Orthodox icons and prayers
"Save me, God!".
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God - we can’t scold! Here are examples from life about people who dared to raise their dirty hands and filthy tongues against God and the Church.
When a church was being broken in the village of Selyavny, Voronezh region, the chairman of the village council and two of his assistants broke a unique huge icon of the Savior on glass. They frantically trampled the icon with their feet and stuck cigarette butts in Jesus' face. If you exist,” the chairman yelled, “then kill me!” At this time there were many people in the temple. “Let Him cut off my legs,” another shouted! Let him deprive me of my hand, screamed the third!
Within a few days, all three received their justly deserved Retribution, everything they asked for! One fell under a trolley, and his leg and part of his pelvis were cut off - he died on the spot. Another had his hand knocked out with a thresher, crippling him, and the chairman died right in the church, fell face down and died. All residents of this village know about this.
The ambulance driver, a man of about forty, cheerful and full of energy, went on an excursion to see the sights of an ancient city. Out of necessity, he went into an abandoned, dilapidated temple, took a shit there, stained the walls, then told his friends and acquaintances about it with laughter and blasphemy. Returning home, he suddenly felt a sharp, severe pain in his stomach, and turned to doctors at a local clinic for help. After carefully examining him, they found nothing, began examinations, tests, and all to no avail, the abdominal pain did not go away, but on the contrary, began to intensify. One day he walked into church and right there during the service he began to grunt. Then he understood a lot of what had happened to him - a demon had possessed him.
In 1922, one Komsomol member was promised a lot of money if he threw the Crosses from the temple. He agreed and broke the crosses, throwing them to the ground. He was not deceived and was paid really well. He brought the money home and began to share his luck. The five-year-old son was standing by the lighted stove, and at that time his wife was bathing her infant daughter in the bathtub in the next room. “Look, son, how much money I earned today,” said the father, opened the bag and showed stacks of money. Leaving the bag with the money, he went to his wife to tell about his luck, how lucky he was today.
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When he returned, he saw his son at “work.” The son was throwing the last wads of money into the stove, into the fire. In a rage, the father hit his son so hard that he fell dead on the floor. - I killed him! - the father shouted. His wife came running to his cry, leaving their daughter behind. The son was lying on the floor dead. - You killed him! - she cried. Returning to the room, she saw her dead daughter, choked in the water. The zealous Komsomol member could not stand such terrible retribution and shot himself.
In the village of Chimeevo, Belozersky district, Kurgan region, in the temple there is a miraculous icon of the Kazan Mother of God, many miracles have happened from it, both before and today in our time.
Here's one example. In 1992, they brought a 13-year-old boy who was deaf from birth, served a prayer service, anointed him with oil, and the boy immediately began to hear everything well. There are a great many such cases there: alcoholics STOP drinking, drug addicts become normal people, seriously ill people dying from cancer or other serious illnesses RECOVER, there were even cases when bald people GROWED luxuriant hair after they visited icons. People go there and travel there from all over our country and from abroad.
So, in 1943, the chairman of the village council decided to distinguish himself before the higher authorities and, taking an assistant with him, went to the church to break and throw away this icon. Arriving at the temple, he could not tear the icon from the place where it stood. Angry, he went home to get an ax and a crowbar, but upon leaving the temple, blood began to flow down his throat and he choked and died. His assistant also did not live to see the morning. But that’s not all, none of their children and loved ones lived to see the end of the war - they all died.
It seemed to the chairman of one collective farm and his friend that it was not enough that he closed the temple in the village. And they decided to build their toilet in the temple, and not just anywhere, but in its most sacred place - in the altar. But they didn't use their toilet for long. Less than a month later, the chairman was the first to be punished. He suddenly fell ill. Doctors discovered he had rectal cancer. His torment was unbearable and long, he screamed continuously day and night from terrible pain, no medicine helped him and he asked for death. And only after two years of terrible torment the Lord sent him death. His comrade was also punished according to his deserts. Both of his arms were caught in the thresher and were torn off. Both of them then lost their children and died early, and their relatives suffered a series of misfortunes.
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One day an Orthodox Greek was walking through a Turkish bazaar. I saw a Muslim Turk, a butcher chopping meat - right on the icon of the Virgin Mary. In horror, he ran up to the Turk and asked to sell him all the meat, along with the icon. The Turk is greedy for money and therefore sold him this icon along with the meat. The Greek brought the icon to his house, washed it from dirt and blood, and placed the icon at home and venerated it.
