The feast of an icon
The Kazan Icon of the Mother of God
Also called Our Lady of Kazan
In 1579, after a great fire in Kazan, the Mother of God appeared in dreams to a ten-year-old girl, Matrona, and showed her where her icon lay buried in the ashes; as it was carried in procession, two blind men received their sight. In 1612 the Russian militia carried a copy of the icon before them and delivered Moscow from foreign occupation, and this feast was set in thanksgiving. The icon became the protectress of all Russia.
The dates
- Kept on
- 22 October (4 November 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
For four centuries Slavic parents have made the sign of the Cross over their son and daughter with the Kazan icon before the wedding crowns. In Russian tradition the groom receives an icon of Christ and the bride the Kazan Mother of God, and these become the couple's first home icons.
Russian families place the icon at the cribs of small children, and they pray before it for sight, washing the eyes with holy water and anointing them with oil from the icon lamp.
It is a specifically Russian feast that Greek churches rarely keep; a second, summer feast remembers the finding of the icon in Kazan.
The saint
Icons for the feast
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