The Lady of Kazan and its importance to Russia

In the Orthodox Church of Russia there is a special liturgy, or liturgical hymn (akathist), of Our Lady of Kazan. This was translated into English in 1963 with the Imprimatur of the Most Rev. Archbishop Leonty, Metropolitan of all America and Canada who had celebrated the Sacred Liturgy with the Icon of Kazan in Moscow before the revolution.

Identified Icon

Archbishop Leonty was one of those who positively identified the Icon of Our Lady of Kazan when it turned up in an English castle in 1953… having been transported out of Russia in a manner which to this day is a mystery. The Icon is in a special chapel at Fatima awaiting transportation back into Russia through the Blue Army of Our Lady of Fatima.

There are 13 sections to this hymn to be used at various times.

Conversions

The first is “a hymn of gratitude for the revelation of Thy Miraculous Icon, O Theotokos,” ending in Her special title at the conclusion of all the hymns: “O Zealous Protectress of the Christian Brethren.” (”Theo means “Mother of God”).

In the second stanza, Our Lady is praised because of the “newly converted city.” And this refers to the fact that Kazan was the Capital of the Mongol Empire when it was conquered by the Russians in 1552. The first Bishop, St. Guri, in nine years converted thousands of Moslems in the area shortly before the Icon was miraculously discovered. This is commemorated in the same Hymn in thanking Our Lady for Her triple vision to a young girl to reveal the location of the Icon, which was then taken to the Church of St. Nicholas and afterwards to the Cathedral of the Annunciation where it continued to be distinguished because of many miracles. In 1579, when the Icon was found, a copy was sent to Czar Ivan the Terrible and he had a cloister built on the spot. The girl to whom Our Lady had revealed the location of the Icon, together with her mother, ioined this cloistered community. These facts are commemorated in the third section of the hymn with such words of praise as:

“Rejoice O Thou Who dispells the darkness of evil with the revelation of your Icon;
Rejoice O Thou Who enlightens all with the rays of miracles;
Rejoice O Glory of Orthodoxy;
Rejoice O Mother of Chastity!”

And the usual ending:
“Rejoice O Zealous Protectress of the Christian Brethren.”

Source of Victory

One of the most interesting aspects of the history of the miraculous image of Our Lady of Kazan is celebrated in the fourth hymn praising Blessed Ermogen: “The narrator of the miracles of Thy Icon, O Theotokos, trying to cease the storm of troubles and treason started in the Russian land by the enemy.” And the hymn continues to bless Our Lady because Blessed Ermogen confided the Icon to the Orthodox Army as a shield and assurance of victory and remained firm in his faith of this victory until the time that he died as a martyr singing to God “Alleluia”.

Blessed Ermogen was the Patriarch of all Russia. He had been a parist priest in the St. Nicholas Church of Kazan when the Icon was discovered there and for this reason he was able to cause all the Russian people to look upon Our Lady of Kazan as their special Protectress and Patroness. He was captured by the enemy in 1612, and starved to death.

One of the great saints of the Russian Church is St. Sergei who built the Holy Trinity Monastery in Zagorsk. He died in 1392, a hundred and fifty years before the Icon of Our Lady was discovered. And during the great battle upon which the freedom of Russia depended in 1612, St. Sergei appeared to Bishop Arseni and assured him that through the intercession of Our Lady of Kazan-which at this time had been brought from Kazan to be used at the head of the troops trying to free Moscow-the troops would be victorious. And on November 27th, 1612, the Kremlin was liberated. This victory is commemorated with a special celebration to .the Icon of Our Lady of Kazan on October 22nd (November 4th in the Gregorian calendar).

The next hymn commemorates the carrying of the Icon by Czar Peter in a great victory which decided the Czar to found a new Capital called St. Petersburg. Peter then installed the Icon of Kazan in the new city. However in 1811. the original was returned to Moscow by popular acclamation, and a copy was installed in the great Basilica of St. Petersburg. And it was this latter church which the Communists changed into an atheist museum after they took over Russia in 1917. From this church, of Our Lady of Kazan, now an atheist museum, the official atheistic magazine “Science and Religion” is published today.

