OLGA OF KYIV

Before her conversion, Olga’s story was marked by brutal revenge. After her husband was killed, she retaliated against the people responsible. The medieval Primary Chronicle describes messengers buried alive, others burned in a bathhouse, and a city destroyed. These accounts contain elements of legend, but the violence in her story is difficult to look past.

Olga later embraced Christianity. The woman remembered for vengeance became a saint. Her conversion does not make the suffering she caused less real. It asks us to consider the possibility that even someone responsible for terrible things can turn toward God.

That is what draws me to her. I struggle with the distance between what I have done, who I am, and who I am being called to become. Olga’s story brings me back to a difficult question: can I believe in the possibility of redemption without making excuses for the past?

This original acrylic painting on stretched canvas belongs to The Redeemed, a series exploring the difficult human lives behind familiar images of holiness.