What is the name of when the icon bleeds. Why do icons cry? Historical cases and interesting facts about myrrh-streaming icons
Most people do not believe in miracles, but they happen right before our eyes, and it is simply pointless to deny that this is really something unusual. It is difficult to figure out who leads them, where they come from, but Orthodox Christians believe that a miracle comes from the Lord God.
The Bible tells us that Jesus Christ performed miracles in front of people more than once, and today these miracles can also be observed. But it is important to remember that a miracle happens only where people really believe in it and where they want to see it with their own eyes.
How can icons cry?
A crying icon does not at all mean that tears will flow from the eyes of the image, it is most correct to say that a special oil, which is called myrrh, is beginning to stand out, but this oil should not be confused with another, which is prepared by priests and is used for Orthodox rituals.
Very rarely, oil begins to appear on icons, which has nothing to do with the oil that is used for chrismation. Tears of an icon can be different in their consistency, for example, oil, can be thick or liquid.
What does the crying icon portend?
In fact, icons cry in churches extremely rarely and, as a rule, after that some terrible event occurs in the world, therefore it is generally accepted that the tears of an icon are a sign or sign to humanity, which warns people that it is necessary to repent. And then, perhaps, the Lord will forgive his children and prevent the threat. In no case should the tears of an icon be considered a bad sign, on the contrary, it is a blessed sign sent by God.
The oil that comes from the icon is necessarily collected and given to the parishioners in the church, it is considered curative, and many people can once again be convinced that miracles exist, because it can heal even the most serious diseases.
Historical cases and interesting facts about myrrh-streaming icons
For the first time, a weeping icon was seen in Veliky Ustyug. Here lived a holy fool named Procopius, who had a special gift of foresight. Procopius urged people to repent, or otherwise they will all perish. Nobody took Procopius' words seriously, and then one day a black cloud appeared over the city, which covered the whole city. People in fright rushed to pray near the icon in the church, which immediately began to ooze myrrh. The parishioners gathered him into vessels, and then smeared themselves and thanked God for forgiving them their sins.
Later, a miracle happened again, and already in 1953 an icon of the Virgin Mary with a baby in her arms was pacified in Sicily. There was too much controversy around this case, but scientists wanted to verify the authenticity of the tears. And when they took the liquid for analysis, they were convinced that it was real human tears in composition.
Another miraculous weeping icon is "The laying of a crown of thorns on the head of the Savior." This icon is in the Church of the Holy Sepulcher. The world began to stand out on the image as early as 1572. That year, trickles of fragrant oil constantly flowed down the icon, which somewhat resembled blood, and this was a sign before the terrible tragedy that happened in France. Later this event became known as St. Bartholomew's Night.
What icons are streaming myrrh?
Neither scientists nor priests can answer many questions. For example, no one will be able to say for sure why the icons are crying, since this is not always an omen of something bad. It is also worth noting that the crying of icons can also be different. Icons cry all over the world, but most of these images, oddly enough, are located in Russia.
The clergy say that in recent years there are much more myrrh-streaming icons than ever before. Not only old images can cry, but also icons that were painted not so long ago. The myrrh-streaming icon is considered a real miracle, and no scientist in the world has yet been able to study the origin of this oil that stands out.
A crying icon does not have to be depicted on a tree. There were cases when the miro appeared even on photographs of icons or photocopies.
A huge number of scientists constantly studied the consistency of the oil, and none of them could find out exactly what it consists of. Recently, they even came to the conclusion that oil has a high protein content, but as it turned out, such a substance can only be released from a living organism. Therefore, the tears of icons remain the biggest unsolved mystery in the world.
How should one relate to such a miracle?
The crying icon is a sign that is explained in different ways. Orthodox Christians treat such a phenomenon with great trepidation. The priests try not to advertise the myrrh-streaming icons, because modern people pay attention to the external miracle and forget that Jesus did not recognize the sign. It should be remembered that a miracle must be a spiritual necessity, and it achieves its purpose only if you believe in it.
Icon of the Mother of God weeping
The most famous is the weeping icon of the Mother of God. She has been streaming myrrh for 15 years. For the Orthodox, this was one of the greatest miracles of the last century. The keeper of this icon is Joseph Muñoz, who, having seen the icon once, decided that it should stay with him.