Moscow Freed from Napoleon

The 6th hymn sings:

“Standing before Thy Most Holy Icon the hierarchy of Bishops, Kings and Princes of all peoples-monks and laity-confess, O Lady Theoto Thy great mercy, for Thou art protecting cities, sheltering convents, defending villages.”

After 1811, when the Icon of Kazan was returned from St. Petersburg to Moscow to be placed in the special Basilica built for it on Red Square, it remained there permanently until the revolution. According to the notes in the actual book of the Liturgy of the Icon, in the year 1900 the value of the adornment of the Icon was estimated at about 35,450 rubles.

Unmasker of Atheism

The seventh hymn commemorates the great gift given by Blessed Alexander the First, Czar of Russia, to adorn the Basilica of Our Lady in Moscow “for the deliverance of his kingdom”. Some of the exclamations to Our Lady in this hymn are:

“Rejoice O Protection of the Russian land, O Defence and Bulwark of Orthodoxy in Russia; O Invulnerable Armour of the Confessors, O Unmasker of A theism …. !”

The hymns become more intimate as the liturgy nears its end. The eighth hymn begins:

“It is strange and doubtful for unbelievers to hear how the springs of grace and the savor of Thy living Presence come from Thy Icon; but we, the faithful, believing the words spoken by Thee, O Sovereign Lady, through the first painted Icon (”With Thee shall be My Grace and Power”) do hope that Thy Grace abides in this Icon also. Piously standing before it, we kiss it, for the adoration of the Icon is transmitted to you its prototype, and Thy Grace works tokens and miracles through this Icon to all those who come with faith and sing to God: Alleluia.” And the exclamations to Our Lady become more and more beautiful. Some in this hymn are:

“Rejoice, O Container of the Measureless One, Bearer of the Deity and all Its Fullness, Thou who savest the world from soul destroying starvation, because Thy prayer is powerful before Thy Son and God, O Thou who hast adopted us at the cross of Thy Son, O Mediatrix of obtaining the Eternal goods…”

“Of All in Need”

Indeed, of the 144 different salutations to Our Lady in this Liturgy, plus the one repeated in each hymn (”O Zealous Protectress of the Christian Brethren”) one could hardly imagine a richer and more beautiful litany to Our Lady.

The seventh hymn which acknowledges the mercies of Our Lady and the deliverance “from the Gauls and the twelve nations” refers to the victory over Napoleon which was attributed directly to the use of the Image of Our Lady of Kazan.

The concluding prayer of this Liturgy begins as follows:

“O Most Holy Sovereign Lady, Theotokos Queen of Heaven and Earth, more exalted than angels and archangels, the purest of all creation Immaculate Virgin Mary, the good helper of all the world, the bulwark of all mankind, and the salvation of all those in need.”

“Soften The Hearts…”

Having thus saluted Our Lady before the Icon of Kazan, the hymn begs that Our Lady will “soften the hearts of evil rnen who have risen up against its and warm them with the love of Christ”.

As we review the tremendous devotion of the people of Russia to Our Lady through this very ancient and miraculous picture perhaps no “miracle” in its history can seem more remarkable than that the Icon should have survived intact after the Basilica built to enshrine it on Red Square was destroyed to prove “that God does not exist”.

There is now a green plot of grass on red square in front of Lenin’s tomb where the Basilica of Our Lady of Kazan had stood as the national Marian Shrine of Russia. When it was destroyed, the atheists notified all the people of Russia to come and see that there was no God. As great sledges and rams knocked down the church, loud speakers blared: “You see, there is no God! We destroy the church of the so-called protectress of Russia, and nothing happens!”

“Russia Will Be Converted”

Most extraordinary, at least to us, is that the Blue Army of Our Lady of Fatima, with no dues among its members and virtually no organization to speak of anywhere in the world, should have acquired the icon to offer it back as a free gift to the people of Russia.

