Description
The Most Holy Theotokos again appeared to the Monk Gabriel, saying that she did not want to be kept by the monks, but wanted to be their Guardian. The monks built a gate church, in which the miraculous icon remains to this day. By the name of the monastery, this icon is called Iverskaya, and by its location above the monastery gates – “Goalkeeper” or “Portaitissa”. The history of the Iversky Monastery has preserved many cases of the miraculous help of the Mother of God through Her miraculous icon: the deliverance of the monastery from barbarians, the miraculous replenishment of food supplies, the healing of the sick.
The miraculous image of the Mother of God was well known in Russia. During the reign of Alexei Mikhailovich (1645-1676), Archimandrite Nikon of the Novospassky Monastery (later Patriarch of All Rus’) turned to Archimandrite Pachomius of the Iveron Athos Monastery with a request to send a list (copy) of the miraculous icon of the Most Holy Theotokos. The priest Iamblichus Romanov was blessed to paint the icon for Russia. Before this, the entire brethren of the monastery (three hundred and sixty-five monks) performed a great prayer service from evening until dawn and blessed the water with holy relics. They poured holy water over the miraculous icon of the Most Holy Theotokos “Portaitissa” and again poured it over a new board prepared for writing the icon, made of cypress wood. After the Divine Liturgy, holy water and particles of holy relics were handed over to the icon painter, who, mixing them with paints, began to paint the icon. On October 13, 1648, the icon was brought to Moscow and solemnly greeted at the Resurrection Gate by many people, Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich and Patriarch Joseph. When Nikon ascended the patriarchal throne, he planned to build a monastery on one of the islands of Lake Valdai in honor of the Iveron Icon of the Mother of God, in the likeness of the Athos Iveron Monastery. Skilled painters were sent to Athos to paint a new copy of the ancient Iveron Icon of the Mother of God and draw up an accurate plan of the Iveron monastery.
Through the efforts of Russian architects, the Iveron Mother of God Svyatoozersky Monastery was founded in Valdai, to which the newly painted Iveron Icon was brought from Athos in 1656. Other revered copies of the Iveron Icon, installed in the Iveron Chapel at the Resurrection Gate, were also written on Athos. Thousands of Orthodox Christians from all over Russia came to venerate the miraculous image (one icon never left its place, while the other was taken from house to house in Moscow in a special carriage). Arriving in Moscow, Russian sovereigns, before entering the Kremlin, always prayed in the chapel at the Resurrection Gate in front of the miraculous image of the Blessed Virgin Mary.
In 1929, the chapel was destroyed, the icon disappeared, but the mobile icon was preserved and is now in the Church of the Resurrection of Christ in Sokolniki. Nowadays, by the grace of God, the chapel has been recreated, and Orthodox Russia, on October 26, 1995, again met the image of the Iveron Mother of God, painted on Holy Mount Athos. At the end of the twentieth century, the myrrh-streaming Iveron Icon of the Blessed Virgin Mary from Montreal, whose custodian was the Orthodox Spaniard Joseph Muñoz Cortes, became famous. Unfortunately, in October 1997, after the villainous murder of Joseph, the miraculous image disappeared without a trace. The celebration of the miraculous Iveron Icon of the Mother of God in the Russian Orthodox Church takes place three times: /February 25 (this day is associated with the transfer of the copy of the Iveron Icon to the monastery in Valdai), /October 26 (the day of the solemn meeting of the Athos shrine in Moscow in 1648) and on Bright Tuesday week (it was on Tuesday of Bright Week, according to legend, that the icon appeared on the waters in front of the monks of the Iveron Monastery). Before the Iveronskaya icon of the Most Holy Theotokos they pray for help in any
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