Memory of the Iveron Icon of the Mother of God

The Holy Orthodox Church celebrates several holiday dates in honor of the Iveron Icon of the Mother of God. On April 22, they celebrate the second discovery of the ancient Moscow list, which occurred in 2012 when the Russian Museum donated the icon to the Orthodox Church. There is no exact information about the origin of the Iveron image; according to one of the legends, the author was the Evangelist Luke, who painted the Virgin Mary and the baby Jesus from life. Another legend mentions the times of iconoclasm in the Byzantine Empire, when many holy relics were mercilessly destroyed. The owner of the miraculous icon was a pious widow from the city of Nicaea. One day, warriors burst into her place demanding that she give them the shrine. For a long time the widow begged her husbands not to take the wonderful image, but no one listened to her words. One of the warriors jabbed a spear into the icon, causing blood to appear on the boards. In memory of this phenomenon, two types of painting of the image of the Virgin Mary were subsequently established, with a bleeding wound on the right cheek and without traces of injury. The inexplicable phenomenon frightened the husbands, and they left, leaving the image to its owner. The woman immediately hastened to hide the shrine and placed it in the waters of the sea. The icon, having stood on the water, floated like a ship, and many years later the monks of Athos saw it, placed in a pillar of fire walking on the sea. The monks did not know how to deal with the miraculous phenomenon until the Mother of God appeared to Elder Gabriel in a dream with a request to deliver her image to the monastery. The monk stepped into the waters of the sea and realized that he was not drowning, when he walked across land to a pillar of fire, took an icon from it and returned to the shore without even getting his clothes wet. The monastic brethren, happy with the discovery of the holy image, intended to place it in the most honorable place in the church, but the icon itself chose its place. Every night she moved to the gates of the monastery, and none of the monks could explain how this happened. The monks returned it back, believing that the relic should have a proper place, but soon the Mother of God again appeared to the sleeping Gabriel and reassured the monks, saying that she herself wanted to be their protector. And today, a small chapel at the gates of the Iverskaya monastery preserves the miraculous image of the “Goalkeeper,” which has protected the monastery for many centuries. The glory of the holy image was also known in Rus'; during the reign of Alexei Mikhailovich Romanov, a copy of the Iveron Mother of God was made. The priest Iamblichus Romanov was blessed for the great work, the work was accompanied by the prayers of the monks, the new cypress boards were soaked in water, imbued with the holiness of the Iveron image of the “Goalkeeper”. During the patriarchate of Nikon, other copies of the Iveron Icon were brought to Russia, made by the monks of the Athos monastery, who later became famous for their miraculous deeds.