Icons and lightning. For a long time, rumors attributed the ability to work miracles to the icons of Orthodox churches, to which there is a lot of evidence, including modern ones. Much less is known about the mysterious connections of iconostases with discharges of heavenly electricity - lightning. There are about a dozen such phenomena, no more, which makes it possible to tell about some of them, relying on scattered theological and secular sources.
The Igritskaya Icon of the Mother of God, found ten years earlier by the peasants of the Igritsa village, in the vicinity of Kostroma, showed itself especially vividly as a "collector of thunderstorms" in 1634. This event is described as follows:
“After the pestilence plague, the church, where the bodies of the dead were taken, were for a long time bypassed by the parishioners. For fifty years of desolation, the temple decayed and partially collapsed. Having decided to restore the church, they entered it and were amazed. On the throne was a single icon of the Mother of God and sparkled with bright colors, as if it had just been painted.
After an immediate prayer service, served in front of her, the boyar son Emilian, blind from birth, received his sight. Other orphaned and poor went to the icon. Every one was rewarded for the faith in health. Some of them, young, settled nearby and, having taken monastic vows, attended to the construction of a new temple, which was soon erected with the money of the boyars and folk donations.
This is how the monastic monastery was conceived, which stood fairly well and was bestowed with pure, incessant miracles, but only when other newly painted icons surrounded the ancient image of the Igritsa Mother of God in the iconostasis. Those miracles were done side by side and often during thunderstorms and torrential rains, ending with rainbows of fabulous beauty. Lightning penetrated into the main temple, causing no harm to anyone, were cold and unhurried to the point that they were given. Those who touched the cold fire changed their lives. Those who are pure in soul and steadfast in faith were immediately given precious gifts. One should not turn away from actions according to conscience."
The author of these lines, the Orthodox writer Ivan Matveyevich Syromyatin, concretizes "the events around the eternal icon." Here are some of his words.
“There were two brothers. Terenty and Fyodor Menshov. Terenty worshiped God. Fedor robbed on the roads, declared that he observes his laws. It seems to have settled down. The mill was installed. They got rich on the grind. Here, in order to consolidate his luck, Terenty led Fyodor into the temple. Fedor was not imbued with the service. Laughed loudly, as if a demon possessed him. A strong thunderstorm has begun. Lightning burst in, scorching the floor. I lit the air at the icon of the Virgin, renewed the setting. She stood there and surrounded Fyodor the blasphemer with a blue crackling ring. Fyodor roared with horror, rushed away. They say that all parishioners heard a loud man's voice: “Go to the mill at night. Take what you deserve! " Fedor laughed again. Say, why should he, a big man, be afraid in a flour mill? And at the mill, when the flour was completely ground, the millstone cracked, and Fyodor was knocked down by the stone that was chipped off. It was during a thunderstorm. When Fyodor was put into the cart, he got one lightning bolt. It burned so badly that it turned black. Sing it off. After the funeral, his face brightened. The coal came off the body. Peace has come. His grave, who had returned to faith, began to work a miracle. Many who visited it were healed."
The yagritskaya icon was also famous for "helping women who could not give birth." And “women acquired the gift of continuing the human race” only after lightning flew into the church, sometimes deafening, blinding parishioners. Lightning did no harm to people and icons. But future women in labor, taking the incident as special signs, went to the village healer Ignatova, blinded by lightning in adolescence during the prayer worship of the icon of the Virgin. Ignatova said that although she was blind, she saw everything. She retired into the forest, wandered, found medicinal herbs, made a decoction, after drinking which "the women fell asleep and soon carried them."
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So it was until a certain whore, whom the healer did not want to help, set fire to Ignatova's house. She, breathing in acrid smoke, fell into oblivion. In an incomprehensible way, the clothes on her only decayed, there were no burns. Her three young sons and her husband were burned down. She was lying in a neighbor's hut. Before her death, she woke up and said that everyone would see how the sons would come to call her, so that no one, seeing that, would be afraid, and would carry her to the funeral service. After the burial, she will come, call the name of the one that will replace her in doing good.
