Every day, people gather at the Queen of All Icon of the Most Holy Theotokos in the gallery of the cathedral at Moscow’s Novospassky Monastery to pray an Akathist to the Mother of God. Many are brought by an incurable disease, and some—by thanksgiving. To nourish the faith of Orthodox Christians, we offer here several stories about miraculous help from this wonderworking icon of the Theotokos. These stories were collected over the course of several years from monastery parishioners and personal observation.
Photo: новоспасский-монастырь.рф
Mass Healing in the Hospital
In 2020, during the coronavirus pandemic, relatives of the elderly Lydia V. asked a priest to come to a hospital outside the city to give her Communion. The priest came and gave her Confession and Communion and also anointed her with holy oil from the lampada at the Queen of All Icon. When the department head saw Father later in the hallway, she asked him to go around to all the rooms and anoint all the patients. None of them said no to being anointed, regardless of religion or how close they were to the Church. Some time later, the department head, a world-renowned doctor, came to Novospassky Monastery to meet with the priest who had been at the hospital. She told him that all those whom he anointed that day with holy oil from the icon of the Theotokos were soon sent home healthy.
The Queen of All Icon
Seven-year Prayer
For more than seven years now, the servant of God George has come to the Queen of All Icon every day after work to pray an Akathist to the Theotokos for his cancer-stricken bedridden mother. She doesn’t know he comes and he doesn’t tell her that he prays for her before the wonderworking icon, because she was raised in a different faith and might take his turn to Orthodoxy the wrong way. In a private conversation, George shared with great confidence that it’s thanks to his prayers before the Queen of All Icon that his beloved mother is still alive.
September 2024
Unconfirmed Cancer
After a moleben, a woman came forward, full of tears of joy. She had been diagnosed with thyroid cancer two months earlier. The outlook was bleak, and she had to undergo chemotherapy. She had just found out about Novospassky’s wonderworking icon of the Theotokos that evening online. She dropped everything and went to see the Queen of All Icon before the monastery closed. She lit a candle before it, ordered a moleben, and took some holy water and holy oil. At her next examination, her tests came back clear. The doctor said the previous diagnosis was probably just a mistake, but this miracle further strengthened the woman’s faith in God.
2025
Procession with the Queen of All Icon
A Vision of the Queen of Heaven
A man around thirty to thirty-five years old lost his young wife to cancer. In the last days of her life, he prayed fervently during molebens to the wonderworking Queen of All Icon of the Mother of God, seeking comfort and help. And the Lord gave him a sign: One day, his wife briefly came out of her coma and told him she’d had a vision. She saw how the Mother of God herself was present at the moleben at Novospassky. She was walking among the worshippers, looking at them with love. With some, she laid her hand on their head, with others, who were weeping from the heart, she wiped away their tears herself.
After that, the woman departed to the Lord in peace, and her husband, deeply moved by this apparition, reverently recounted what had happened.
July 21, 2025
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Since his cancer diagnosis, every Sunday, L. attends the moleben before the Queen of All Icon and takes home two liters of holy water, which he reverently drinks with prayer to the Mother of God. His illness has stopped advancing, and he has enough strength to go to church every week to confess and commune.
