The Biggest Miracle I Ever Heard of

Philippa posted a comment to my last blog about a woman at her church who'd had a lump on her thyroid, and after she prayed about it, it went away. The doctor couldn't explain it.

As I mentioned, during that fall at Jordanville I also cracked my wrist. Four days after "treatment" (they put it in a splint, but didn't put a cast on it), it was still throbbing, and no pain-killers were working on it. On the Thursday morning, the Kursk Root Icon was being brought to the school for the students to venerate, before it left the monastery for Australia. I had heard that this was a miracle-working icon, so as I venerated it, I touched my wrist to the icon, hoping that the Theotokos would take away the pain. As I lowered my wrist, I felt bones rearranging themselves, accompanied by a gentle radiant warmth; holding my breath, I went back to class, picked up my pen, and began to take notes. And I had not been able to write with that hand at all.

Later on in the day, I was telling one of the teachers about my experience, and she recalled a "whopper": It seems that a local Matushka and her two children were out running errands, and as they crested a hill, they found someone in their lane, hurtling towards them. Their car was totaled, and all three ended up in the hospital in comas. The little boy came out of his first; the mother was next; and a few days later, when she was able to process information, the doctors took her in to see her little girl, three years old. The child was in a deep coma, and the doctors explained that from the severe impact of the head-on, her brain had basically turned into water; they showed the x-rays to the mother, and advised her to have her child taken off life support.

The mother knew that the Kursk Root icon was visiting the monastery, so she called, asking for prayers. Next thing anyone knew, seven Orthodox monks, in full regalia, marched into the ICU, holding the icon; surrounded the child's bed; and proceeded to offer a Service of Supplication to the Kursk Root Icon.

At the time I heard this story, the little girl was seven years old, had just completed second grade with top grades, and was doing all the normal seven-year-old stunts that stop any mother's heart.

(By the way -- I love how they talk about icons generally: "The icon was visiting the monastery, the icon is travelling to Australia, Father So-and-So is accompanying the icon...." It took me awhile to grasp that the person portrayed in any given icon inspires a flesh-and-blood human being to pick it up and take it someplace, therefore, the icon itself initiates the action; but I still get a charge out of hearing it expressed so clearly. A Westerner would have a real problem with this concept!)