After some time, he had a dream. Having appeared, the Mother of God told the Greek that it would be better if he took Her Holy Image back - back to the Muslim Turk, and let him chop the meat on it rather than the smoke of the Greek’s cigarettes every day - desecrate this icon.
One man, in the rage of fighting against God, chopped up the wedding icon in his home after the wedding. After some time, this man’s head was broken with an iron rod. Diagnosis: traumatic brain injury, fracture of the base of the skull. He survived only thanks to the prayers of his believing relatives. He doesn’t go to Church, or rather he can’t, the enemy doesn’t let him in because of his sins.
One grandmother, in her childhood, out of stupidity, gouged out the eyes on the icon of some saint, and from that time on, she suffered with her eyes all her life. Eyes - They hurt a lot and they don’t see well. No medications help...
One temple was being restored, and icons for it were transported from Novgorod. And one day, before loading the next batch of icons into the car, they were placed near the wall of the house. Some passerby walked past with a gun over his shoulders, saw the icon and read: Holy Great Martyr Panteleimon. And he says: “Well, if there is a God, then let him punish me,” the atheist grinned, pulled the gun off his shoulder and took aim at the image.
"Don't you dare do that!" - shouted the church elder. Why, the atheist has already shot at the icon of the great martyr. At the same moment, as the people who were nearby later saw, this man bent into an arc, he began to wheeze and emit foam from his mouth. For about an hour, the blasphemer writhed in convulsions, until a called ambulance arrived, they loaded him into the car, but before reaching the hospital he died.
In one village, a high school student joined the Komsomol, and after listening to a lot of lectures about atheism at school, he came home, went into his grandmother’s room, and took from there the icon in front of which his grandmother always prayed. He took an ax and went outside to cut this icon into pieces, and when he raised the ax to hit the icon with the ax, at that moment the ax fell out of his hands, and his hand hung like a whip. From that day on, his hand completely dried up and he remained disabled for the rest of his life.
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In the village of Buylovo, Rameshkovsky district, Tver region, when the Church of the Epiphany was closed, it became a haven for local drunkards. One day one of them climbed up the iconostasis and lowered a three-meter crucifix of Christ, which was attached under the very arch of the temple, down on a rope. This unfortunate man, who does not understand anything, put this crucifix in his garden instead of a scarecrow. The next day the poor fellow was struck by paralysis and a week later he died.
In another village, an Orthodox church was destroyed. Militant atheists drove out the priests and turned the church into a theater. The play, in which the actors shot icons with rifles right in the altar, was particularly successful among local communists and Komsomol members. And they laughed at the curses of the believing fellow villagers, who warned of the imminent terrible punishment of God. Years have passed, this punishment is still being carried out to this day.
Everyone who directly took part in the desecration and destruction of the temple did not die a natural death, some committed suicide, some were killed themselves, some went crazy and rotted in a mental hospital, the same misfortune befell all their children. The whole village is drinking itself to death. Husbands chase their wives with knives and guns, and then shoot themselves or hang themselves with soldiers' belts, their houses are constantly burning. Children do not live long, many freaks, cripples and morons were born, many sit and are treated in a psychiatric hospital, and none of the children and grandchildren live long.
Of course, God is merciful and long-suffering; but He is also just; just as our ancestors said: “God endures for a long time, but it hurts!”
God cannot be mocked | Notes from a believer
Author - Tatyana Yakutina, Kodinsk
Having been baptized, most of us almost immediately fall away from the temple. Having learned, at best, “Our Father”, “Rejoice to the Virgin Mary...” and “Creed”. They don’t want to teach the latter - “Somehow everything is incomprehensible, and even in the Church Slavonic language... It’s time to finally translate the entire Divine Service into modern Russian.” Many of my friends think this way.
When a person is prosperous, well-fed and healthy, when everything in his life is smooth as clockwork, he has no need to go to church. Just think, on Saturday you have to go to evening service, when you really want to relax after a week of work. After the bathhouse, sit down with a glass of tea, chat with friends, lie down on the sofa and relax in front of the TV. And on Sunday it’s even worse - you have to get up at six o’clock in order to have time to come to the temple before the start of the service, submit notes about health and repose, and order prayer services. And even stand on your feet for three or four hours!
And my legs hurt and tingle so much, and my back hurts so much! And some thoughts are spinning in my head all the time, so I hardly even hear the service. I cross myself and bow when others do it. And why don’t our Orthodox churches still have rows of benches, like in Catholic churches, so that you can sit quietly and enjoy the service? Really? Why? Why exhaust yourself like that? It’s time to abandon everything outdated that was a hundred or two hundred years ago...
