Pilgrimage to Hermitage of the Holy Cross draws the Faithful from afar.

Hexaemeron’s plans for the proposed new church for the Hermitage of the Holy Cross were on display during its Annual Pilgrimage. Sept. 30 and Oct. 1.

The heavens opened up, the rains came down, and the Holy Spirit descended upon all who gathered in the West Virginia hills for the Annual Pilgrimage to Hermitage of the Holy Cross. Vespers and Akathist to St. Anna in the tiny monastery church ended about 3 p.m. on Saturday with a great procession to the outdoor chapel. Umbrellas went up as the crowd followed the Precious Cross, the Kursk Root Icon, the Myrrh-Streaming Icon of St. Anna, and the Icon and Holy Relics of St. Panteleimon.

A large, open-sided tent, adjoining the outdoor chapel, provided shelter for the veneration of the icons and an extended space for His Eminence Metropolitan LAURUS to celebrate the All-Night Vigil. Throngs of attending clergy and altar servers formed a loose half-circle around the icons with an overflow of worshippers standing with them, barely under cover. Close by, two other large tents were also filled with worshippers, and still, there were many gathered under a crush of umbrellas and in the little booths set up for displays. Lines of believers with their whole families formed in the side tents for priests to hear their confessions during the vigil. Rain continued into the night, but the faithful who had come from as far away as New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, South Carolina and many mid-west states, kept their candles burning.

In one of the little side booths, Hexaemeron displayed its plans for a new church, bell tower, trapeza (dining hall), monastic cells, bookstore and workshops. The model of the church created by Hexaemeron architect, Thomas Smith, survived the rain, but his six detail drawings of the complex perished.

Sunday morning was sunny and bright for Holy Hours and Hierarchical Divine Liturgy that began at 9 a.m. and ended at about 1 p.m. During the service, Fr. Andrew was elevated to the priesthood and Fr. Sergius to the Deaconate. Shouts of Axios, Axios, Axios! (He is Worthy!) resounded through the hills.

At the banquet following Divine Liturgy, Fr. Seraphim and Fr. Alexander recognized the work of Thomas Smith and Hexaemeron. Holding the model aloft, Fr. Alexander expressed his hopes that God would bless the monastery to be able to accomplish the plan.

“It seems it always rains on our feast day,” Fr. Alexander said, “but after six years here in West Virginia, we know how to prepare. We have many contingency plans in place: for light, intermittent rain; for steady, light rain; for heavy, intermittent rain; and for heavy, continuous rain. Some day soon, we pray, you will be able to celebrate this feast with us inside this beautiful church that Thomas Smith of Hexaemeron has designed.”

His Eminence Metropolitan LAURUS concluded the banquet ceremonies with a sobering message about “the coming days of tribulation.” He spoke warmly about the benefits of God’s priests and faithful people drawing together in unity, referring to the normalization of relationships between the Russian Church Abroad and the Russian Patriarchate.

The majority of the pilgrims in the crowd that weekend were Russian immigrants, who have known first hand of the persecutions of Christians in the last century. His Eminence, now in his eighties, has seen many things that the young children at the gathering could not imagine. For their parents and grandparents who followed Metropolitan LARUS to West Virginia that weekend, the Kursk Root Icon symbolizes the survival and triumph of the Orthodox faith.

Over 750 years old, the Kursk Root Icon has survived two devastating invasions by the Mongols and the Bolshevik Revolution. Often referred to as Protectoress of the Russian Diaspora, it now resides in the Synodal Cathedral Church of the Mother of God of the Sign in New York City, the residence of the First Hierarch of the Russian Church Abroad, His Eminence Metropolitan LARUS.

