November 4 - Feast of the Kazan Icon of the Mother of God and Day of National Unity
… “It was a terrible time! The capital city of Moscow was in the hands of the Poles, in Novgorod and the northern regions were ruled by the Swedes, and all kinds of robber bands roamed the whole country, robbing and killing. The despair of the Russian people reached the utmost limits: the death of the Russian state seemed irrevocable and final. There was nowhere to wait for salvation. This is how Archbishop Averky (Taushev) described the beginning of the 17th century.
Then many did not even expect salvation. The Moscow nobility was seized with vacillation. In the struggle against the tsars Godunov and Shuisky, the boyar elites often took the side of the false Dmitriy, the swamp and the Sigismund; to the throne were pushed those who promised their accomplices to spread Catholicism to Russia, trampled on the foundations of Orthodoxy, deposed patriarchs.
“There was no tsar, the Poles locked up the patriarch, the last army turned into a powerless bunch of beggars…” writes Dmitry Volodikhin, professor at Moscow State University. - Gangs of thieves' Cossacks, foreign mercenaries, rioters roamed all the cities and lands of Russia … The capital, as well as the main cities of the North and West of Russia, were under the control of the occupation corps … Pal Smolensk, which detained the invaders for a long time. The Swedes started a war against Russia, took Novgorod the Great, as well as a number of our other cities … It seemed that the power would no longer rise. It seemed that the Troubles ruined Russia … However, the Russian civilization had enough resilience, and the grace of God, to cope with this catastrophic situation."
Archbishop Averky recalls: “At the head of the cause of saving the Motherland was our Russian Church, represented by Her worthy spiritual leaders, such as His Holiness Patriarch Hermogenes, who was in captivity and imprisonment among the Poles in Moscow, and the rector of the Holy Trinity Lavra of St. Palitsyn. Throughout Russia, they sent out "gramata" with fiery appeals to the Russian people to stand up for the protection and salvation of the Church and the Fatherland. In response to these "gramata", people's militias began to form."
D. Volodikhin notes the inspiring role of the Trinity-Sergius Monastery, which held and withstood the siege of the Poles for 16 months: “The steadfastness of the defenders and the impotence of the interventionists became known throughout the country. This victory strengthened the spirit of resistance throughout Russia."
And the Lord's mercy was shown to the Russian people even earlier - in a visible form.
Promotional video:
Unearthly factor
In June 1579, a terrible fire broke out in Kazan. It spread from the church of St. Nicholas of Tulsk to the fortress walls. The element destroyed everything in its path, including half of the Kazan Kremlin. Not far from the temple, the house of archer Daniil Onuchin also burned down.
From that time on, the Mother of God began to come to his ten-year-old daughter in a dream. Three times She appeared to the girl Matrona and informed that under the ashes of their burnt house there was a miraculous icon hidden. Only the third time did the girl manage to persuade the adults to start excavations. When they were digging up, Matrona herself came across a half-rotted sleeve of some kind of clothing, in which an icon was wrapped, shining like new.
Probably, the shrine was buried in the last years of the existence of the Kazan Khanate, when the Crimean dynasty seized power in it. She was supported by that part of the Tatar local nobility, which, like the Crimeans, considered the "unfaithful" neighbors as an object of slave trade and plunder. This, in fact, prompted Ivan the Terrible to march on Kazan.
And the "mercy of the Lord" appeared to the Orthodox Muslims of the Volga region when it was necessary to strengthen their faith - after the fire of 1579, which allegedly occurred in revenge for the capture of Kazan by the Russian tsar. When, in the words of the chronicler, "the faith of Christ became a parable and an outrage."
Archbishop Jeremiah arrived at the place where the icon was found and transferred the icon to the neighboring St. Nicholas Church. Then, by the procession of the cross, the icon was transferred to the Annunciation Cathedral - the first Orthodox church in the city of Kazan, erected by Ivan the Terrible.
In the same year, a list of the icon with a description of the circumstances of its acquisition and the miracles that happened to happen from it was sent to Tsar Ivan. He ordered the construction of a temple in honor of the Kazan icon and a convent on the site of the find. In it, Matrona (under the name of Mavra) will take monastic vows, who years later will become the abbess of the monastery.
We know about the early history of the image from the priceless literary and historical monument "The Story and Miracles of the Most Pure Mother of God of the honest, glorious Her appearance of the image, like in Kazan", created in 1594 by Saint Germogen. It was he - then still the priest Yermolai - who in 1579 was the rector of that very Nikolsky church, where the first prayer service was performed before the Kazan icon.
In 1589, Vladyka Germogen became the first Kazan and Astrakhan metropolitan, and in 1606 he was elected patriarch (for his great "bookishness", inflexibility in matters of faith, fair trial).
