The feast of an icon
The Inexhaustible Cup Icon of the Mother of God
Also called The Inexhaustible Chalice
The icon shows the Mother of God with hands raised in prayer and the Christ Child standing in the Communion chalice, an inexhaustible source of spiritual joy and consolation. In 1878 a retired soldier of Tula province, who had drunk away everything he owned and whose legs were paralyzed, was told three times in a dream to go to the Vladychny Convent in Serpukhov and have a moleben served before the icon. He set out crawling, gradually regained his strength, found the forgotten icon and returned home healed.
The dates
- Kept on
- 5 May (18 May on the Old Calendar)
- Next, New Calendar
- Next, Old Calendar
The New Calendar (the Greek, Antiochian, Romanian and Bulgarian churches, the OCA and most converts) keeps fixed feasts on the church date; the Old Calendar (the Russian, Serbian and Georgian churches, Jerusalem and Mount Athos) keeps them 13 days later. Pascha and the feasts that follow it are kept on the same day by both.
How the day is kept
Since then Russian Orthodox Christians pray before it for those enslaved to drink and every other addiction, and for the families who suffer with them; families ask for a moleben before the icon.
The original icon was lost after the Revolution. The Vysotsky Monastery in Serpukhov keeps a revered copy, and many sobriety societies make a pilgrimage there on its feast.
It is a Russian icon, which Greeks know mainly through Russian copies.