It seemed that her public work left no time for anything else, and yet Elizaveta Yurievna managed to complete, by correspondence, the St Sergius Theological Institute in Paris, where the chair of dogmatic theology was held by Fr Sergius Bulgakov. His spiritual influence on Elizaveta Yurievna was so great that later she would, with every right, call him her spiritual father. From the history of monasticism she knew vivid and luminous examples of service. But could the motherly service she had conceived really be combined with the monastic life? And even if it could, ought she — could she even — dream of the tonsure while two husbands were still living, though she was divorced from one and estranged from the other? With these questions she turned to the members of her family, to her spiritual father Sergius Bulgakov, and to the diocesan bishop, Metropolitan Evlogy. At first the obstacles seemed insurmountable. But against all expectation, the Lord took her by the hand and led her. Canon law allows divorce in the case where at least one of the spouses wishes to enter the monastic life. On this ground the Metropolitan decided to grant her a church divorce. The sole condition, and the last obstacle, was that her husband too had to give his consent. Daniil Yermolaevich Skobtsov met this demand without any enthusiasm, and the Metropolitan himself had to persuade him. The question of a civil divorce was not raised at all — from the Church’s point of view there was no need of one. This also spared them needless legal costs. And so the canonical and family obstacles were overcome. The divorce took place on 7 March 1932, the anniversary of Nastya’s death. Preparations for the tonsure began: a second-hand cassock was found, a day was appointed. But the most important preparations went on unseen by outsiders. On the appointed day in March 1932, in the church of the St Sergius Compound at the St Sergius Orthodox Theological Institute in Paris, Elizaveta Yurievna Skobtsova — Kuzmina-Karavaeva by her first marriage, née Pilenko — laid aside her worldly clothing, put on a plain white shirt, came down the dark stairway from the choir loft of the church of St Sergius, and lay prostrate on the floor in the form of a cross:
The chapter goes on in the book.