MONASTERY REGAINS MIRACLE-WORKING ICON

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TIKHVIN, July 8 (RIA Novosti) - His Beatitude Alexis II, Patriarch of Moscow and All Russia-Primate of the Russian Orthodox Church, served vespers and matins at the Tikhvin Monastery, not far from St. Petersburg, to worship the miracle-working icon of Our Lady of Tikhvin, which the monastery has regained.

The holy image was outside Russia for the preceding sixty years, mostly in the USA.

The night service brought together bishops of the Russian Orthodox Church, the Garklavs archpriests, who had brought the icon from the USA, and Metropolitan Germanius, Primate of the Orthodox Church in America. Valeri Serdyukov, Lennigrad regional governor, and other prominent political and cultural activists were on the congregation.

Several thousand worshippers gathered in and round the monastery. All who wished could enter the holy place once they came through a metal detector. The gathering outside watched the service on two screens, placed in the open for the occasion.

Pilgrims can come to bow to the precious icon even at nighttime. It has been placed in the monastery courtyard for round-the-clock access.

One of the most precious shrines of Eastern Christendom, the holy image belongs to the iconographic type of Hodegetria, or Lodestar. According to Church tradition, it came from the brush of St. Luke the Apostle and Evangelist in the 1st century. Transferred from Jerusalem to Constantinople in the 5th century, it vanished in 1383, seventy years before Turkish invaders seized the glorious city to give it to fire and sword.

As mediaeval chronicles have it, the icon miraculously appeared the same year 1383 above Lake Ladoga. Gliding in the air above the quiet waters, it stopped close to Tikhvin, on the Tikhvina riverbank. The townspeople built a humble log church on the spot. Consecrated to the Assumption of Our Lady, it had the icon for its main treasure. Hence the name by which the image earned renown in Russia.

Basil III the Grand Duke of Muscovy made a pilgrimage to Tikhvin in 1526 to start national worship of the miracle-working icon. A stone monastery was built on the spot of its appearance during the reign of Ivan the Terrible, Basil's son.

Nazis seized the little town during World War II. The icon was rescued from the invaders and placed in Pskov, not far from Tikhvin. The Orthodox Christian community of Riga overtook the treasure in 1944. Archbishop John of Riga (Janis Garklavs, in the world) fled to the USA in 1949, having the icon with him. The mystical treasure found its new abode in the Holy Trinity Cathedral of Chicago.

After Archbishop John's demise, the icon came into the custody of his adoptive son, Archpriest Sergius Garklavs, whom it was bequeathed under a proviso-he was to restore the image to the Tikhvin Monastery in case it revived.

Patriarch Alexis II met delegates of the Orthodox Church in America at the negotiation table, January last, when a final accord was reached for Russia to regain the icon. It left Chicago, June 20, to be brought to Riga and on to Moscow. The precious image reached St. Petersburg, June 28. It was displayed for public worship in the Monastery of St. Alexander Nevsky, and subsequently in the Cathedral of Our Lady of Kazan.

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