On August 11, 1995, the charitable community of the Righteous John of Kronstadt received a call from the metochion of the Holy Panteleimon monastery on Mount Athos inviting them to come and receive an icon that arrived from Mount Athos.
The charitable community was established at the Church of the Renewal of the Resurrection of Christ at Jerusalem on Sivtsev Vrazhek (in Moscow.—Trans.). The community members were known for their care for other people’s problems and sorrows; they visited a nursing home, helped disabled children and lonely pensioners. Several people volunteered to assist young cancer patients. Once or twice a week they would visit the children’s ward at the Kashirsky Oncology Center—the place of children’s grief and parent’s sorrows. Were they able to comfort them? Perhaps they offered distraction from pain for a while. These volunteers tried to learn something new about their souls, too—the Lord was with us there, of course—we shared stories about Him. As well as about the Mother of God and Her infinite mercy to anyone who is suffering.
We also had a priest, Father Alexey Kazanchev, rector of the St. George the Victory-Bearer Church in Starye Luchniki. Every week, he brought the Holy Gifts to the children’s department, served a prayer service for health in a small chapel room, and then went around the ward to administer communion to the children.
One day, Maxim Klimenko, Subdeacon of Metropolitan Pitirim (Nechaev; 1926–2003) of Volokolamsk, visited Mount Athos and bought a pack of paper postcards bearing the photo of the “Pantanassa” miracle-working icon of the Vatopedi monastery. This icon, known from the seventeenth century, belonged to the Athonite elder Joseph (1921–2009), the disciple of Venerable Joseph the Hesychast. After the death of his mentor, Fr. Joseph founded a monastic brotherhood in the New Skete on Mount Athos and in 1989 they decided to undertake an effort to restore the Vatopedi monastery. Fr. Joseph brought the “Pantanassa” icon from the New Skete to the monastery.
The icon has manifested its grace-filled power for the first time when a young man who practiced witchcraft was turned away from his wicked habits. A young man wanted to venerate the icon, but suddenly the face of the Most Pure Virgin has shone brightly and an unknown force has pushed him away. When he came to his senses, he tearfully repented and told the fathers of the monastery that he had lived without God and practiced magic. This is how the Most Holy Mother of God had drastically changed his life. He spent the rest of his life on Mount Athos.
The miracle-working “Pantanassa” icon became famous for many miracles, especially for healings from cancer.
Maxim, who brought a package of icon postcards from Mount Athos, handed them over to Tatiana Goncharova, the head of the community, asking her to distribute them among the sick children. We hastened to fulfill his request, considering it a command from the Queen of Heaven Herself. The icon depicts the Most Holy Mother of God seated on the Royal throne holding the Divine Child Jesus. Behind the throne are the Archangel Michael and Archangel Gabriel who appeared before the Most Pure Virgin to announce the news about the birth of the Savior. The Archangel, in a sign of particular reverence, is depicted with his head lowered and his wing raised.
When we met the children—the ones who could walk—and their parents at the Oncology Center, we handed out the icons and told them that the Mother of God Herself willed to visit them with Her image to bring comfort, strength and healing. We then realized that we had brought them not only the icon card, but also hope, their faces were lit with a bright glow. We continued to visit the sick children: we talked with them and prayed. Because of their un-childlike illness, they grew up much too early and lost the sense of joy, as they courageously fought with the disease. Then, one day we were told that a girl aged ten was healed and joyfully went with her mother back home to the Moscow region.
Soon we were told about an amazing case of healing through the prayers to this icon. A boy called Misha, aged eight, was one the patients of the cancer ward. A paper icon was attached above his bed. He was feeling grievously ill and suddenly his heart stopped beating in the presence of his mother and a nurse. At that exact moment, they saw rays of light emanating from the icon, directed at the dead child. These rays brought him back to life. The boy came to his senses. This is how the icon began to manifest its miraculous powers.
With the help of Maxim Klimenko, we sent a letter to the Vatopedi monastery asking for a blessing to put the icon of “Pantanassa” in print here in Russia. We also asked to send a slide of the miraculous icon and a prayer. This is how the correspondence with the monastery began. Archimandrite Ephraim, the abbot of the monastery, gave such blessing. With the help of Maxim, we received a letter from him, a transparency of the icon, as well as the service, the prayer canon and the akathist in Greek.
We found a sponsor to publish the postcard of the icon. But we didn’t have a prayer translated into Russian that we could place on the back of the postcard. Maxim translated the troparion from Greek and came to the head of the community asking her to select a Russian name for the icon. His offer puzzled her and she immediately refused, saying that the priests, not her, should be consulted on the matter. Maxim began to persuade her and reminded that the publishing house was waiting to receive this information—the print run would be delayed if they kept searching for the variants of the name any longer. They had to try to do it themselves. Suddenly, a comforting thought came to mind: This icon belongs to the community, a narrow circle of people. We can name it for internal use. Tatiana began to pray asking for help from the Mother of God.