Brief Story of the History of the Kursk Root Icon

• The Tartars (Mongols) invaded Russia in the 13th century. The province of Kursk was devastated and emptied of people. Kursk became a wilderness where residents of the city of Rylsk often hunted. A hunter discovered the icon lying face down in the roots of a tree. When he picked it up, he recognized it as the icon of the Mother of God Sign, similar to the one venerated in Novgorod. At that moment an abundant spring of pure water gushed forth. This first miracle took place Sept. 8, 1295. The hunter constructed a small wooden shrine for the icon.
• Residents of Rylsk began to visit the place and many miracles were recorded. Prince Vasily Shemyaka ordered the icon brought to Rylsk and a church was built in the city to house the icon. But it disappeared mysteriously and appeared in the original place of its appearance near Kursk River. This was repeated several times until the citizens of Rylsk realized the icon should remain near where it was found.
• Pilgrimages continually streamed to the site to venerate the icon and to attend services celebrated by the priest Bogoliub, who dwelt at the site of the wooden chapel and struggled there in asceticism.
• In 1383, the province of Kursk was again overrun by a new invasion of Tartars. They decided to set fire to the chapel, but it refused to burn, even though they piled up fuel all around the chapel. The invaders accused Fr. Bogoluib of sorcery. The pious priest denounced them and pointed to the icon of the Mother of God. The Tartars seized the holy icon and cut it in two, casting the pieces to either side. The chapel then caught fire and the Fr. Bogoliub was carried off a prisoner to tend the Tartar flocks.
• Emissaries of the Moscow Tsar eventually ransomed Fr. Bogoluib. He returned to the former chapel site and found the pieces of the icon the Tartars had desecrated. When he held the two pieces together, they miraculously became fused; the split is still visible to this day. A new chapel was built on the original site of the icon's appearance and here it remained for about 200 years.
• In 1597 Tsar Theodore Ivanovich ordered Kursk revived. He had heard of the miracle-working icon and had it brought to Moscow where it was met with great solemnity. The Tsaritsa Iren Theodorovna adorned the holy icon with a precious riza and the Tsar ordered it set in a silver-gilt frame upon which were depicted the Lord of Hosts and prophets holding scrolls in their hands. The icon was subsequently returned to Kursk and, with the close cooperation of the Tsar, a monastery was founded on the site of the chapel. A church, dedicated to the Life-bearing Spring, was built above the same spring that had appeared when the icon was first revealed and the monastery attached to it was called the Kursk Root Hermitage in honor of the manifestation of the icon at the root of the tree.
• In 1676, the icon of the Mother of God of the Sign was borne to the Don River to bless the forces of the Don Cossacks who were fighting against Moslem aggression from the Crimea.
• In 1684, the sovereigns and great princes Ivan and Peter Alexievich sent a copy of the miraculous icon of the all-holy Theotokos of the Sign to the Monastery of the Root. This copy was set in a silver-gilt frame and a command was made that this copy be borne wherever Orthodox warriors went into battle.
• March 1898, anarchists, wanting to undermine the faith of Orthodox believers, placed a bomb in the Cathedral of the Sign in Kursk. The force of the blast shattered the gilded canopy above the icon. The heavy marble base, constructed of several massive steps, was jolted out of position and split into several pieces. A huge metal candlestick, which stood before the icon was blown to the opposite side of the cathedral. A door of cast iron located near the icon was torn from its hinges and cast outside where it smashed against a wall and caused a deep crack. All the windows in the cathedral and even those in the dome above were shattered. But the holy icon remained intact and even the glass within the frame remained unbroken. Contrary to what the anarchist had hoped, the incident was added to the miracles associated with the icon and became a cause of great rejoicing.
• In 1918, during the Bolshevik revolution, the icon was stolen from the Cathedral of the Sign on April 12. It was discovered by a poor girl who found it on the edge of a well, wrapped in a sack. It had apparently been left there by the theft.
• October 1919, the White Army evacuated the city of Kursk guarding 12 monks who transferred the icon to the city of Belgoro. From there it was taken to Taganrog, then to Ekateri Nodar, then to Novorossiisk. When the White Army evacuated southern Russian and the Ukraine, Metropolitan Anthony Khrapovitsky gave permission for Bishop Theophan of Kursk to take the icon by steamship to Thessalonica in March 1920.
• April 3, 1920, Bishop Theophan took the icon to Pec, the ancient capital of Serbia. After an interim of returning the icon to the Crimea, it came to rest with Bishop Theophan in the Serbian monastery of Yazak on Frushkaya Mountain.
• In 1927, the icon resided in the Russian church of the Holy Trinity in the city of Belgrade. With the blessing of the Synod of Bishops, Bishop Theophan bore the icon around to various places where Russians of the Diaspora dwelt.
• During World War II, when Belgrade was being bombarded, the miraculous icon became a rampart of hope for Serbia people.
• Autumn of 1944, together with those fleeing the godless regime sweeping Eastern Europe, the icon left Yugoslavia. From ruined Vienna it was borne to Carlsbad where the Russian Synod of Bishops had been evacuated.
• Spring of 1945 the icon was transferred to Munich.
• From Munich the icon was borne to Switzerland, France, Belgium, England, Austria, and many cities and camps in Germany itself. Subsequently, the icon was transferred to the New World where it had its permanent residence first in the New Kursk Hermitage in Mahopac, N.Y., and then in the Synod's Cathedral Church of the Mother of God of the Sign in New York City, the residence of the First Hierarch of the Russian Church Abroad.
• The holy icon proved to be an unending consolation to many thousands of people who were experiencing all the trials and tribulations of the latter years of World War II and continues today to console the Orthodox people in Diaspora.