Mt. Athos, October 2, 2017
Photo: afonit.info Festive Divine services in honor of the miraculous icon of Christ the Savior before which He appeared to St. Silouan the Athonite at the beginning of the 20th century were celebrated on Sunday in the Russian Athonite Monastery of St. Panteleimon, Russian Athos reports.
Photo: afonit.info The celebration of the wonderworking icon is one of the local celebrations of St. Panteleimon’s Monastery, kept, according to the monastery’s typikon, on the Sunday following the feast of St. Silouan the Athonite, who is celebrated on September 11/24. More than 400 pilgrims arrived to join in the celebrations that were head Metropolitan Seraphim (Domnin) of Penza and Nizhnelomovsky and Bishop Nestor (Lyuberansky) of Kuznetsk and Nikolsk.
Photo: afonit.info The miraculous icon of Christ the Savior, together with the Light-Painted Image of the Most Holy Theotokos, is one of the most important wonderworking icons of St. Panteleimon’s Monastery. Both images appeared in the first half of the 20th century and both confirm the reality of the existence of the spiritual world, which makes their veneration especially relevant in our times.
The Most Holy Theotokos miraculously appeared on August 21/September 3, 1903 in the Russian St. Panteleimon’s Monastery on Mt. Athos. A photograph was taken at the Holy Gates of the monastery during the distribution of alms, which subsequently revealed an imprinted image of the Mother of God receiving charity as if one of the poor brethren from the hands of an elder monk. This phenomenon of the Light-Painted image of the Mother of God was prayerfully venerated on September 3 by the brethren of the monastery.
Last year, in celebration of the 150th anniversary of the birth of St. Silouan, the icon of Christ the Savior, together with the skull of St. Silouan himself, visited multiple cities in Belarus and Russia, where it was venerated by more than 315,000 faithful.
According to St. Silouan himself, the appearance of Christ, which occurred while he was yet a novice, and in front of the miraculous icon of Christ the Savior, was the most important event in his life. It was deeply engraved on the soul of the ascetic to the very end of his earthly life. A careful reading of the teachings of St. Silouan reveals that the memory of this theophany permeates all his writings, as if their main leitmotif.