The icon “Pantanassa” is translated into Russian as “Our Lady of All”, “The Sovereign Lady of All”, “The Queen of All” and “Our Most Holy Lady of All.” They had to choose the name from these translations. After a while, the word “The Queen of All” felt right and it was spoken aloud. Maxim approved the choice. This name was included in the troparion, the first prayer of this holy icon.
For many subsequent years, Tatiana never stopped worrying about wheter they chose the correct name. What if she was wrong? Then, the answer was given to her. Once day, she was watching a documentary called “Vatopedi Monastery.” It talked about the icons of the monastery. Monk Dositheos spoke about the “The Queen of All” icon in Russian. He shared that the Vatopedi elder Joseph named this icon as follows: ‘When he received this icon, he looked at it—the Mother of God seated on the throne like a queen—and said: “How else can you be called, the Mother of God, if not the Queen of all? The Queen of All, Pantanassa.’” The name of the icon once chosen by the elder Joseph was repeated in 1995 in one of the Moscow churches. This was according to the Most Holy Mother of God’s will.
In one meeting with Maxim, he unexpectedly offered to order a copy of the “The Queen of All” icon on Athos. This idea was met with great enthusiasm. Following that, certain events quickly developed, and as it turned out later, they all were connected with the arrival of a copy of the icon to Russia.
In the same year of 1995, Fr. Deacon Georgiy Postnikov, clergyman of the Church of the Holy Equal-to-the-Apostles Prince Vladimir in Stariye Sady, joined our group. Pious, merciful, patient and gentle, Fr. Deacon possessed the “zeal to do good deeds” and thus he was lovingly received by the patients of this sorrowful ward. He truly cemented our group as a clergyman and got involved in the work of the community as a whole.
Some time later during my pilgrimage to the Holy Land, I met with Archimandrite Ieronim (Shurygin; 1952–2013) who suggested that I join him on his trip to Greece. He was taking his spiritual flock there to pray at the local holy places. This invitation joyfully resonated in my heart—I could order the icon, because the program of the pilgrimage included a visit to Mount Athos. I thought about Fr. Deacon Georgiy, because he could carry out this mission. Father Ieronim blessed him to join us, but warned that we only had a week to get our visas, as his group already had them.
Fr. Georgiy and I immediately went to the Greek consulate. Back then, in the middle of 1990s, Pontic Greeks were leaving Russia in droves. It was them who we met near the consulate building. All applicants could only enter inside after a three-day wait prior to their visa appointment. We were saddened at this news. Although, having assessed the situation, we weren’t in a hurry to leave. We had to wait—we simply couldn’t abandon all hope right away.
We stood praying by the iron fence near the entrance to the courtyard. We soon saw a staff member coming out of the building. We asked him if he could come over and speak to us. We found out later that he was one of only few workers in the consulate who spoke Russian. We told him that we need urgently to seek an appointment with the Consul regarding an important matter and asked him to help us. He agreed but he allowed only one of us to go inside. “You go,” said Fr. Georgiy, “and I will pray here.”
This consulate worker walked me to the Consul’s office and I was asked to wait at the door. A few minutes later, he came to me insisting that I tell him what matter brought me to the Consul. I stubbornly tried to conceal the purpose of my visit—I didn’t want to hear the suggestion to return to the general queue. I stood there in silence. Then he suddenly said: “If you need visas, you don’t need to go to see the Consul, I will issue them myself. Come back tomorrow.” We realized that the events were continuing to develop in our favor.
When we received our passports with Greek visas, we saw that instead of the three weeks we requested, we were given a month-long visa. It was enough for us to get ready for the pilgrimage and to travel.
Fr. Ieronim decided to have his group use a regular bus connection. It was cheaper and we weren’t bound by an exact departure date and a place of departure. The journey was long, but it didn’t seem too tiring, as our fatigue dissolved in the excitement of the upcoming trip. The entire group Fr. Ieronim was taking would be traveling to Greece for the first time.
After our arrival to Thessaloniki and veneration of the local shrines, we travelled to Ouranoupolis, where the next morning our men would take a boat to Mount Athos. There were two women in our group: Nun Natalia and me. Batiushka suggested that we go to Prokopion in the morning to venerate St. John the Russian and wait for their return at a local pilgrim hotel. But our plans changed.