The icon was on Athos, and when Joseph first asked to give it back, he was refused, but later the abbot came to Joseph and gave the icon, saying that the Mother of God herself had blessed him for this act. The tears that were collected from the icon helped many people to heal. To date, the fate of the icon of the Mother of God is unknown, since in 19997 Joseph was killed and the icon was stolen.
Myrrh-streaming icon in Belgorod
Miracles happen and not too far away. Quite recently, on the territory of the Belgorod clinic, where there is a hospital church, an icon of the Matrona of Moscow was pacified. The crying icon in Belgorod caused a real storm of emotions among the Orthodox, who lined up in a huge living line to see the miracle with their own eyes, and, of course, to kiss it. As soon as it became known that the icon began to stream myrrh, a procedure was carried out, which was supposed to testify that it was really a miracle, and not someone's cruel joke.
Saint Matronushka is not the only crying icon in Belgorod. In a small village near Belgorod, there is a wooden church built in the name of St. Nicholas the Wonderworker. It also began to stream myrrh, and everything happened in the evening before the great feast of the Annunciation of the Most Holy Theotokos.
All Orthodox Christians should know that it is impossible to prove the origin of such a miracle, a person should believe and see what the Lord shows him. No analysis has ever been able to prove that the oil is of terrestrial origin. Therefore, it is simply impossible to shake the faith of people who really believe with all their souls in the Lord God.
Miracles happen. They happen for those who truly believe in them. Documentary evidence and facts are needed only for those who do not believe or do not want to believe, especially when it comes to Orthodox traditions. With regard to myrrh streaming, there are plenty of such testimonies, and there are no less eyewitnesses. Priests try to record every such phenomenon, however, publicity is not welcomed. People worship religious shrines, believing in a cure for deadly ailments and hoping to be forgiven for their not always reliable deeds.
To begin with, the flow of myrrh, even for a believer, is a miracle. Gradually, the world gets used to such things, and already in our time, the myrrh streaming of icons is not something supernatural. Many people observe such a phenomenon with their own eyes. Some claim that miraculous healing from diseases happened to them. However, every believer accepts the myrrh streaming of icons as a certain sign concerning the worldly life of all people. Why did we talk about just such an interpretation? To a greater extent, this was influenced by the events that took place after the most famous cases of the myrrh-streaming of icons or the relics of saints.
According to many reports about the myrrh streaming of icons in Russia, their peak falls on the late 20th - early 21st centuries. In the famous Svyato-Vvedensky monastery in Ivanovo, 1047 icons were streaming myrrh, and only for the period from December 1998 to March 1999, not only ancient icons, but also those painted in our time, are streaming myrrh. The icon "The Sovereign Mother of God", painted in 1995, was streaming myrrh by contemporary icon painters, at the exhibition in honor of the 850th anniversary of Moscow. There are many such stories, although the type and color of the emitted liquid can be strikingly different in each case. Sometimes these are light transparent streams, similar to human tears or dew. Often a liquid of a thick, almost resinous consistency with a characteristic fragrance appears on icons, and sometimes it is similar to blood.
The sign of myrrh streaming, according to believers, is that God's world is close to the world of people. This is a call to repentance and confession. The myrrh streaming of icons, a liquid similar to scarlet blood, signifies impending terrible and bloody events. Tears of the Virgin, to difficult trials, but which can be prevented by prayer and repentance. The bleeding of icons is a more formidable sign, foreshadowing terrible and bloody events. Myrrh streaming icons made of wood, metal, paper copies.
The miraculous icon "Laying a crown of thorns on the head of the Savior" (Jerusalem, Church of the Holy Sepulcher) bled three times. Rather, twice, because the first time, an ancient fresco located on the same place where the famous shrine is now kept was bleeding. It happened in 1572. The fresco streamed myrrh, like streams of liquid like blood. The same year, a few months later, Paris. A terrifying event takes place that changed the history of France, turned the minds of people around the world and remained in history for centuries. In Paris, overnight, a third of the population was destroyed. The most terrible bloody night, St. Bartholomew (August 24).