The blue Army counts millions of members around the world, but they are “members” only in the sense that they have promised to do the three essential things Our Lady asked at Fatima… AT THE VERY TIME OF THE COMMUNIST REVOLUTION… to bring about the conversion of Russia and world peace.

The late Father Pio, whose cause for beautification has been officially initiated, once said: “Russia will be converted when there is a Blue Army member for every Communist.”

And through this completely spiritual army… which does not have a single “paid” officer in the entire world… the fabulously valuable Icon of the LIBERATRIX AND PROTECTRESS OF RUSSIA is on its way back to the Russian people.

Frank Dorland 1963

(1) Major credit for getting the Icon of Kazan to Fatima is due to an art conservator in San Francisco and to the Blue Army Chaplain there, the Rev. Karl Patzelt S.J. The latter knew the value of the Icon and when approached by Art Conservator, Frank Dorland, he persuaded the National Center of the Blue Army of Our Lady in the United States to take action.

In May of 1971, Mr. Dorland said: “As an Art Conservator, I considered it my obligation to see that this Icon went to a place where it would be properly honored. Furthermore. I felt that I should accept no financial return for my services in conjunction with the Icon, but only remuneration for expenses during the years that it was in my care.” Mr. Dorland. who is not a Catholic and not Russian, said that the longer the Icon remained in his custody in San Francisco, even though it was usually in the vault of the Bank of America, he felt that there was something “supernatural” about it.

(2) Many anti-Communists outside of Russia think of the Russian Church as a “tool” of atheistic Communism. They cannot believe that the present Orthodox priests of Russia could have avoided being subverted and made tools of the atheistic faith during the past fifty years. And this is indeed what the Communists would want everyone to think, if only to prevent those outside of Russia from dealing with the Russian Church.

However, it becomes increasingly evident that agents within the Church are usually known to the sincere churchmen who have withstood persecution and who have preserved the Sacraments in Russia. The Unity Secretariat in Rome, working closely with Pope Paul VI, is convinced that the core of the Russian Orthodox Church has not only withstood the fifty years of atheistic persecution, but is now showing a new purity and strength. The persecution continues actively, but this year the Komsomol, which was previously allowed to disrupt Easter services inside the churches, could demonstrate and harass the priests and faithful only from the outside. The Soviet police “contained” the demonstrations.

Where, in Moscow, Would No Atheist Building Stand?

By John M. Haffert

You get an amazing reaction in Moscow if you ask the simple question: “Where is the Basilica of Our Lady of Kazan-The National Marian Shrine of Russia?”

One official guide went into shocked silence.

“But there must be such a Basilica,” we insisted. “That is a fact of history!”

“I know of no such Basilica in Moscow,” the Intourist guide answered nervously..

“Is it not in the Kremlin?” we asked.

The guide answered hesitantly: “Could you mean the Church of Our Lady’s Intercession in front of the Kremlin?”

Guide Didn’t Know!

A University student of about twenty years of age whom we met in Red Square the night before had said: “I think it is in the Kremlin”. But the guide didn’t know.

Our Lady of Kazan is the “Liberatrix and Protectress of Russia” and a special Basilica had been built for Her in Moscow. So where could it be? Was it possible that it had simply disappeared? We had also heard before coming to Russia that this same Basilica had been turned into an atheist museum, as in the case of a Basilica of the same title in Leningrad.

Could all this information have been false?

Kazan Not There

The next day we again asked the guide who had meanwhile promised to make inquiries for us. By now both she and the answer were selfcomposed:

“Yes, you must mean the Basilica of the Intercession of Our Lady, built by Ivan the Terrible after the victory of Kazan over the Tartars. And that is the church with the seven towers on Red Square in front of the Kremlin.”

At the earliest opportunity we visited this church (now a museum) but there was no sign anywhere of Moscow Cathedral, a Mockery to the Atheists?