So we go into the church for a short time to “light candles” for health and repose, in front of the icons of especially revered saints. To collect holy Epiphany water, you can use large cans and cans for the whole year, so that you can then water flowers with holy water and sprinkle vegetables for better growth. Give the cattle water so that they can be fruitful and multiply! Such a mass phenomenon of people with huge containers was observed by our priest at one of the parishes at the source, which he consecrated at the Epiphany.
Collect willow branches, bless Easter cakes and colored eggs before Vespers on Saturday or on the morning of Holy Easter. You can drive up to the church just before sprinkling the above. And then at home, in a calm family atmosphere, sit at a rich festive table, say Christ, clink eggs in beautiful colored stickers or, as a tribute to tradition, painted in water with onion skins. Why stand for a long time, why bother in vain?! We are busy people.
This is, or almost so, what most of us think or have thought, let’s not lie. And it certainly doesn’t occur to us to thank God for His ineffable mercies and generosity to us sinners. We don’t thank Him, we don’t ask for help until a certain moment. Until He knocks on the tightly closed doors of our hearts...
We have no idea how long the Lord endures and waits for the return of prodigal children to His Home... In the spring of 2013, we (my husband and I) visited the Goden Cross, which I had previously learned about from the Internet. I don’t know how and why this happens, but the Lord opens to me one page of his World after another... My heart flares up and responds - “Lord, how I want to go there!”
And here we are in Antushkovo, listening to the guide’s story about the desecration of the Cross during the years of the atheism. About how the big men couldn’t move him from his place, and two women, at night, with prayer, secretly took him out of the temple and hid him in a safe place. How fiercely the atheist, possessed by demonic power and hatred, tried to chop up the shrine that had come across the sky to Rus' with an ax. How he hit the little toe on Jesus’ foot with an ax...
The Lord waited for his repentance for 50 years. He waited, and then a cancerous tumor appeared on the little toe of the god-fighter’s foot. But this man still didn’t understand anything, didn’t cry or pray: “Lord, forgive me, the accursed one, for I didn’t know what I was doing!” He went unrepentant into the abyss of hell...
Wise priests in their sermons tell their flock that it is not God who punishes us with sorrows and illnesses, since He is immeasurably kind and merciful, but we ourselves, with our sins and dirty lives (“like a pig lies in the dung” or a dog that keeps coming back on our vomit) we depart from Him.
We are leaving because His holy Home - the Church - never became our home... One of my virtual friends - Natalya Rusina, an assistant to the priest from the Slyudyansk Church of St. Nicholas the Pleasant, on the shore of the Holy Siberian Sea - Baikal, wrote after a terrible, destructive flood in Tulun in LiveJournal: “As Metropolitan Veniamin (Fedchenkov) says: “Christianity, knowing where the root of troubles is, that is, in the soul, came and brought new strength to treat it, first of all, and not external conditions. And the doctor cures the root and primary source of the disease, and not its secondary manifestations on the outside. And so, apparently leaving external disasters untouched, Christianity gave “inside” such enlightenment, poured in such grace-filled forces that a person could feel free internally even in slavery, rich or at least calm in poverty.
How? Christianity pointed out and really gave a new, peaceful life to the soul: life in the grace of God is still here and hopes for a blessed life in the future world, which undoubtedly exists. Having this inner spiritual life within himself, a person could and became calm under all conditions. The doctor who treats a disease is not so good as the one who, by injecting some anti-poisonous liquid, makes a person incapable of infection, the so-called immunity. Christianity gave these powers to our people.” And we, as a people, relaxed, decided that God Himself would do everything, our efforts were not needed here. And then we cry that the children do not obey, that the children are sick, that there is not enough money, that the sorrows do not end, on the one hand, the farms burned down, on the other hand, the houses floated away... Why is this? Yes, because “to whom the Church is not a mother, God is not a father” is such a church truth. What do we want to receive from God if we cannot find time to go to His temple? Well, you shouldn’t complain then - it’s your own fault for all your troubles. Eh... We are looking for strength in the wrong place as a people, in the wrong place at all...”
So how much longer will we test the patience of the Lord?! What kind of trouble are we waiting for, what kind of universal conflagration or flood?!
It seems to me that with this Tulun Flood the Lord is testing us for mercy and humanity. Will we respond to someone else’s misfortune and help?! If we don’t respond and help, we’ll pretend that this is not our problem, and we’ll be in for even greater disasters and catastrophes...
O bottom of our hope - Mother of God!