On the eve of Easter, 1939, the Pope is told about the myrrh-flowing, miraculous icon. Again she is bleeding and again there are many witnesses to this phenomenon. Is it worth drawing an analogy with the outbreak of World War II, in September of the same year? Myrrh flow, resumed again and lasted throughout the day, in 2001. And again September, and again, the most terrible bloody event in the history of mankind, a terrorist attack in the United States. It is noteworthy that all the myrrh streams took place on the eve of Easter, the greatest and most significant holiday of Christians, witnessed by millions of pilgrims from all over the world.
There is also an opinion that it is in private houses that icons “cry” more often. There are cases when such icons were donated to churches. In the house of a resident of the city of Ivye, in Belarus, icons were streaming myrrh for a whole week (March 2007). It happened before Holy Week, a time of especially strict fasting for Orthodox believers. According to some reports, at first the icon of the Kazan Mother of God was pacified, and after a few days all the others, 10 icons. The icons “cried” with a liquid similar to oil, but without any fragrances. Hundreds of pilgrims from many parts of Belarus, who visited the large family of parishioners of the local church during this time, allegedly confirmed this fact. The story was widely discussed in the media. It is noteworthy that all the icons brought to this house began to stream myrrh after reading the prayer service to the Holy Mother of God. Needless to say, this event only strengthened the parishioners in their faith.
To argue that there has never been any falsification of facts about the myrrh-streaming of icons, of course, would not be entirely ethical. They were really engaged in such a thing, and there are quite a few such stories. Apparently, the fear of being punished for such "blasphemy" for some priests was still less, the desire to receive an influx of pilgrims to the temple. The regularity in striving to gain glory and recognition, through deceit and deception, is not alien even to some religious, although apparently not entirely religious, people. This is our reality.
Believing in a miracle, is it bad? Probably it doesn't matter what the result will be, concrete tangible and tangible. The important thing is that there is hope in the one who has lost the meaning of life. The important thing is that a very sick person, suddenly, will believe that healing will soon come. What is important is that peace and tranquility in the soul is achieved in such a simple way - by faith in a miracle ...
Wedge-9: smell and awe
In the military town of Klin-9 in 2001, icons were pacified at an elderly woman's house. And not one or two, but absolutely everything! Television, press: only a lazy person could pass by such a "picture" then, no matter whether he was a believer or an unbeliever. Natalya BESSONOVA, a correspondent for "NS", at that time a young neophyte, visited the myrrh-streaming icons on a pilgrimage.
I visited Valentina Zhuchkova in 2003. The myrrh streaming of icons in her apartment had just begun, but it was already widely known about it outside the Moscow region. My confessor advised me to go - to strengthen my faith. He offered to take the icon with him from home. As I was told before the trip, for some people, the brought icons begin to stream myrrh in their hands when they just enter the apartment, but this is a rare case. To everyone else, Valentina herself anoints them with a cotton swab with the world.
So, I got ready to go. I was joined by a skeptical friend and one hieromonk, a resident of a monastery near Moscow. Father had already visited Valentina, left his icon with her and now wanted to take it back. On the way in the car, we discussed the motives of our trip. What drives us? Curiosity? Yes. The desire to possess a personal "home miracle" - a myrrh-streaming icon? Yes. It's good? No. So what are we driving? “A miracle, as it began suddenly, may end so - and then we will regret that we did not see everything with our own eyes, although we could - that is why we are going,” we justified ourselves to each other.
We smelled a sweet floral scent when we were just approaching a block five-story building, in the second entrance of which there was an unusual apartment. There was such a scent at the entrance that the air seemed thick. From the smell and trepidation before meeting with a miracle, my head was spinning. Valentina greeted us warmly, she took me and her friend into the living room and turned on to watch the film "The Klin miracle", where she tells how it all began, and she went with the priest to look for his icon.
After we watched the "introductory" film, Valentina took us into the next room, the former bedroom, filled to the ceiling with icons. There were a lot of them: paper, metal, wood; old and new. All the icons were streaming myrrh. Different images smelled differently. For example, the icons of the Blessed Matrona smelled of lilies, regardless of where they stood and what they were made of. Under all the icons lay neat rags, towels and cotton wool so that myrrh would not drip on the floor (Valentina distributed this cotton wool to everyone who came). 
