for our times.  When so many young girls are sold into sexual trafficking, when so many families suffer from sexual abuse, when there has been an upsurge in child porn, she stands as consolation to those who suffer from these unspeakable acts, both for the victim and for the abuser.  What was remarkable about St Markella was that even after suffering at the hands of her father, she still loved and forgave him.  When her mother died, she vowed to take care of him, respect him, and obey him until he died.  I am sure even during the gruesome time of her murder she was praying for his restitution to his rational self, a father who was supposed to protect and cherish his daughter.  What a contrast the image in the icon makes– a young beautiful virgin who would give her life to remain chaste versus her father, an old sex-crazed lecher driven to madness by the unholy passion of sexual lechery.  This is perhaps the greatest soul work of victims who have suffered abuse at the hands of their parents–to forgive the abuser and not blame themselves, but to bless the opportunity even of the cruelty in order that they may manifest the loving kindness of God, something antithetical to human logic anyway.  Her grace outpours into the world even today and here is a personal example.  In the tiny church we attend every now and then, not coincidentally dedicated to Aghia Markella, a sweet nun, not of Hellenic descent, runs girl empowerment classes.  She teaches them about the importance of staying chaste and the severity of the sin of abortion.  She shares her life story with them; she was the product of rape.  Her father was a criminal guilty of the same act, yet her mother had kept the child as she did not want to add a sin on top of another.  This child, the product of violence, sorrow, and shame, grew up to become a bride of God.  She is one of the most loving, most patient, most endearing human beings I have ever met.  She like Aghia Markella reveals how even in the midst of carnal crime, purity of heart and the beauty in goodness cannot be erased.  It is one’s choice whether to curse or bless, whether to stay chaste or be promiscuous, whether to be enslaved by ones’s passions or by conscious abstinence to be liberated from them.

In her martyrdom Aghia Markella was able to shine as the truly splendid and radiant maiden of Christ and rise above the circumstances of sexual abuse and serve as a paragon of virtue.  Her legacy still lives on as she is adored by the denizens of Chios and of many outside the island who flock to her site of martyrdom year after year.