OUR LADY OF THE SIGN

Day 313: March 21

Our Lady of the Sign, Kursk, Russia



After the Mongol invasion, the devastated province of Kursk was emptied of people in the 13th century and the main city, Kursk, became a desert. Only a few hunters went there in search of wild animals. Men from Rylsk, about 75 miles southwest of the Kursk ruins, had driven into the area on a hunting trip when one of them noticed the icon lying face down at the root of a tree along the bank of the Skal River.

When he tried to lift it, he immediately saw a spring gushing out. The hunter realized that it was an icon of the "sign" type venerated in the city of Novgorod. He decided to build a chapel capable of housing the extraordinary icon right in the precise spot where he had found it.

Following the construction of the chapel, numerous pilgrims also arrived and thus the first graces and miracles were obtained. The Prince Vasily Shemyaka of Rylsk, intrigued by the fame of that image, ordered that the icon be brought to his city with a solemn procession in which he did not want to participate. This irreverent gesture led him to momentary blindness, which healed only when he repented and asked for forgiveness. He therefore decided to build a more beautiful church, in order to have it venerated by more people and in a more dignified way, but each time the sacred icon mysteriously returned to its place in the chapel.

In the year 1383, the Kursk province was again invaded by the Tatars who tried to burn the chapel. All their efforts, however, were useless, and superstitious people blamed the priest Bogoliub, accusing him of witchcraft. The religious tried to justify himself by talking about the miraculous icon but the incredulous Tatars cut it in two by throwing away the pieces. They were therefore able to burn the chapel and take the poor priest away as a prisoner.

During his imprisonment, he managed to keep the faith, putting himself completely in the hands of the Mother of God. Now one day, while he was intent on tending a flock, he sang his praises to the Virgin as usual. Some of the Tsar's emissaries heard him and decided to rescue him from his captivity and let him return to his chapel, where he found the pieces of Our Lady of the Sign and collected them and miraculously reunited, leaving the mark of the split.

After learning of the miracle, the inhabitants of Rylsk wanted to try again to bring the Mother of God to their city, but she once again returned to her place in the forest. It was therefore decided to build a new, larger chapel on the original site and remained there for about 200 years.

In 1597, the Tsar decided to rebuild the city of Kursk starting with the formation of a monastery: the Kursk Root Hermitage next to the chapel. When the Tatars destroyed the hermitage in 1611, the icon was taken to Moscow and hidden until 1618, when the monastery was finally rebuilt, although a copy was left in place. Every year on the ninth Friday after Easter, a procession celebrates the memory of the return of the icon of Our Lady of the Sign.

On the night of March 21, 1898 (March 8 in the Russian liturgical calendar), an anarchist bomb exploded under the icon of the Mother of God of Kursk, destroying a large part of the church of its dome, yet the precious image and its glass cover remained unharmed. So it was that instead of declining, his veneration increased further.

After the Russian Revolution, in 1919, the Orthodox bishops brought the Icon to Serbia. The following year the counter-revolutionary White Army brought the icon to their stronghold in Crimea.

Unfortunately, however, they had a hard defeat and brought the icon back to Serbia where it remained until 1944, when it accompanied the Orthodox clergy into exile. In the following years it wandered through many European countries until it arrived overseas in 1957, and precisely in New York, in the church of the Mother of God of the Sign in New York City, a Russian Orthodox Cathedral on American soil.

The Virgin of the Sign is a "sign" icon, with the child in front of his mother and at the same time in front of the viewer. Its main feast is celebrated on December 10 of the Gregorian calendar.


St Justin Russolillo Writes...

"O most holy Mary, allow your slave of love to pray to you! Come to my soul, in our homes, in our work as in the holy Cenacle. Come and remain with us in a perpetual visitation. Come, O holy Mary."

(Justin Russolillo, Devotional, Vocationist Editions, Pianura, 2009, p. 93)

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