Lady Theotokos of Tikhvin - Baptism Gifts

The icon of Our Lady of Odigitria Tikhvinskaya repeats the miraculous image revealed in Lydda. Tradition informs us that St. the apostles Peter and John asked the Mother of God to come to the consecration of the temple built in Her honor by Aeneas, healed by the Apostle Peter. The Blessed Virgin could not be present at the celebration, but on the column of the temple miraculously appeared Her face. In the VIII century, Saint Herman, the patriarch of Constantinople orders a copy from the miraculous image that comes to Constantinople. In the era of iconoclasm St.. Herman, after suffering persecution for the veneration of icons, sends the icon through the waters to Pope Gregory. The image was found near Rome at the mouth of the Tiber and placed in the Cathedral of St. Peter.

After this event the Lidda icon also received the name of Rome. The shrine returns to Constantinople under Queen Theodore (842-855) and is kept in the Khalkopratian Church of the Blessed Virgin. The legend of the Roman icon could be read on the first Sunday of Lent on the day of the Triumph of Orthodoxy, when the restoration of icon-worship at the Seventh Ecumenical Council is recalled. In Russia, the Tikhvin icon, outwardly corresponding to the Roman one, was revealed in 1383.

On the site of the phenomenon of the icon was built a wooden church in honor of the Assumption of the Virgin. In 1560, under the order of Tsar Ivan the Terrible, a monastery was built at the temple. In 1613-1614 the Swedish troops, having captured Novgorod, repeatedly tried to destroy the monastery, but the abode was saved by the intercession of the Mother of God. The icon takes on a special significance in the 15th-17th centuries, when the idea of Moscow as the successor to Byzantium ("Moscow is the Third Rome") spreads.

Two symmetrical branches of acanthus shoot, completing the frame of the oval medallion, give this, as a whole, a monumental, oval image a shade of inimitable nobility. The title of an elegant icon in the form of a cartouche framed by acanthus leaves was decided as the eight-pointed Mother of God, decorated with the vestments of the Blessed Virgin on the images. On the back of the icons is the final fragment of the prayer to the Theotokos of Tikhvin: "You are fights, Mistress, glory of the heavens and the hope of the earth, You are our hope in Boza and the Intercessor of all who come to you with faith.

To You we also pray to You, as an almighty helper, to ourselves and each other and our whole belly, now and forever, and to the ages of ages. Amen". The text of this prayer asks "mentors and humility, love and harmony to the spouses, obedience to the children," therefore before the icon of Our Lady of Tikhvin you can pray for the well-being and health of children.