(Author’s Note: Several asked if I were not afraid to go to Russia for the crowning of Our Lady of Fatima there last May 13th because I had written the best-selling book “Russia Will Be Converted” and had been described ill the official Soviet magazine “Science and Religion” as a leader of the cold war. Although I may have had reason to be concerned, I cannot adequately express the satisfaction in having seen with my own eyes the green miracle on Red Square, and the public homage in Moscow’s Cathedral to Our Lady of Kazan.)

Our Lady of Kazan… not in any picture on the dozens covering the several iconostases in the various chapels.

Completely perplexed, we asked the Chaplain of the American Embassy who had been in Moscow for the past several years. To our great amazement, he, too, had never seen the Basilica of Our Lady of Kazan!

He did know, of course, about the Icon and its importance. But he felt sure THERE WAS NO BASILICA OF OUR LADY OF KAZAN IN MOSCOW!

The Unbelievable Answer

Through discreet inquiries, we discovered the unbelievable explanation.

The Basilica of Kazan had stood at the entrance to Red Square, diagonal to the spot where Lenin’s tomb now stands.

After the 1917 Revolution, the atheistic government invited the people of Russia to Red Square for a demonstration that “God does not exist”.

Thousands (most of them organized) were there, and a battering-ram… in the presence of a vast crowd… knocked down the Basilica of Our Lady of Kazan, “Liberatrix and Protectress of Russia”.

Loud speakers blared.

“You see there is no God! We publicly destroy the Church of Russia’s ‘Protectress’, and nothing happens… because God does not exist!”

But Something Did.

Everything precious had been previously removed from the destroyed basilica, including the original miraculous Icon which had been carried in major battles for hundreds of years and was then (and is now) revered throughout Russia as the Country’s Liberator and Protector.

Why the atheists did not destroy the Icon, we may never know. They now claim priests removed it. Others say that it was sold with other church articles to raise money for the revolution because it is decorated with over one-thousand precious jewels. But if this were so, why were not the stones simply removed, as in the case of the Icon of Our Lady of Vladimir? Stripped of the rizza and jewels, Our Lady of Vladimir is now in an art museum while the rizza all its jewels apparently intact -is in the Kremlin Museum.

In any event, a few years later the Icon of Kazan emerged intact (rizza and all) in a mid-European sale of “stuff” out of Russia. It was bought by a South African millionaire, and then went to Farleigh Castle in England where by chance the Grand Duchess Zenia recognized it as the original Icon of Kazan. Priests who had actually handled the Icon in Moscow verified this identification. One of them was the Patriarch Leonty. Experts then subjected the Icon to all manner of tests. There could be no doubt: the original miraculous Icon of Kazan, “Liberatrix and Protectress of Russia”, was now decorating the walls of an English castle!

“Come Down From the Cross”

What the atheists did on Red Square in 1918, when before a crowd they destroyed the church of Russia’s Patroness to prove there was no God, is reminiscent of the shouts of the non-believers at the foot of .the Cross:

“If Ye be the Son of God, come down from the cross!”

And what happened afterwards in Moscow was as quiet, and in an analogical sense, almost as imperceptibly effective during the first few decades of the atheist “victory” as the Resurrection.

First, the Communists did not succeed in building anything on the spot where they had destroyed the Kazan Basilica! Today there is a plot of grass-nothing else!… on that valuable ground opposite the Satanic Shrine of the Tomb of Lenin!

Is is any wonder that an Intourist guide gets nervous when you ask: “Where is the Basilica of Our Lady of Kazan?!”

Stalin decided to build a skyscraper for the Komsomol in the heart of Moscow, at the foot of his great university, in place of Russia’s biggest church: a Church of the Holy Saviour.

There, too, no walls would stand after the Church was destroyed!

After repeated efforts, which resulted in whispers throughout the country that the atheist walls would not stand where walls honoring God had been destroyed, Stalin had a heated swimming pool built on that spot. It was the largest outdoor heated pool in the world, filling the area of what had once been Moscow’s largest church.

During most of the year, mist hanging over this vast pool, like a cloud of smoke, gives it the appearance of something infernal.

