On Thursday, June 24, 2021, Metropolitan Athenagoras of Belgium and Exarch of the Netherlands and Luxembourg presided over the Archieratic Divine Liturgy at the Nativity of the Mother of God Convent in Asten, the Netherlands, with the participation only of the fraternity and a few faithful due to protection measures against the coronavirus.
At the end of the Divine Liturgy, the Metropolitan performed the Memorial Service for the blessed Mother Maria, while in his short speech after the Memorial Service, Metropolitan Athenagoras referred to the person of Mother Maria.
Afterwards, the Metropolitan performed a Trisagion on the tomb of the Blessed Mother Maria.
Blessed Mother Maria, of Dutch descent, was born in the Hague. There she became orthodox. At the age of 21, she entered the Dutch-speaking Orthodox Monastery in the Hague. She traveled to Greece, with a stopover in Serbia, where she remained in various Orthodox monasteries.
Eleven years later, after learning the Greek language, she returned to the Netherlands with the aim of transmitting Orthodox monasticism to her homeland.
With the blessing and support of the then Metropolitan Panteleimon of Belgium and the great help of a Dutch family, she settled on a farm in the area of Eindhoven, in Asten, which she turned into a monastery dedicated to the Nativity of the Virgin. On the day of the feast of the monastery, of the year 1989, the doors of the monastery are opened and the first Divine Liturgy is performed.
With hard work, struggle, and prayer, the monastery is slowly being formed and acquires the necessary spaces. Gradually, the first fraternity is created under the leadership of Mother Maria from nuns of different backgrounds and traditions, thus giving the ecumenical message of Orthodoxy. At the same time, the monastery becomes known to the world and is visited not only by the Diocese of Belgium but also by other Dioceses.
On June 24, 2016, on the day of the feast of Nativity of Saint John the Baptist, Mother Maria, fell asleep in the Lord.