The myrrh-streaming of holy images, along with radiance and fragrance, are special signs of the icon by God, signs of placing on it some special mission for people, conveying a certain message to humanity. There are many miraculous images in the history of the Orthodox Church.
Intercessor Mother
It is not surprising that most of these icons are represented by the images of the Mother of God, the Heavenly Intercessor of mankind. Who cares more about their children than a mother? The icon of the weeping Mother of God mourns for her negligent children, that is, for us, mourns our negligence, suffers from our fall into sin. Images exude not only tears or myrrh, but also blood, the appearance of which is considered an omen, a harbinger of trouble.
The images of the Holy Virgin were recognized as miraculous when they helped people - healed the sick, protected from enemies and natural disasters. The icons moved, acquired, streamed myrrh, their help sometimes accompanied the apparitionTheotokos to someone in a dream in which she specified the place where Her image was found.
Holy miraculous images of the Mother of God
The most common weeping icons with the face of the Virgin are Pryazhevskaya, Ilyinskaya-Chernigovskaya, and Kazan-Vysochinovskaya, the Novgorod Mother of God weeping “Tenderness” icon, and this is not a complete list of holy images known to the Orthodox world.
Historical facts of "weeping" images
A miracle called the “weeping icon” appeared to people in ancient times. Back in the 4th century AD, the Pisidian image of the Mother of God streamed myrrh in Sozopol. In the 13th century, the townspeople of Veliky Ustyug prayed for the city to be saved from stone hail, and a wonderful myrrh appeared on the icon of the Annunciation. In 1592, the crying icon of the Mother of God called "Praise of the Most Holy Theotokos" saved itself. The robbers stole the holy image from Mount Athos, got scared when the icon began to cry, and immediately returned it to its place.
In 1848, in the Moscow house of a colonel, for Easter, I froze a list of the image of the Mother of God "The guarantor of sinners." Drops of myrrh, which had an oily texture and a very pleasant aroma, subsequently healed the sick.
In 1991, at Christmas time in the Moscow Nikolo-Perervinsky monastery, the Sovereign icon wept, in the summer of that year, tears appeared in the eyes of the Savior Not Made by Hands in the Vologda church, the weeping icon with the face of the Virgin in the local church amazed the inhabitants of Georgia.
Repeatedly puzzled andthe icons of the patron saints of Russian tsars were surprising, for example, the Fedorov icon streamed myrrh in 1994. This happened in Tsarskoye Selo. When members of the royal family were officially recognized as martyrs, the Vladimir Icon of the Theotokos exuded a strong fragrance of the perfume loved by Empress Alexandra Feodorovna. Later, this fragrance became known to everyone as "Red Moscow".
When blood flows over the icons
When a holy image bleeds, it's not just a weeping icon. The dream in which you see her is interpreted by somnologists as an omen of some bad, sad event. The historical facts of the bleeding of holy faces and the events that took place later can be considered mere coincidences, but many clergy consider the appearance of blood on the holy image as an omen of trouble.
For example, in the Jerusalem Church of the Holy Sepulcher, there is an icon weeping with blood. We are talking about the image "Laying the crown of thorns." Its plot is a story about the mockery of the Romans over Jesus in the last hours of his life.
Since the beginning of our era, this image has bled three times, and all cases occurred on the eve of Easter. In 1572, a few days before Bartholomew's Night, a bloody liquid flowed through the image, and on August 24, almost a third of the population was destroyed in Paris. The second case occurred in 1939, shortly before the outbreak of World War II. Finally, in April 2001, the fact of bleeding of the holy image was witnessed by stricken pilgrims on the night of Holy Saturday, and on September 11, 2001, subsequentlyterrorist attack collapsed New York skyscrapers, the tragedy claimed hundreds of lives. So weren't the facts of the appearance of bloody tears on the image a kind of signs portending trouble?
What can we say about the fact that the weeping icon of the Iverskaya church of the village of Zelenchukskaya struck all the villagers with bloody tears right before the start of the Chechen war? Also, the tears on the image before the seizure of the school in Beslan on September 1, 2004 turned out to be a tragic sign.
A bit of science
Currently, special organizations have been created and are working to find out the causes and sources of the myrrh-streaming of icons. These commissions include groups of scientists from various disciplines and the theological diaspora.
In 1999, the Moscow Patriarchate agreed to the founding of the Committee, whose mission is to describe the facts of the miraculous myrrh-streaming of icons that have ever happened in Russia. It turned out that myrrh differs in appearance, color, smell and consistency - there is thick, viscous like resin, and there is transparent, like dew. Miro has a very persistent and thick smell of roses, lilacs or incense. The shape and size of the drops are also very different from each other. Sometimes drops appear on the whole image, sometimes they ooze pointwise. There are known cases of the myrrh flowing against the force of gravity - from the bottom up, moreover, there is an opinion that the influence of the myrrh renews the icon, the colors of the image become brighter.
Are they alive?
The Patriarchate of Moscow is also involved in the study of the myrrh highlighted by icons. The conclusions made by the Patriarchy regarding the composition of the miraculous substance say that thisprotein substance of unknown origin. Various types of myrrh were studied, some of them are similar in composition to oils, human tears or human blood plasma. For example, an analysis of the composition of the myrrh exuded by the holy relics resting in the Kiev-Pechersk Lavra showed that it is based on a protein that only a living being can generate. And does the weeping icon really meaningfully send us certain signs? Scientists have no answer to this question. How about you?