This was the time when Russia suffered from the gangs of the impostor False Dmitry and the Polish king Sigismund III. From occupied Moscow, Patriarch Hermogenes began to send messages to all corners of the country calling for an uprising and the expulsion of aliens who had invaded Russia. When an uprising arose, the Poles imprisoned the saint in prison and demanded that he call on the Russian militias to withdraw from the city. The saint refused, and he was starved to death, but the patriarch's steadfastness inspired all who were eager to cleanse their homeland of the invaders. The spread of Hermogenes' messages went like an avalanche; they were copied, read out in squares and in churches.
In Nizhny Novgorod, near which in his estate Mugreev healed the wounds of the hero of the first - failed - militia, Prince Dimitri Mikhailovich Pozharsky, came the order from the Patriarch: “Write to Kazan to Metropolitan Ephraim, let him send a teaching letter to the regiments to the boyars and they stood firm for the faith, suppressed robbery, preserved brotherhood, and as they promised to lay down their souls for the house of the Most Pure and for miracle workers and for the faith, so they would have done. And write to all cities … everywhere use my name."
Nizhny Novgorod residents were the first to respond to the call. Cathedral Archpriest Savva Yevfimiev and Voivode Prince Zvenigorodsky called the cry, and a new militia began to gather. Prince Pozharsky was elected leader. Dmitry Mikhailovich led a new liberation army up the Volga, replenishing it in Kineshma, Kostroma, Yuryevets-Povolsky …
The holiday is not only a state
Yaroslavl was elected headquarters of the militia. An elected provisional government - the Council of All Lands - was formed here, and the Kazan squads, who joined the militia, brought a list of the Kazan miraculous icon here. This is how Russian statehood began to revive.
Before the march on Moscow, the second militia spent three days in fasting and prayer of repentance. “And this fiery, tearful, repentant prayer was heard,” writes St. Averky. "The miracle of the salvation of our Motherland has taken place, which, for human reasons, could not have been counted on."
On October 22, 1612, the Poles agreed to negotiate surrender, and four days later the liberators entered the Kremlin on a procession of the cross, carrying the Kazan icon before them. Archbishop Arseny met them at the Execution Ground, holding the Vladimir Icon of the Mother of God in his hands. This is how the two greatest shrines of the Russian land came together - one that became famous in Vyshgorod, and the other, revealed in Kazan on the Russian Volga.
In 1636, the famous white-stone Kazan Cathedral was erected on Red Square in honor of the icon of the same name. Since then, her lists have become especially revered throughout Russia.
Small Russia was no exception in this popular veneration. There are countless churches and thrones in honor of Our Lady of Kazan in Ukraine. One of the most famous churches is in the Frolovsky Monastery, beloved by Orthodox Kievans.
Even today, churches are being erected in Kiev in honor of the liberator of Moscow, which means that the Day of National Unity, established in Russia in memory of the Kazan Icon, is the day of the unity of the ALL-People. Orthodox people of Kiev, Lviv and Odessa celebrate this holiday as their own. And, of course, Poltava residents.
In 1709, on the eve of the Poltava Victoria, Peter I prayed with shelves in front of the Kaplunovsky copy of the Kazan Mother of God, whose exciting history continues to this day.
In 1721, the emperor delivered a copy of the Kazan icon to St. Petersburg. In 1811, before the Patriotic War, this image was transferred to the majestic Kazan Cathedral that had just been built for it. In the summer of the following year, the former Kiev military governor, His Serene Highness Prince M. I. Kutuzov, having accepted the appointment as commander-in-chief, first went to the cathedral, where he prayed for a long time in front of the miraculous image. According to legend, he placed on himself a small icon depicting the Kazan icon. The next year, Mikhail Illarionovich will be buried in the Kazan Cathedral. The temple itself will soon acquire the status of a monument to Russian military glory. And not only in memory of past victories under the shadow of the Kazan Mother of God: October 22, 1812 (on the day of the Kazan Mother of God according to the old style) the rearguard of the Russian army under the command of the son of the Chernigov governor, the grandson of the Gadyach colonel,Kutuzov's successor at the post of Kiev governor, General of Infantry Serb M. A. Miloradovich and the ataman of the Don Cossacks M. I. Platov's first defeat after Borodin will inflict on the French. Don Cossacks will donate to the Kazan Cathedral 40 poods of silver taken from the French, from which the main iconostasis of the temple will be made afterwards. And its walls will be decorated with keys from captured French cities and other trophies. At the foot of the tomb of Field Marshal Kutuzov, defeated enemy banners will be placed. And its walls will be decorated with keys from the captured French cities and other trophies. At the foot of the tomb of Field Marshal Kutuzov, defeated enemy banners will be placed. And its walls will be decorated with keys from the captured French cities and other trophies. At the foot of the tomb of Field Marshal Kutuzov, defeated enemy banners will be placed.
More than a century later, the defenders of Leningrad, overshadowed by the blessing of the Mother of God and the Son of God, will leave the tomb of the great Russian military leader for the fronts of another Patriotic War.
This is about them and their predecessors, Saint Averky will say: “There is no other correct way to save our Motherland - Russia, besides the one that our pious ancestors have always taken: this is the way of our universal appeal to“a quiet and good haven - the protection of the Mother of God and Ever-Virgin Mary..