She warned that the girls should not sin: the house of every wicked woman will be burned by lightning.
The peasants saw the burned children who visited her, "as if alive, coming up to her, and how she herself, emerging from the ground, appeared and pointed to the follower." Every spring the house with the whore burned down in the village. Syromyatin regrets: “I don’t know if electricity is such familiar lightning? I know for sure that the Igritskaya icon of the Mother of God commands them. And he himself watched the revelry of dazzling blue and green flashes around the iconostasis in the July thunderstorm. That's all right. Good things are borne by those lightning, from which in the heat frost is on the skin."
The Sevastopol Icon of the Mother of God in the hard times of the Crimean War of 1853-1856 reliably protected the city from the invasion of enemies. In 1840, the Holy Synod, after thoroughly investigating and confirming the facts of the creation of miracles, recognized the icon as miraculous and decided to establish a popular holiday in her honor. The Synod Commission's papers contain the following entry:
“The iconostasis with the blessed icon is manifested by the attraction of lightning when there is a thunderstorm in the air and a stormy rain. From lightning strikes, penetrating in an unknown way under the deaf vaults of the temple, especially go to wicked people who use the "black" evil eye for witchcraft, and shameless people who owe large sums of money without a decent return to benefactors. Such people were struck to death by lightning.
In 1839, the tradesman Vasily Petrenkov was struck by lightning, but survived as soon as he was taken out into the air. He repaid the debt, regularly donated to the temple. But that's what. Later, lightning chased, deafened, blinded him, wherever he appeared. Tearful repentant prayers near the Sevastopol image gave a result. Lightning struck him in public in the temple, but did not scorch the body, not bypassing the burning of his outer garments. This edifying miracle is included in a single series of miracles, mainly by healing the wounds of militia soldiers when they attempt to invade Sevastopol.
Blessing of water at a key spring, repaired by means of the icon, had the effect that the water, stopping the inflammation of wounds, stood in an open container in freshness, without mustiness, for several years."
Old church books also tell about completely amazing supernatural phenomena that are directly related to the Molchenskaya icon of the Mother of God, also known as the Mother of Thunder. The collection of the most complete miracles she showed was compiled by the Orthodox writer Denis Nikolaevich Moiseev. Here is just one quote:
“A charred plaque with the image of the face of the Most Pure was found in the swamps of Silence, in the vicinity of Putivl. When her colors independently freshened up and flashed with novelty, they served her in the Molchenskaya Sofroniev Hermitage, where everything is near, and at a distance they experienced righteous grace. In 1805, she was moved to the Putivl Monastery, in which there were inconveniences and anxieties in connection with the misfortune - the appearance during the prayer services of the ghosts of the deceased monks, who were very indecently clinging to the place.
The icon of the ghosts put off, put to rest. It happened that even in winter, a restless and dangerous glow was established near it - akin to lightning strikes. The ghost, if at that moment appeared, could be cut into pieces with a staff, and the pieces of the ghost easily disintegrated into dense foggy strips, like cut bread. After that, the foggy elders were never seen anywhere.
Curiosity could be satisfied by visiting church graveyards. Lightning struck the graves. They beat step by step, approaching the temple, getting inside. The wooden chapels did not hold. Lightning burned them. Everything burned out. The frames of the icons melted. The icons, if they survived the ancient writing, did not bear traces of soot. The fire destroyed the icons of the new letter. In the chapel there was a coffin with the deceased after the funeral service. The fire did not touch him at all. Lightning struck until a stone chapel was erected in that place.
How to understand all this and can it be understood at all? Orthodox ascetic Ignatius Brianchaninov advised "to turn away hungry eyes from the mysteries of divine providence, for they are not subject to a weak human mind, but sensitive with a pure heart." No matter how series, the nature of miraculous icons is outside the brackets of the possibilities of rational science, because it is impossible to explain the fundamentally inexplicable.
Alexander Pudomyagin
