20thc. Miracles St Nicholas in Russia and beyond

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Barbara
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20thc. Miracles St Nicholas in Russia and beyond

Post by Barbara »

Here is one excerpt from collected 20th century miracles by St Nicholas in Soviet Russia and other locales where emigres, soldiers, etc. found themselves in those years.
These are published by Orthodox Life, the journal of Jordanville [ Rocor-MP ], which has just started conversion to an all-online format to be offered free to readers.


"In 1918, dur­ing the Bol­she­vik rev­o­lu­tion, all of Moscow was shocked by a sign which was given through the image of St Nicholas. One of his icons which hung on a wall in the Krem­lin was cov­ered with a red cloth. Before the eyes of a great mul­ti­tude peo­ple on Red Square, this cloth which hid the face of St Nicholas ripped apart on its own. Pieces of the mate­ri­al fell onto the ground, and St Nicholas’ image was again seen by all. This was inter­pret­ed as the future deliv­er­ance from the “red cloak” which had descend­ed upon the Krem­lin and Holy Rus’.

Besides this, many oth­er signs were given through icons of St Nicholas through­out the years. Here we will men­tion just a few.

Dur­ing WWII the gov­ern­ment was evac­u­at­ing the pop­u­la­tion from the front line in trucks. An old wom­an was hold­ing a bundle in her hands.

The com­mis­sar asked: “What do you have there?”

“An icon of St Nicholas,” the wom­an replied.

Image

“Drop it!” the com­mis­sar com­mand­ed.

“No, I will not,” protest­ed the wom­an.

The com­mis­sar pulled out a revolver, point­ed it at the old wom­an and demand­ed: “If you do not drop it imme­di­ate­ly, I will shoot you!”

“Go ahead and shoot, I will not part with it. This icon has kept me safe through­out my life,” came the answer.

At that moment a Ger­man mis­sile explod­ed over the head of the com­mis­sar, and he was blown to pieces. The old wom­an sim­ply sat down from fear, and con­tin­ued to hold the icon which was so dear to her.


Just before the war we saw a large icon of St Nicholas on one of the analo­gions at the women’s monastery ded­i­cat­ed to the Entry of the Moth­er of God into the Tem­ple in Bel­grade. It had mirac­u­lous­ly renewed itself. The for­mer­ly dark­ened image was sparkling with all its many col­ors, which had become fresh and lumi­nous. 

Along with all the mar­tyrs who accept­ed death from the god­less ones in the name of God’s truth, St Nicholas seems to speak to us through the words of Apos­tle Paul: Be fol­low­ers of me, as I am a fol­low­er of Christ. (1 Cor. 4, 16)

Code: Select all

      by Arch­bish­op Nikon (Rozh­den­stven­skii) 

http://orthodoxlife.org/miracles/contem ... derworker/


[ Archbishop Nikon is head of the OCA's Boston, New England and the Albanian Archdiocese. He was born in 1945 in the U.S., so perhaps he heard the story about the Belgrade Icon renewal from parents or emigres - ? ]

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Barbara
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Re: 20thc. Miracles St Nicholas in Russia and beyond

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Here is a candid account of the Saint's shaming a man named in his honor -- for the good of the man's soul.

Image


"Once, when I was work­ing as the direc­tor of a cul­tur­al cen­ter I was invit­ed to spend New Year’s Eve at a restau­rant. This was dur­ing the Nativ­i­ty fast, but I was inter­est­ed in the pay­ment which was offered and agreed to go. The night before I was in my own dream: in our parish church the relics of St Nicholas the Won­der­work­er are on dis­play. Every­one is tak­ing a turn to come up and ven­er­ate them. My turn came up, too. But when I leaned over the holy relics, St Nicholas rose, pushed me aside in anger and began to berate me in front of the whole con­gre­ga­tion. 

I woke up from a ter­ri­ble sense of shame and fear, and could not fall asleep again for a long time. I prayed and cried, but clar­i­ty of mind came lat­er. I did not change my mind about going to the restaurant—the pay­ment was half of my usu­al salary. The feel­ing of fear and shame did not leave me, how­ev­er. It pre­vent­ed me from falling into deep­er and more dis­gust­ing sins that New Year’s Eve. Yet it is impos­si­ble to stay clean when one jumps into a dirty pud­dle.

The extra mon­ey I made was spent on med­ica­tions for my daugh­ter who had sud­den­ly become ill. I became despon­dent, think­ing of my irrepara­ble worth­less­ness. But St Nicholas was mer­ci­ful to me and brought me con­so­la­tion lat­er. Some kind peo­ple gave me an icon with an unusu­al depic­tion of St Nicholas. The saint’s face, how­ev­er, looks exact­ly as I remem­ber it in my dream. Every day I ask for­give­ness of St Nicholas, for I am not wor­thy to bear his name; I ask for help and inter­ces­sion. And I know: though I am a per­ish­ing and sin­ful man, this God pleaser nev­er for­sakes me.

Nicholas Iva­nenko, city of Vileika, region of Min­sk (Belarus)"

http://orthodoxlife.org/miracles/contem ... derworker/


One is left to ponder whether the daughter became ill as a punishment for Nicholas' failure to obey the warning given by his patron Saint before the New Year's dinner. If that is the case, Nicholas did not even make a profit as he had anticipated.
Better to have listened to Saint Nicholas, who was considerate enough to visit the man with this strikingly unusual scene in order to shock him into avoiding the perilous occasion.

The Saint clearly cared about the man enough to intervene to avert the damage to his soul. Though the cultural director did not obey, at least he kept his guard up against a plethora of sins at the boisterous New Year's Eve party.

When his daughter suddenly became sick afterwards, Nicholas realized his disobedience and repented, thus being consoled with the remarkable Icon bearing a resemblance to the face of the Saint in his vivid dream.

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