Tag Archives: Mother of God

With the Mother of God in Eastern England

Between 2 and 9 April 2019, for the first time ever, all of a long-neglected region, that of Eastern England, was visited by the Wonderworking Kursk Root Icon of the Mother of God. The faithful gathered in Kent, Essex, Suffolk, Norfolk, Cambridgeshire, bordering on Lincolnshire to the north and Bedfordshire to the south. 1500 miles were covered in eight days, 38 molebens were served in our five churches in the region and in the homes of the scattered faithful and £2,210 was raised for the Synod of Bishops of the Church Outside Russia. If we had had longer we would have visited even more faithful in this forgotten backwater outside the Capital. (For photos see the ROCOR Diocesan website).

The Icon gave off Her very strong myrrh-like fragrance, wafting in waves, in churches, homes, hospitals and cars, even filling streets while being taken in Her carrying case just the few yards to the doors of houses and flats. This was the fragrance of the Mercy of Mother Mary, for then the long-abandoned felt valued, consoled by this scent from Paradise. The highlights were perhaps the evening moleben and akathist in St Matrona’s chapel of the Lithuanian Orthodox community in Wisbech, the Capital of the Fens, at the Sunday Liturgy of the Annunciation in Colchester, and especially in one home, where two faithful, long-suffering and isolated converted Orthodox were able to pray before Her, showing that they had embraced Orthodoxy with their hearts and not with their heads.

In the first case we felt how, although the people may have had little knowledge, their spirit was great and the Mother of God descended on account of their humility, for they are absolutely devoid of any pretensions. In the second case, we felt how the hundreds of people came from far away with many small children, with all their huge pain at all the past injustices, and cried out to the Most Holy One and She heard them and consoled them, giving them courage. We three priests could barely cope with all the confessions and over 200 communions. In the third case we saw the greatest sincerity, piety, humility, unseen anywhere else here, and intense suffering, and how the Mother of God came and comforted. We have all become Josephs, guardians of the priceless treasure of the Most Pure One.

After a hospital visit to a young married Romanian man who did electrical work in the altar of the church some years ago, but who is now dying of cancer, we saw him comforted by a wafting of fragrance, which all in the hospital ward felt. We saw an elderly Russian parishioner kissing the Icon and her two Romanian carers, who happened to be present, kneeling and joining her. After one akathist, two pious Greek priests who had attended apologized for the behaviour of their Patriarch. Will the autocephaly of Constantinople be revoked by a Council of the thirteen canonical Local Orthodox Churches? Then the Greek Diaspora can be taken under the care of the Greek Orthodox Church in Athens and return to Orthodoxy. Then all in the Church can once again be confirmed as truly One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic, that is, in one word, Orthodox.

Our Mother in heaven sees everyone, righteous and sinners alike, our parishioners, Bulgarian and English, Moldovan and Lithuanian, Ukrainian and Russian, Greek and Turkish, French and Italian, Indian and Romanian, Australian and Kazakh, Polish and Latvian. She acts as a magnet to all, Her presence so strongly felt by all. For the unbeliever the Icon is haunted; we know better. Her fragrance is Her Mercy. In the absence of any others, the Mother of God is truly our champion leader. She is in this Her Icon of the Sign, Who Shows the Way. In the Eastern provinces the rejected are being accepted, the persecuted are being comforted, the despised are being recalled, the long-forgotten are being remembered and the long-neglected are being visited.

We have little money or importance in the eyes of the world, our churches have no gold or precious stones, no ancient icons or precious artefacts, we have no great theologians or brains, but we do have faith and hope. The region is waking, as the very long and very dark night ends in the glimmer and hope of the long-prayed for dawn, which we long to see before we die. We feel that in heaven our prayers have been heard and our decades of tears have been noted. Can it be much longer now? Her fragrance still fills our clothes, homes and cars even days after She left us. We live by faith in Christ and by hope for the better.

 

The Mother of God Comes to the Faithful of Eastern England

For the first time in history the Wonderworking Kursk Root Icon of the Mother of God is being allowed to visit the homes of the faithful at all points of the compass in Eastern England. Previously, She had only been taken to London and spent only a few brief hours in some churches in the East.

God willing,

On Tuesday 2 April She will be brought from London to our parishioners to the north-east of Colchester, in Holbrook, Felixstowe, Kesgrave and Ipswich.

On Wednesday 3 April She will visit our parishioners to the west, in St Neots, Cambridge, to the community of St Edmund in Bury St Edmunds, and to the north-west, to the community of St Matrona in Wisbech.

On Thursday 4 April She will visit our parishioners to the south-west, in Chelmsford, Basildon Brentwood, Romford, Ilford, Hatfield Peverel, Witham and Silver End.

On Friday 5 April She will visit our parishioners in Colchester and to the south-east, in Wivenhoe and Great Bromley.

On Saturday 6 April She will visit our parishioners to the south, to the community of the Royal Martyrs in Ashford and then in Bellingham before returning to Colchester.

