Kiev, October 6, 2023
Photo: news.church.ua
In his homily on the feast of the Icon of the Mother of God “She Who is Quick to Hear” yesterday, His Beatitude Metropolitan Onuphry of Kiev and All Ukraine recounted the miraculous story of how the Mother of God saved a nun from death when she was a child.
“The Mother of God takes care of everyone, and especially helps those who turn to her with prayer, with petitions,” the Ukrainian primate began, reports the Information-Education Department of the Ukrainian orthodox Church.
He then told a story he had heard from a nun about when she was a child, living alone with her mother. There were many icons in the house, but the mother herself never prayed or taught her daughter to pray. Out of weakness, the mother began to get involved in promiscuous deeds, bringing different men home, and she began to see her daughter as an interference.
Met. Onuphry continued:
She became so immersed in the passion of debauchery that she decided to kill her child. She took an axe and raised it to strike her daughter. The girl was about five years old, and she didn’t fully understand what was happening, but she began to cry. And then suddenly, a strange woman in black appeared and grabbed the mother's hand, taking the axe away. The mother felt ashamed and began to cry and repent. Then this woman disappeared.
The little girl thought that perhaps some neighbor had intervened on her behalf, but none of them knew anything about it.
One day, she approached the icons and saw an image of the Mother of God. The girl thought it was a photograph, a portrait of someone who resembled the woman who had saved her from her mother. She approached what she thought was a portrait, caressed it, began to talk to it... And when she did this, she felt relief in her soul, and she always left feeling comforted and peaceful.
As Met. Onuphry explained, it was only some time later that she began to learn about God and that she understood that the image was not a portrait, but an icon of the Mother of God.
She developed such a love for the Mother of God, a fire ignited in her soul, and the grace-filled flame of love, which usually appears in people when something significant happens, when they receive grace from God... This flame was constantly burning in her soul. When she told me about this incident, she was already an elderly woman. And over time, this fire burned so brightly that in the later years of her life, in her 50s or 60s, she decided to go to a monastery. She became a nun and spent the last years of her life in piety and purity.
“When everything is good, thank the Mother of God for her holy prayers, for her protection, but when there is trouble, ask Her to intercede for us before God once again,” Met. Onuphry exhorted.
“Through the prayers of the Most Holy Theotokos, who is the Mother of God and the Mother of all of us, may the Lord protect each one of us.”
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