A NOTE ON THE TEXT

On Monday, the first day of June, 1998, Howler in the Shadows, Crux Ansata, and I visited a small monastery just outside of Blanco in communion with the Russian Orthodox Church Abroad, a group of exiles and emigrants which broke away from the mother body of the Russian Orthodox Church in Russia due to the latter's collaborations with the Communist Russian government and which has never reconciled with the Orthodox Church in Russia. This monastery is attached to an even smaller convent and lies a few miles outside Blanco, the county seat of Blanco County, Texas.

An icon at this monastery is said to have wept tears of myrrh intermittently since 1985, and it is this which we visited the monastery to see. While we did not see the icon in tears it was a very interesting trip, and the following is my journal entry reporting our visit. It is, of course, merely a common pilgrim's entry, and had I been visiting to investigate the authenticity of the icon's weeping it would have been more critical, and had I been investigating the importance of the icon to the monastery and the Orthodox Church as a whole it would have been vastly more comprehensive. I present it merely as it is.

Unfortunately, a number of details were left out, from the antics of the cows blocking our car on the way to the monastery to the processional fans in the church which the monk told us are icons of the cherubim and seraphim. I also forgot to mention that the practice of leaving votive body parts at shrines dates back beyond the Middle Ages to the pagan Romans and Etruscans. This is discussed in Prof. Ralph Merrifield's book, cited below. As far as the question of diabolic intervention goes, I've since learned that it is common practice in the Orthodox Churches to exorcise icons exhibiting miraculous signs to dispel any demonic influences.

This journal entry often makes clear my own ignorance of the Orthodox Churches, as well as my bias in favour of my own Roman Catholic Church. The reader should take this into account.

The phenomenon of weeping icons is not new; nor is it restricted to New Sarov. Miracle XCII of Sir E. A. Wallis Budge's One Hundred and Ten Miracles of Our Lady Mary: Translated From Ethiopic Manuscripts (London: Humphrey Milford, Publisher to the Oxford University Press, 1933) relates a fifteenth century Ethiopic Orthodox story of "an image of the VIRGIN MARY [which] wept for the sins of the world," and other reports of weeping icons and other images are scattered about in all areas of the Christian world in both Roman Catholic and the separated Churches. In the United States there have been a number of icons which have been said to have wept, perhaps the most famous being that of the Orthodox Saint Irene at New York's St. Irene of Chrysovalantou Greek Orthodox Church in Astoria, Queens, which was involved in a well-publicised theft around Christmas, 1993, covered extensively in the New York Times. More can be learned about the weeping icon we visited, that of St. Irene, and other weeping icons, at my website at http://www.oocities.org/ Athens/Olympus/9587/relics.html.

Christ of the Hills Monastery offers free tears of the weeping icon, absorbed in cotton, to any in need on a one-per-family basis. They are also distributed on the same basis to all pilgrims to the monastery who take the monastery tour. While Orthodox Christians should check with their proper authorities, Roman Catholics should consider these relics connected with an unapproved (although not necessarily condemned) Apparition and as such I do not believe they should venerate them, although I know of no specific injunction against using them to anoint people, especially the sick. As I am not a competent authority on this, those with questions should contact their local pastors. The tears and the pamphlet Shrine of the Blessed Virgin Mary can be obtained by request from the following address:

The monastery can also be reached at voice phone (210) 833-5363 or fax (210) 833-5813. The tears are free, although the monastery does accept donations and, of course, it would be polite to pay for postage.

A few minor changes have been made to the following diary entry. The only changes to content, however, were restricted to the corrections I made on 3 June to the description of the relative locations of buildings at the site. Minor spelling and grammatical corrections have been made, but I have kept the "quaint" -- although inconsistent -- ungrammatical capitalisation scheme with which I wrote. Also, two sketches have of necessity been omitted. One was a very rough sketch of the layout of icon stands in the Shrine of the Mother of God, while the other was of a pilgrim's cross I purchased at the icon store. This cross was in the form of a Russian Cross, which has three bars. The middle bar is set like the crossbar of a Latin Cross, that usually seen in Western Churches, both Catholic and Protestant, and is the bar to which Christ's hands were nailed. Another bar above this represents the title which Pilate nailed above Our Lord reading in Latin "Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews" (John 19:19-22). The third bar, lower on the cross and representing that to which Our Lord's feet were nailed, is slanted with the right side pointing up and the left side pointing down, representing the good and bad thieves crucified on the right and left sides of Our Lord (Luke 23:39-43). In addition to these omissions, as this is a private journal entry, I have freely left out anything I felt like, including personal and irrelevant observations and information, marking these areas with ellipses. I have also replaced SoB writers' real names with their handles. With these exceptions, however, the following unrefined and often awkward text is how this entry appeared in my messily printed journal, minus the scratch-outs and arrows.

