Blessed Basil, the Fool for Christ of Moscow.

Commemorated August 2 in the Orthodox Christian Menaion

From the Prologue

His father was called Jacob and his mother Anna. At the age of sixteen, he gave himself to the ascesis of folly for Christ, and persevered in that hard asceticism for seventy-two years, living to the age of eighty-eight. He went barefoot, bareheaded and in tatters, and had no settled shelter. He set sinners on the right way, reprimanded the nobles and had true insight into distant events. Suffering greatly from hunger, from cold and from the insults of men, Blessed Basil gave his holy soul to God. Tsar Ivan was at his funeral, with the Metropolitan. He was buried in the Moscow church of the Most Holy Mother of God, later re-named for him.

From The Prologue From Ochrid by Bishop Nikolai Velimirovich
©1985 Lazarica Press, Birmingham UK