In the evening, after the service in a local church, we waited for its priest in order to ask his blessing to spend the night inside the church, as we had no money for a stay in a hotel. Suddenly, a woman came up to us and said that she overheard our conversation and that she was an Orthodox from Belgium. With these words, she handed us fifty dollars saying that someone at her church gave her this money to distribute among the needy. And, turning to Fr. Ieronim, she added: “Your women don’t need to go anywhere. Have them stay at the hotel. Let them rest while they wait for you.” The matter was settled.
The men from our group returned from Mount Athos filled with grace and transformed in spirit. Father Georgiy joyfully shared how in one of the monasteries he met a young man named Dionisy, who turned out to be the son of the famous icon painter and restorer Vladimir Makarov, who was working at that time in the Vatopedi monastery. Dionisy introduced them and Vladimir agreed to write a copy of “The Queen of All” icon for Russia. Also, Father Ephraim, the abbot of the monastery, gave his blessing. Father Georgiy said that the iconographer would charge three hundred and fifty dollars for his work.
When we returned home, we soon received a letter from the monastery saying that the board for the icon was made according to the dimensions of the Vatopedi “Pantanassa” icon; that the brethren served a prayer service, sprinkled the paints with holy water, and the iconographer took to work. Soon, another letter came from the Vatopedi monastery saying that the icon had been painted and it was sanctified by staying for forty days in the altar of the church. The monks also said that it would soon be forwarded to us. At the beginning of 1996, we also received a letter from Vladimir, the icon painter. He asked us to donate a hundred out of the three hundred fifty dollars to the restoration of the Christ the Savior Cathedral in Moscow, send two hundred to his family in St. Petersburg, and to exchange the remaining fifty into rubles and hand out a one dollar equivalent per person to anyone who is truly poor and needy: “We need to do it to add strength and grace to the icon.”
Our charitable community didn’t have that much money. Fr. Georgiy asked us not to worry. He had saved up a certain amount for a future trip to the Holy Land. He had enough money to pay for the icon. Hopefully, the Lord will not forsake him—and help making that trip a reality.
Time has passed, but the icon still wasn’t sent. We made ourselves busy helping sick children. More icons were now hanging in the chapel of the children’s ward. Many candles were burning, as always.
Fr. Georgiy decided to try to enter the Novospassky monastery. He had been pondering over monasticism for a long time. He was ordained to the rank of deacon as a celibate. Then, one day, after attending the service in this monastery, he met its abbot Vladyka Alexiy (Frolov; 1947–2013) who immediately invited him for a conversation in his reception office. Vladyka gave his consent to Fr. Georgiy and sent him to the Patriarchate.
We asked Vladyka to pray for a speedy arrival of the copy of “The Queen of All” icon. As it turned out, Vladyka venerated this icon for a very long time, and he had also ordereded a copy from the Vatopedi monastery, but a larger one, and for some reason it had not been sent yet either. When Vladyka has learned that Father Georgiy was about to go to Mount Athos, he asked to clarify the situation if possible. But everything became clear a few days later, when I unexpectedly met Maxim Klimenko again.
He told me that the Vatopedi monastery had sent a letter to His Holiness Patriarch Alexiy II requesting him to send a particle of the relics of Venerable Maximus the Greek. When the letter was translated into Russian, it turned out that the request contained not a “particle” but the “relics.” The letter was set aside. The Greeks were perplexed. That’s why they delayed the shipment of “The Queen of All” icons. We had to correct the situation. It would have been nice if Fr. Georgiy asked for a duplicate of the letter from Archimandrite Ephraim, while we could order an independent translation made by the translation bureau.
We received the a letter, ordered the translation, and it turned out that the Greeks were again asking for the relics. We wrote “a particle of the relics”, reprinted it and gave the letter with the translation to the Patriarchate. The Patriarch blessed to transfer a particle of the relics of Venerable Maximus the Greek to the Vatopedi monastery, and the monastery announced the decision to organize an expedient delivery of the icon to the Novospassky monastery. As for our icon, there was a different story.
Fr. Alexiy Kazanchev informed us that Greek Bishop Meletios has come to Moscow. It was our chance to meet him and try to find out something about our icon. Of course, we took advantage of this opportunity. In a conversation with the bishop, we told the story of ordering the copy of “The Queen of All” icon and expressed concern about the delay by Mount Athos. Vladyka asked us not to worry and assured us that the icon would soon arrive in Moscow—Father Ephraim, the abbot of the monastery, was his spiritual son.
And it happened exactly as he told us. Ten days later, we received a call from the local Athonite metochion asking to pick up our icon. On the same day, we also had a call from the printing office: the print run of the icons-postcards of “The Queen of All” was ready.