1 June 1998 -- Monday -- 11:51 p.m. -- Leander

Today, after no small amount of wandering through Austin while trying to figure out which of the Highway 290's to take to get to Blanco, Howler in the Shadows, ansat, and I visited Christ of the Hills Monastery in New Sarov, just outside of Blanco, for the express purpose of seeing the Weeping Icon. Sights along the way, expectation, and the gift of good company made the trip seem quite short.

New Sarov is perched atop one of those oddly-shaped uneven hills so characteristic of the Hill Country which hide their true natures until, turning a bend or rounding the top, one is stunned by the beautiful vista opened up below and across the gulfs between the next in a series of hilltops and the one upon which one stands and yet was barely aware of climbing. It is almost like opening the curtains of a high window, and it is ironic that we had come here to see what the Orthodox call a window into Heaven.

Passing a small roadside shrine with a roofed icon of Christ on the way down the country road leading to the monastery, as well as a similar roofed icon at the entrance to the monastery grounds, we pulled up to the small cluster of buildings making up the area of the monastery open to casual visitors at about 3:30-3:45 p.m. The visible buildings consisted of a building to the right of unknown function but which I assume to have been a warehouse of some sort due to the presence of a UPS truck in front of its open door; a small, open covered shrine to Mary located to our left containing a large icon and behind which were visible the large black-on-white crosses which I knew from my previous visit to be the monastery's cemetery; the icon store/gift shop to the right and just beyond it a boat-shaped building of unknown function; and to the left beyond the small open shrine the Shrine of the Blessed Virgin Mary housing the weeping icon, with an adjacent building of unknown purpose from which came the sounds of the washing of dishes. On the left a little past the cemetery and the small open shrine and between them and the Shrine of the Weeping Icon stood the monastery's church, and on a slope down a path further down the main path stood the episcopal residence. I believe at least one more building of unknown purpose stood further down the main path, but of this I am not certain.

As we got out of our car we were met by an elderly man who I assume is a volunteer at the monastery who asked us if we had come to see the weeping icon. I answered yes . . . . [Soon afterwards he went to summon a monk.]

While waiting we looked about outside the shrine. In wall murals on the outside wall nearest us were representations of Christ, St. George, and a saint whom none of us recognised and whose icon bore a plaque dedicating it to the memory of a parishioner in the place of the titles on the icon of St. George. Next to the shrine stood the large silverish metal dome which represents all that yet exists of the planned Basilica of the Blessed Virgin Mary. More would probably exist of this basilica had the building fund coffers not been emptied to pay for water during the drought of a year or so ago during which the monastery well and cisterns all went dry and there was no rain for over three years.

Where the monks and nuns were is something of a mystery, although the grounds are large and the hills don't permit a view of the entire area, but presently a young monk arrived who asked us where we were from and if we had visited the monastery before. He introduced himself, and ansat remembers his name as Zeke, although I missed it entirely. He then took us within the shrine.

Passing through the outside doors one enters first an anteroom with icons on either side of a door leading into the shrine proper. Several icons of Christ, Mary, and other saints are in this first room, and I believe two, but perhaps three or more specific icons were saluted by the monk with a series of Signs of the Cross and kisses to the icons' bases before the second door was opened and we passed into the main room of the shrine. This room, too, was panelled with icons, and some of these were saluted in the same way as those in the antechamber. In the central area of the shrine immediately after entering one comes across a solid podium holding an icon of Christ, and in the same place to the front of the shrine stood the podium holding the weeping icon. As I recall this, in turn, was flanked by other icons of Christ and Mary, some distance from the weeping icon.

