An understanding on the icon was made as Alexis II, Patriarch of Moscow and All Russia, was receiving spokesmen of the Orthodox Church in America, January 12. The icon of Our Lady of Tikhvin will be brought to Russia, June 23, to be re-installed in the central church of the Dormition Monastery at Tikhvin, a small town not far from St. Petersburg. The icon will reappear at the church on July 9, its Feast.
Holy protector of Russia's northwest, the icon came from the brush of St. Luke in the Virgin's lifetime, says tradition. Donated to the newly baptized land by Byzantine priests, it miraculously vanished from Kiev to come up near Tikhvin. A church was soon built on the site. In 1560, Tsar Ivan the Terrible ordered a fortified monastery erected round the house of worship.
The monastery developed into a formidable stronghold. When Swedish invaders seized the town and a sizeable area round it in 1613-1614, they made several vain attacks on the monastery, which the brave brethren repulsed every time.
After the revolution of 1917, refugees rescued the icon from the godless regime and, after long trials and tribulations, it found an abode in the USA's Russian community.