Father began to serve a prayer service, after which Valentina took us to a plastic cuvette where the Iveron Icon of the Mother of God “floated” in the world. She poured all the myrrh from the cuvette into the pharmacy bottles and presented them to us, and wiped the icon, put it back and offered to look at its surface. Bubbles-fountains appeared on the printed image and the cuvette began to fill again with a fragrant composition. If someone told me that a cuvette is larger in volume than an icon and could fill to the brim, I would not believe it. But I saw it with my own eyes and even photographed it.
Valentina told how old icons were being renewed, how the room smelled of damp earth before the terrorist attack on September 11, how a physicist came and said that it was condensation in the air and laughed at it, but when he held the Iverskaya and myrrh flowed down his hands, he believed and was baptized, how the demon-possessed shout, how the sick are healed, and there are many, many more stories that are terrible because of the closeness of the spiritual world. Poor woman. I listened to all this and thought that, God forbid, something like this would happen to me - I would go crazy in a matter of hours, if not from pride, then from the complete impossibility to exist next to a constant miracle, but she is holding on, even somehow resigns himself.
Although she looks somewhat blissful. But since the situation in which she lives is not an ordinary one, she must be forgiven for some enthusiastic mysticism ... She says that it is a great secret for her, why it all began in this apartment, and that she does not know for what purpose the Lord arranged all this ... But since He wants it so, she is ready to receive endless crowds of people in her apartment, which now looks like a subway car at rush hour, to distribute bubbles to everyone, to tell again and again how it all began and how the physicist believed.
After about an hour of all this talking and thinking, touching and smelling, the brain shuts down in emergency mode. That part of it is blocked, which is responsible for recognizing reality and analyzing what is happening. You start to take everything "for granted." Yes, indeed, fresh blood appeared on the paper icon cut out of the calendar and it smells “naturally” of blood; yes, but a drop of peace has flowed from my icon, brought from home ...
We returned back in silence. My "skeptical friend" drove to Moscow with her mouth open with surprise - the icon she brought with her to Klin was pacified in her hands. After this trip, the girl began to regularly go to church, confess and receive communion. Miro on the icons brought home froze in droplets and soon dried up, but the dizzy smell lasted for a very long time.
Judging by the fruits, as the Holy Scripture advises, then what we saw strengthened us in faith and this fruit is positive. But there is no desire to go there again, because it is scary. The supernatural nature of what is happening in Klin is obvious. But who does this come from? From God or not? It is not clear, and therefore scary. It is not possible to figure this out with your mind. It is terrible to be mistaken, since this error will be too large-scale.
Myrrh streaming into Klin: why do icons cry?
Seven years later, the endless stream of pilgrims and onlookers to Klin-9 dried up. The Klin "myrrh streaming" was almost forgotten not only by journalists, but also by church people. Why? Our correspondent Dmitry REBROV tried to find out.
Keeper of icons
More than an hour and a half by train from Moscow, from the station by bus to the suburbs - the apartment of Valentina Zhuchkova, the "keeper" of the Klin miracle, is located in a military garrison on the very outskirts of the city. Here, to the left of the checkpoints, in a panel five-story building, icons have been streaming myrrh for seven years. At the entrance to the entrance there is a recently built chapel, deserted. “Are you at the appointment? Come in ”, - Valentina opens the door herself. She looks no more than fifty, is short, her head is covered with a scarf. - "Here, it is here!" - She points her hand to the door of the room. “They come from all over the CIS, from Canada, Belgium, Washington, New Jersey,” Valentina explains willingly, but when she learns that we have come not just “on a pilgrimage,” but to write a report, she becomes taciturn. “I don't need publications, journalists are constantly adding thousands of distortions to my words. I don't need ads. I’m tired of taking five hundred people a day in seven years. Yes, and the neighbors are offended, they are not satisfied with all this ... ". But since today there are no other visitors besides me, Valentina Mikhailovna tells how seven years ago the icons “burst into tears” at her house.
