Icon of the "Reigning" Mother of God

 

This icon appeared in the village of Kolomenskoye near Moscow on March 2(15). 1917, the day of the abdication of Emperor Nicholas II. One Yevdokia Andrianova, a peasant woman living at Pererva, saw a dream in which a mysterious voice said to her: ''There is a large black icon at Kolomenskoye. It must be taken and made red and people should pray before it." In another dream she saw a white church in which a woman was sitting majestically on a throne. Andrianova recognized her as the Heavenly Queen, even though she did not see Her holy face. Yevdokia decided to go to Kolomenskoye and there she immediately identified the Church of the Ascension as the church where she had seen the Heavenly Queen in her dream. Father Nikolai Mikhachev, rector of the church, showed her all the old icons of the Mother of God that were part of the iconostasis, but the one that she had seen in her dream was not there. After long searches a large, narrow, black icon was discovered in the crypt. Having washed it, those present saw a representation of the Most Holy Theotokos as the Queen of Heaven sitting on a ryal throne clad in a purple robe lined with green, wearing a royal crown on Her and holding a scepter and an orb in Her Hands. Sitting in Her Lap was the infant Jesus Christ making a blessing gesture. According to some sources, the icon was initially kept in the Cathedral of the Ascension in the Moscow Kremlin and was hidden at Kolmenskoye during the French invasion in 1812. By making this appearance, the Mother of God took over supreme royal power over Russia in the most difficult period in the life of the Russian state. Feast day: March 2/15.