Second Thursday after Pentecost
Mother of God, Maryina Horka, Pukhavichy, Minsk, Belarus
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The story goes that at some long-ago time, after many
doctors and healers failed to cure devout Orthodox villager Isidore
Lyadtsy of a serious illness, the Mother of God appeared to him in a
dream, promising health if he would erect a prayer cross on a hill (horka)
that had been the site of pagan rites. He did as she asked, recovered his
health, and later built a chapel on the hill, placing in it a portrait of
the Mother of God as she looked in his dream. Visitors to the chapel
reported healings of their own, attracting pilgrims but also detractors,
who burned it down. On finding the icon unharmed in the shrine's ashes,
the anti-Orthodox establishment allowed believers to build a new church on
the hill. (This part of the story would have had to occur when Belarus
belonged to the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, before its takeover by Russia in
1795; if so, the antagonists may have been Catholic.) The shrine burned
again during the Napoleonic incursion of 1812; it was said that the
soldier responsible went blind, and that once again, the sacred image
remained intact. At the request of his peasants, the landowner Borzhetsky
built a new wooden church to house the icon. Stalin's regime destroyed the
Mother of God's church in Maryina Horka once again, in 1940. This time,
believers moved the icon to the only church that remained in the area,
Holy Trinity in the nearby village of Blon. In 2004, on a visit to that
church, Stephen, Archbishop of Pinsk and Luninets, recognized the icon he
had prayed before as a boy. He arranged for its return to Maryina Horka,
where, on September 8, 2010, it was solemnly installed in the new church
of Alexander Nevsky. The feast day of the Mother of God of Maryina Horka
falls on the second Thursday after Pentecost Sunday. |
Sources:
 | "On the veneration of icons of the Mother of God in Belarus," SPPS
- site of the Parish of St. Peter and Paul Cathedral in Minsk,
sppsobor.by/bractva/vilna/publish/belcalendar/5263 |
| "Марьина
Горка," Википедия,
ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/Марьина_Горка |
| "Pilgrimage to Our Lady Maringorskaya icon," SOBOR.by,
sobor.by/pda/idnews.php?id=2011-Jan-25-9:57:47 |
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