“For many years I have become convinced that myrrh does not appear from icons, but descends like a cloud. It happens imperceptibly, ”explains Valentina Zhuchkova. On almost all icons, large drops - "myrrh" are everywhere: on faces, on clothes. Some icons lying in wooden icon cases have drops only on the outside, on a glass door, but most of them lie without frames, and there the drops are evenly distributed over the entire surface. It smells like caramel, however, not as strong as the media described seven years ago. The main shrine - the Iberian icon in an open icon case - is almost completely immersed in oil. “This icon is still the strongest of all,” says Valentina. “Look. Do you see how the drops appear? ”She says, taking out the icon. (the size of the icon is no more than 15-20 cm diagonally). "Miro" slowly flows down from the icon, and on its shiny and damp surface, as the oil slides down, several bulges, like drops, become noticeable. A little later, the surface begins to be covered with small bubbles, as if from air. "You see? And then some people look at the icon, and say: how it streams myrrh, show me, I get them, we both look, I see, but he does not! - Valentina worries. “That is, they just don’t believe their eyes, they see and don’t believe!”. I believed my eyes.
“Isn't this all a forgery? No, it is not, ”- explains to us after a while, in Klin itself, Archpriest Alexei Tyukov, a cleric of the Sorrowful Church, a member of the special commission of the deanery to study the phenomenon of myrrh streaming. In addition to this commission, whose competence included theological and pastoral expertise, the expert group for describing the miraculous events taking place in the Russian Orthodox Church, under the Synodal Theological Commission of the Moscow Patriarchate chaired by Pavel Florensky, also worked with the "Klin myrrh-streaming": "The Synodal Group was engaged in scientific expertise. and they, like us, can confirm that the oily liquid is actually escaping. We have no reason to say that this is a fake ”.
However, the clergy who take care of the parishes of the Klin deanery, when talking about the "miracle", carefully choose the words: "We call this phenomenon not myrrh flow, but the outflow of an oily liquid," Father Alexei notes, "after all, the fact of" myrrh streaming "does not make it possible to speak that this is a manifestation from God. " And this caution is not accidental. According to the Apocalypse, there is no such miracle that the Antichrist cannot fake. There are many things that confuse the clergy in the "Klin history".
“There are many miracles, conversions, healings taking place here,” Valentina continues. - As an example - my own family, after all, her life has turned upside down radically. What I could not even dream of happened: the daughter, who for a long time could not give birth to a child, now has four children. All my children were unbelievers, but now they have come to faith, got married, and are living in a church marriage. "
Nobody lives in an apartment with icons now: the children have moved to Klin, and Valentina herself - to Tver, where she tries not to talk about her miracle: “I go to the church there as an ordinary parishioner,” she admits. Once or twice a week, Valentina comes to the garrison, where she receives pilgrims: laymen, monks, clergy. To the questions: “why did the miracle happen exactly with you?”, He modestly replies: “I don’t know, probably, this is due to the place itself, because I am an ordinary sinful person, and I don’t consider myself worthy of this miracle in any way, I'm just a keeper of these icons. "
There is a miracle, there is no obedience
“If you go to the Dean, he will tell you this, I don’t even want to argue with all this!” Sighs when asked about the attitude of local clergy to the miracle “Mother Valentina,” as pilgrims sometimes call her in the monastic manner.
Seven years ago, a conflict arose between Valentina Mikhailovna and the pastors of the Klin Deanery. It all began with the fact that after several questions from the priesthood, the "keeper of the miracle" drove out the commission that had come to her from the deanery. “We then came to see, - we wanted to see everything with our own eyes, to talk,” says Father Alexy Tyukov, “but suddenly we saw on the shelves“ myrrh-streaming ”, in addition to icons, and very dubious images, such as a portrait of Ivan the Terrible, some photographs of confessors Valentines. After our question about the non-canonical images of Ivan the Terrible, Valentina Mikhailovna interrupted the conversation and asked us to leave the premises. We tried to get at least some information about the healings that, as she said, take place here, but we could not find out anything concrete. Valentina Mikhailovna herself explains the lack of such information with her by the fact that she simply “does not need”, at first she “wrote it down somehow,” and then she was tired, “you just can't rewrite it!”