On Sunday 7 April She will be in the centre in St John’s church in Colchesterfrom 8.00 am until 2.30 pm.

On Monday 8 April She will visit our parishioners to the east, in Colchester, Clacton and Frinton.

On Tuesday 9 April She will visit our parishioners to the north, in Sudbury, Mendlesham and Thetford, before being taken to St Alexander Nevsky church in Norwich.

 

 

Déjà Vu

After the flight (‘the exit strategy’) of defeated Western forces from Iraq, they left behind them a weak and bickering sectarian puppet regime. This had only limited control of the centre of the country around Baghdad and everywhere else the invasion left chaos, bitterness and the desire for revenge. Now that that regime looks like falling to Sunni forces, some in the West must be repenting. Just as the CIA founded Al-Qaeda in Afghanistan in the 1980s, so the West, through its puppet allies in utterly corrupt Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Turkey, has trained and armed Sunni forces in Libya, Egypt and Syria. And now look what is happening.

Western-trained Sunni forces have spread to Iraq and look like seizing power. The Western elite has swiftly dropped all its propaganda rhetoric about an ‘Arab spring’. Its ‘freedom and democracy’ mantra has unleashed a Pandora’s box from Afghanistan to Tunisia, via Libya, Yemen, Bahrein, Syria and Iraq – just as many Middle East experts precisely predicted before the genocidal Bush-Blair 2003 invasion of Iraq. It looks as though the West may now have to ally itself with Iran and the Assad Syrian government in order to defeat the Sunni terrorists, which it itself trained and armed on American bases in Qatar, Turkey and Afghanistan.

In Iraq we now also see exactly what will happen next year in Afghanistan once the humiliated Western forces have fled from there too and when its puppet regime, which even now controls less than one tenth of the country, falls to the people. They will in turn take their revenge on the local, English-speaking, CIA-installed traitors. Just as with a host of CIA puppet-regimes over the last 65 years, in Latin America, South-East Asia, Greece and Italy, it too will fall quite quickly. The same is already happening to the CIA-installed junta in the Ukraine, which it is also trying to turn into yet another banana republic.

Having in the Ukraine found an unprincipled and power-mad English-speaking bandit, who made his money from drug-dealing, prostitution rackets and arms sales (rather like the corrupt rulers the CIA backed in Saigon half a century ago), it backed him. Telling the ignorant and hoodwinked Western public that he had made his billions from ‘chocolate’ (!), the US administration had him elected President with fewer than 25% of the votes, despite a massive US-style PR campaign and strict media censorship. However, he has already slaughtered hundreds in the civil war that he has undertaken and now he faces bankruptcy.

This is because his corrupt regime cannot even pay the foreign, US-trained mercenaries whom it has had to engage to massacre the Ukrainian people – mercenaries are necessary because most of the Ukrainian forces themselves will not kill their own people, as he will. What the West has overlooked in the wars that it created first in Georgia, then in Syria and now in the Ukraine, is that all these countries, unlike Afghanistan and even Iraq, have a large population which has great veneration for the Mother of God. It is She Who has apanages in both Georgia and the Ukraine and a great shrine in Orthodox Syria.

Just as the US failed in its promotion of the tinpot Georgian dictator and torturer, the English-speaking, US-trained Mikhail Sakaashvili, so too it is failing in Syria and the Ukraine. The Russian Crimea, given to the Ukraine by an atheist dictator sixty years ago against the will of the people, did not want to become a US naval base. Now the south and east of the Ukraine, called by history Novorossiya (New Russia), given to the Ukraine by an atheist dictator ninety years ago against the will of its people, does not want to become a US missile base. The US policy of destabilization and genocide is not working in the Ukraine and will not work – as long as its people pray to the Mother of God.

A Miracle in Syria

A miracle of the Mother of God has been reported from Saidnaya, one of the most famous Christian towns and places of pilgrimage in war-torn Syria. The ongoing civil war has destroyed several Christian institutions and displaced thousands of Christian families in Saidnaya.The incident was related by a Syrian Christian who visited her homeland recently.

The miraculous incident took place last month when a rebel group fired rockets at the monastery. The nuns inside the monastery experienced a huge noise and vibration from the rocket attack. They were sure that the rockets would kill them and also damage the monastery complex. But nothing happened as they expected, and the nuns wondered at the fate of the rockets.

A few days later one of the Generals of the Syrian Army visited the monastery to convey Nativity and New Year greetings. During the conversation he asked whether the monastery had experienced anything unusual recently. The nuns told about the rockets fired by rebels at the monastery but which did not hit them.

The officer was amazed to hear this and he confirmed that he had even seen the rockets fired towards the monastery, but he along with others had seen something very strange and unusual. The rockets were about to hit the monastery but suddenly a women dressed in blue appeared in the sky and took the rockets with her hands and threw them away. This was a great wonder to all of them. The General wondered who the could be the lady dressed in blue with amazing grace all around her. Finally they realized that it was none other than the Mother of Christ our God, the Lord and Saviour.

Source:
OCP News Service
http://www.pravoslavie.ru/english/67980.htm