Now At Fatima

Most amazing, of course, is what happened to the Icon of Kazan, the original miraculous Icon which personified the faith and hope of millions of Russians in the intercession of the Mother of the Saviour for their freedom and protection.

The owner of Farleigh Castle in England was a Protestant who had an adopted, Catholic daughter. When her foster father died, she agreed to sell the Icon to the Orthodox Archbishop of San Francisco. The Russian Church in America carried on a nation-wide campaign to raise one-million dollars for this purpose. But they failed to raise the money and the Icon was on the verge of being sold to a museum because thousands of dollars had been spent in its protection, with armed guards accompanying it on the journeys through America in the effort to raise a million dollars to redeem it.

The Blue Army of Our Lady of Fatima, which was founded to carry out the conditions of Our Lady for the conversion of Russia, learned about the danger of the Icon of Kazan becoming a museum piece.”‘ Without hesitation, the leaders of the Blue Army signed a contract to redeem .the Icon. It is now at Fatima at the very spot where, in 1917, at the very time of the Atheist Revolution in Russia Our Lady appeared with a message for all the world:

“If my requests are not heard, error will spread from an atheist Russia throughout the entire world, formenting further wars, the good will be persecuted, and the Holy Father will suffer much. However, if my requests are heard, Russia will be converted and an era of peace will be granted to the world.”

Copies in Moscow Cathedral

The Communists now suggest that the Icon at Fatima is not the original one. But it would be impossible to be mistaken if one had ever seen the Icon before. No copy is like it. And the rizza, with its configuration of jewels, is positive identification. There is the diadem of emeralds given by Ivan the Terrible, and the crown of diamonds given by Catherine the Great. And there is a “presence” which can best be likened in our experience only to the “presence” of the Miraculous Image of Our Lady of Guadalupe. It is something no copies ever have.

Today, in the Cathedral of Moscow, the most prominent Icons are copies of this original picture of Our Lady of Kazan, now at Fatima.

One enormous copy (about 3 feet high) dominates the center of the right wall as you enter the Moscow Cathedral.”‘ A very old and impressive copy is enshrined right against the iconostasis on what would be our “gospel side” in the exact same location held on the other side by the Tomb of St. Sergei, who in an apparition spoke of the Icon of Kazan and of its use in the Liberation of Russia.

So in addition to the mockery of the empty green plot on Red Square, the main devotion today in the Moscow Cathedral is to Our Lady of Kazan, although there are at least 50 other icons of Our Lady ( all representing different titles as in our Litany of Loreto) elsewhere in the Cathedral.

And when will the original Icon of Our Lady of Kazan go back to Moscow?

This question was asked of the Blue Army by a member of Cardinal Willebrand’s Unity Secretariat in Rome who suggested that the Icon should go back to Russia now. The Blue Army then asked, and obtained permission, that the Icon will go back to Moscow when the Basilica from which ii was taken is restored.

“Sooner Than Most Think”

Some who have a sense of history may recall that after the East-West schism, the Amalfitani raided Constantinople and Greece and among other treasures stole the body of Saint Andrew. 1n the time of Michelangelo, the head of the saint was placed next to the tomb of his brother, St. Peter, under Michelangelo’s great dome in Rome.

1t was this same official of the Unity Secretariat who recently succeeded in having the head of Saint Andrew given back to the Greek Church. And concerning the restoration of the Icon of Kazan… when that green plot opposite Lenin’s tomb is again covered by the “national basilica of Russia’s Liberatrix and Protectress”, he said:

“It may happen sooner than most people would think.”

Meanwhile a copy of Our Lady of Kazan, in blatant response to the atheist challenge, is honored at the centre of all icons in the Moscow Cathedral. It must be obvious to all that the militant atheists who still control Russia do not dare remove this copy of the Icon from the Cathedral because of .the Russian people. It is a constant, public reminder of the green miracle on Red Square. It recalls that favorite Russian mystery of Christ which ultimately defeated those who had taunted him to “Come down from the Cross!”: The Resurrection.

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