Valentina left the pastoral meeting to which she was invited by the local clergy: “She then fell upon us with a storm of criticism: why do we not recognize 'her' miracle, and why did we not publish about it in the church newspaper when we publish other miracles - says Archpriest Boris Balashov, Dean of the Klin District. - The fact is that in the village of Nudol, Klin region, in the Church of the Transfiguration of the Lord, an icon also pacified. We published a small note about this in the church supplement to the district newspaper. We did not write about Valentina's icons, because we treated them with caution, chose a wait-and-see attitude. We invited Valentina to the meeting to talk, but from the doorway she began to be indignant, reproach us, accuse us of "unbelief."
The rector of the church in honor of the MonkMartyr Seraphim of Klinsky, located in the garrison, priest Igor Kovalev, whose parishioner before the "myrrh-streaming" was Valentina, says that at first she brought him icons to show, but in the church their "myrrh-streaming" each time stopped. “At first I gave them to the church, but what can we attribute them to if they don’t stream myrrh there?” Zhuchkova now reasonably remarks.
Priest Igor Kovalev is inclined to regard the nature of the "myrrh streams" in Valentina's apartment as "absolutely non-church". “Of all the people who visited Valentina in our neighborhood, before that they had never looked at the church at all, after watching the 'myrrh streaming' only one person came to the church,” he says. Considering that the temple of Father Igor in the military town is the only one, and almost the majority of the garrison residents visited Zhuchkova's apartment, the "missionary catch" of the miracle is really small. “We never forbade anyone to go there, although we didn’t bless, but now not a single parishioner in our church visits Valentina’s apartment, even though at first there were huge queues to see her,” Father Igor continues. “Today they travel much less, and many of those who come visit our church on their way, and after talking with the parishioners or with me, having discussed this, they often decide not to go to the apartment at all. And vice versa, those who are already returning from their apartment, as a rule, do not come to our church. "
According to the observations of the local priesthood, an exalted audience very quickly gathered around Valentina and the "myrrh-streaming" icons. “As a result, all this was expressed in the fact that Valentina Mikhailovna stopped participating in parish life, stopped confessing and taking communion in the churches of our deanery, preferring to arrange independent prayers at home, in front of the icons. This, of course, is not yet a split, but already a kind of unhealthy independence, - says Archpriest Boris Balashov, Dean of the District. “Some clergymen from other dioceses began to come to her on a“ pilgrimage ”, read akathists there, some“ elders ”, to whom she began to take familiar women for“ treatment ”.”
“A miracle for the sake of a miracle is meaningless. God does not act just like that, He always has a very specific goal in terms of man's salvation. And, falling under the authority of Valentina, people who are carried away by her charisma get the wrong idea about God, about spiritual life, - says Father Alexy Tyukov. “For example, Valentina told one of our parishioners that“ you don’t need to come to the priest, communion will not help you ”. We, of course, cannot demand from every grandmother the heights of ascetic sobriety, and, indeed, we ourselves cannot say with confidence anything about the nature of the "Klin miracle", but if there is a miracle, but there is no obedience, but on the contrary - scandals, divisions, we, as shepherds, are alarmed and define our attitude to this "miracle" as extremely cautious. The fruit of the spirit is peace, not division. Therefore, we do not bless our parishioners to visit this apartment. Do not blaspheme and do not accept if you cannot determine with absolute certainty what spirit this miracle is - this is an ancient patristic principle in relation to "miraculous" phenomena. We are guided by it ”.
Valentina confirms that she does not go to church, where they do not believe in "her" miracle. Her current confessor lives far away, in the Pochaev Lavra, and, as she says, he advised her not to give any interviews. But while we say goodbye, already at the door, she, without any questions from my side, recalls “different approaches in the Church to the same things,” and more specifically, about the painful: “I’m no passports with chips , I'm not going to take any cards - she says. “I’ve given up both my pension and all the benefits. It's easier for me. Why am I going to walk under the number? I want it under my name! Now they say about Diomedes that he is a schismatic, he is so-and-so ... But he was here, and was more than once! And at least one bishop was like him, he would have expressed his opinion, this is just a martyr! "
"Why do you think the icons cry?" - she asks at the last moment, and she herself answers her own question: "Maybe that's why they cry, because everything around is" chipped ", these cards are everywhere ... It's just that God sees how we live, so they cry!" Perhaps, without noticing it herself, Valentina Zhuchkova said “we”. But this is who she meant by this “we”: whether herself, the pastors of the deanery, someone else or all together, remained a mystery.
