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| Synaxis of the Deliverer Icon of the Mother of God (Feast Day - October 17) |
The Deliverer Icon of the Mother of God, before being brought to
the New Athos Simono-Kananitsk Monastery in the Caucasus, was on Mount
Athos with a brother of the Russian Saint Panteleimon Monastery,
Schemamonk Martinian (+ 1884). The pious schemamonk had received this
icon from the ascetic Theodoulos.
The holy icon was glorified by
miracles for many centuries. After praying before this icon the
inhabitants of Sparta, Greece were delivered from a plague of locusts in 1841.
From
the Monastery of Saint Panteleimon, according to the final wishes of
Schemamonk Macarius, this icon was given to the New Athos Monastery in Abkhazia on
July 20, 1889, and the festal celebration in its honor was designated as
October 17.
When the feast day in honor of this icon was first
celebrated at the Simono-Kananitsk Monastery, a storm cast more than a
ton of fish ashore at the monastery.
The celebration of the icon was established on October 17 in grateful memory of the miraculous rescue of Emperor Alexander III with his entire family during the train crash near the Borki station of the Kursk-Kharkov-Azov road. Less than a month before this incident, on September 24, 1888, the entire family of the emperor visited the New Athos Monastery, where Alexander III personally founded a cathedral in the name of the Holy Great Martyr and Healer Panteleimon. In this cathedral, until the destruction of the monastery in 1924, the miraculous Deliverer Icon of the Mother of God stayed.
On the icon, the Most Holy Theotokos
holds the Divine Infant in Her left arm, and He blesses with His right
hand.
