They made her very excited, and she gave her rich clothes away to the poor. Her parents didn't support her decision to follow an ascetic and religious life, but she explained to them that that’s the only way she could live. After they passed away, Petka completely separated herself from the world. She gave away her inherited possessions to the poor and visited all of the holy places.  

Her voyages took her to Jerusalem and the Holy Land, she wished to kneel in front of God’s tomb and spend the rest of her life there and she settled in a convent in the Jordanian desert. Here Petka endured extreme heat and cold weather. She ate grass only once a day – after sunset. An evil spirit tempted her into dreams and apparitions, but she had the Lord as her refuge. That is how she spent her life till old age. One time, as she stood in prayer, an Angel appeared to her and said, "Leave the wilderness and return to your homeland. There you must leave your body on the Earth and give your soul to the Lord." She was pleased that the time to part with her body and let her soul go to Heaven was near. She went back and lived as a stranger in a constant prayer at the church of the Holy Apostles. Two years later while praying the Lord came and took her soul. She was buried as a stranger outside the village.  

Many years later not far from the place where the Reverend was buried, a sailor died. His body was dumped near the place where the drifter was living. The stench of the decaying corpse was so strong that he was forced to ask the nearby inhabitants to bury the body of the unfortunate man. Pious people began digging a tomb and found in the ground the body of the Blessed Petka, preserved and not decomposed. People were frightened, because they had never seen anything like that before and they buried the sailor’s corpse with it. The same night, one of those people named Georgi dreamed of a virgin, encircled by light, clothed in royal attire and surrounded by soldiers. One of the soldiers told Georgi, "Why have you detested the body of the reverend Paraskeva? Take the dead sailor out of her grave and lay him in a coffin. The Lord God wants to glorify her on this earth." Then the Virgin herself told the troubled Georgi: "Hurry and take out my relics. I can't stand the stench. My homeland is Epivates, where you live." The next day, the tomb was excavated. The preserved body of Saint Petka was removed and transferred to the church of “The Holy Apostles.”  Many miracles happened in front of the holy relics: blind could see, crippled could walk, incurable diseases were healed. 

In 1238 the Bulgarian tsar Ivan Asen ordered the relics to be transferred to the capital Turnovo. Solemnly greeted by the Tsar and the Bulgarian Patriarch Vasily, the relics were placed in the newly built for them church "The Reverend Petka". 

From 1393 to 1641 the relics of the Reverend Petka was transferred to three different countries to save them from the Turks. From 1641 to present day, they are resting in the city of Iash, Romania and deeply revered by the Romanian people.   The memory of Saint Petka  has been exalted not only in Bulgaria, but also in Greece, Serbia and Romania. In the twelfth century Deacon Vasily wrote a biography of the Blessed. The Deacon’s work inspired Patriarch Turnovski two hundred years later to wrote also a biography of Saint Petka.