The myrrh streaming of holy images along with radiance and fragrance are special signs of the icon by God, signs of imposing a special mission on it for people, conveying a certain message to humanity. There are many miraculous images in the history of the Orthodox Church.
Mother Intercessor
It is not surprising that most of these icons are represented by the images of the Mother of God, the Heavenly Intercessor of mankind. Who else is so worried about their children if not the mother? The icon of the weeping Mother of God grieves for her negligent children, that is, for us, mourns our negligence, suffers from our fall. The images exude not only tears or myrrh, but also blood, the appearance of which is considered an omen, a harbinger of trouble.
The images of the Holy Virgin were recognized as miraculous when they helped people - healed the sick, protected from enemies and natural disasters. The icons moved, acquired, streamed myrrh, their help sometimes accompanied the appearance of the Mother of God to someone in a dream, in which she clarified the place of finding Her image.
Holy miraculous images of the Virgin
The most common weeping icons with the face of the Virgin are Pryazhevskaya, Ilyinskaya-Chernigovskaya, as well as Kazan-Vysochinovskaya, Novgorod's icon of the Mother of God weeping "Tenderness" and this is not a complete list of holy images known to the Orthodox world.
Historical facts of "crying" images
A miracle called "weeping icon" appeared to people in ancient times. As early as the 4th century AD, the Pisidian image of the Mother of God in Sozopol was streaming myrrh. In the 13th century, the townspeople of Veliky Ustyug prayed for the salvation of the city from the stone hail, and the miraculous myrrh appeared on the icon of the Annunciation. In 1592, she was saved by a crying woman called "Praise of the Most Holy Theotokos." The robbers stole the holy image from Mount Athos, got scared when the icon began to cry, and immediately returned it to its place.
In 1848, in the Moscow house of a colonel, on Easter, he pacified a list of the image of the Mother of God "The Guarantor of Sinners." With drops of myrrh, which had an oily consistency and a very pleasant aroma, they subsequently healed the sick.
In 1991, at Christmas time in the Moscow Nikolo-Perervinsky monastery, she cried in the summer of the same year in the Vologda church, tears appeared in the eyes of the Savior Not Made by Hands, the crying icon with the face of the Mother of God in the local church amazed the residents of Georgia.
The icons of the Russian tsars were repeatedly puzzled and amazed, for example, the Fedorovskaya icon was streaming myrrh in 1994. This took place in Tsarskoe Selo. When members of the royal family were officially recognized as martyrs, the Vladimir Icon of the Mother of God exuded a strong scent of perfume loved by Empress Alexandra Feodorovna. Later this fragrance became known to everyone as "Red Moscow".
When blood flows over icons
When a holy image bleeds, it is not just a crying icon. The dream in which you see her is interpreted by somnologists as an omen of some bad, sad event. The historical facts of the bleeding of holy images and the events that took place later may be considered by some to be mere coincidences, but many clergy consider the appearance of blood on the holy image an omen of disaster.
For example, in the Holy Sepulcher, there is an icon crying with blood. We are talking about the image of the “Laying of the Crown of Thorns”. Its plot is a story about the mockery of the Romans over Jesus in the last hours of his life.
Since the beginning of our era, this image has bled three times, and all cases took place on the eve of Easter. In 1572, a few days before, a bloody liquid flowed in the image, and on August 24, almost a third of the population was destroyed in Paris. The second incident occurred in 1939, shortly before the outbreak of World War II. Finally, in April 2001, the stricken pilgrims witnessed the bleeding of the holy image on the night of Holy Saturday, and on September 11, 2001, New York skyscrapers subsequently collapsed, the tragedy claimed hundreds of lives. So, weren't the facts of the appearance of bloody tears on the image some kind of signs, foreshadowing trouble?
What can we say about the fact that the weeping icon of the Iverskaya Church of the village of Zelenchukskaya struck all the villagers with bloody tears right before the start of the Chechen war? Tears on the image before the seizure of the school in Beslan on September 1, 2004 were also a tragic sign.
A little scientific
Currently, special organizations have been created and are working to clarify the causes and sources of myrrh-streaming icons. These commissions include groups of scholars from various disciplines and the theological diaspora.
In 1999, the Moscow Patriarchate agreed to found a Committee whose mission is to describe the facts of the miraculous myrrh streaming of icons that have ever taken place in Russia. It turned out that myrrh differs in appearance, color, smell and consistency - there is thick, viscous like resin, and there is transparent, like dew. Miro has a very persistent and dense scent of roses, lilacs or incense. The shape and size of the droplets are also very different from each other. Sometimes droplets appear all over the image, sometimes they ooze pointwise. There are known cases of the flow of myrrh against the force of gravity - from the bottom up, moreover, there is an opinion that the influence of the myrrh renews the icon, the colors of the image become brighter.
Are they alive?
The Patriarchate of Moscow is also involved in the study of the world that is highlighted by icons. The conclusions made by the Patriarchy regarding the composition of the miraculous substance say that it is a protein substance of unknown origin. Various types of myrrh have been studied, some of them have a similarity in composition to oils, human tears or blood plasma. For example, an analysis of the composition of myrrh exuded by the holy relics resting in the Kiev-Pechersk Lavra showed that it is based on a protein that can only be generated by a living being. And does the weeping icon really meaningfully send us certain signs? Scientists have no answer to this question. And you?
For the Orthodox Church, an icon is a special form of Divine revelation and an integral part of all faith. And it is impossible to doubt this, because the faces of the saints can not only silently listen to the prayer, but also stream myrrh. Find out what this miracle is preparing believers for, is it worth waiting for a great trouble or salvation.
Why do icons cry
Myrrh streaming is a real Orthodox miracle that appears to true believers at a particularly difficult moment in life. This may concern an entire nation, or the icon may also cry for a person who finds himself in a terrible life situation.
There are cases when the icons wept a few days before the big trouble. For example, in 2004, the icon depicting Tikhon Zadonsky was pacified, and the next day, the passenger plane TU - 154 crashed.
The same thing happened in Beslan a few days before the terrorist seizure of the school. On August 29, 2004, the image of Jesus Christ cried, and a few days later there was a terrorist attack that shook the whole country.
A crying icon can become a harbinger of misfortune, not only in order to warn people of trouble, but also to strengthen faith in God in Orthodox Christians.
The myrrh-streaming image can also speak of an imminent deliverance from troubles and warn of the upcoming joy. There are cases when terminally ill people recovered in the house where the icon cried.
Bleeding icons
It happens that the faces of the Saints bleed, red tears on the images are a sign to universal repentance. The ministers of the church claim that bloody tears on the images indicate that people have estranged themselves from God and commit terrible sins.
In a convent in the Leningrad region, an icon of the Most Holy Theotokos was bled on the day of the start of the conflict in Ukraine. Red spots still appear on the image.
A large number of such cases are known. During wars in which innocent people die, the Saints shed their blood to remind the world of God and humanity.
Authenticity of myrrh streaming
Any miracle should be treated carefully and carefully. Unfortunately, many scammers tried to take advantage of the crying icons. There are a few simple rules that will help you distinguish genuine crying from cheating.
- Myrrh streaming is never associated with a specific place.
- The face of the Saint or the Mother of God never cries in the presence of any one living person, everyone can see this miracle.
- Genuine myrrh streaming cannot stop just because the icon was brought to the temple.
A real Orthodox miracle can appear only to a truly believing person. Tears on images can portend terrible misfortunes and prepare people for great salvation. But in any case, the Saints remind us that it is worth repenting and becoming closer to God. We must not forget that, first of all, we are people. We wish you the best of luck and don’t forget to press the buttons and
26.07.2015 09:30
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