The weeping icon stood about chest-high and was contained within a frame not unlike some of the icons on the walls. Within the frame with the icon were a number of rosaries and religious medals and what might have been a couple of chotkis, the knotted prayer-ropes used in the Orthodox Church while saying the "Jesus Prayer." (I say perhaps because it seems the Russians like to make both rosaries and chotkis with those knotted ropes, making it somewhat difficult to sort them out when in a bundle.) Above the icon was a wooden cross with images of body parts and the like in tin or a like material nailed to it, and either tied or otherwise attached about the podium or stand were a number of plaques in a silverish metal, some depicting body parts (such as eyes, hearts, and limbs), some entire human forms, and some words in Greek or Cyrillic. (I did not look closely enough to tell.) I asked the monk about these and he said each represents a miracle, presumably associated with the icon. This makes them exactly analogous to the votive images of body parts of humans and animals popularly hung in thanks for or in anticipation of miracles at saint's shrines in the Middle Ages, as discussed in Prof. Ralph Merrifield's The Archaeology of Ritual and Magic (New York: New Amsterdam, 1987), pgs. 88-93, a practice still living in some areas under the Roman Church as well. Indeed, the cross above the icon could easily be mistaken for a Mexican miracle cross, with the exception of the fact that, as I recall, the monastery's cross was a Greek one while the Mexican crosses tend to be Latin in design.

After opening the glass front of the frame and offering a silent prayer, the monk explained to us the history of the icon, much as it is presented in the pamphlet Shrine of the Blessed Virgin Mary which they give to visitors, with the added fact that the icon weeps almost every day, although it can go for up to two weeks without weeping. This was much more often than I had expected, and I wonder how this compares to other weeping icons. He also said that it had last wept around 2:00 that same day, which is, ironically enough, the time we had originally hoped to arrive at the monastery. Interestingly, he also said that when the weeping first occurred one of the monks' first concerns was to make sure it was Divine and not diabolic intervention, which is the first time I have heard of an Orthodox religious suggesting that Satan might make icons weep.

One of the most striking things about the icon was how thoroughly new-looking it was. Although I knew it was written in 1983, I had expected it to be antiquated in execution. Instead it was thoroughly modern and looked much like the icon of Christ I bought at Alba House in New York which was written at Holy Protection Orthodox Monastery in Geneva, Nebraska. (The New Sarov icon was written in California.)

Of course, like most visitors, pilgrim and curiosity-seeker alike, my mind drifted to thoughts as to whether or not the icon truly wept through Divine intervention. Of course, the frame and solid podium would have made trickery easier, but these are not signs of trickery, for many of the other icons, both in the Shrine and in the Church, are housed the same way. While trickery is the only option besides supernatural intervention, as no other options that I am aware of besides psychic forces (which I don't believe to be the cause) have been put forward, trickery would also suggest that more than one monk would be involved in the trickery, and cabals are rare in such things. It is unfortunate that the Eastern Churches seem to lack the ecclesiastical review committees necessary in the Roman Church, but in the absence of such I can make no personal judgements in favour of one argument or the other. Either way, standing in that shrine that day I felt closer to God, and it is this that is truly important.

In the shrine the monk gave us each a card with hymns to the icon identical to those in the Shrine pamphlet and another card bearing on one side the following:

The Call of the Mother of God:
1.) Daily Repentance, Weekly Confession
2.) Fasting, (Wednesday and Friday)
3.) Ceaseless Prayer (see Way of A Pilgrim)
4.) Love God, Love Neighbor. Live the Gospel of Jesus Christ
5.) Refrain From All Judgement

The monk spoke very highly of both this prayer and Way of a Pilgrim, which strengthens my desire to read the book all the more.

The monk offered to anoint us all with the icon's tears, an offer which I readily took him up on. Taking a piece of cotton soaked in the myrrh tears from the pile of cotton at the base of the icon there to catch them, the monk anointed my forehead and the backs and the palms of each of my hands, blessing me by name in the Name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. I don't know his exact words, but those printed in one of the leaflets later given to us ("Tear of the Mother of God Instructions") read:

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, through the intercessions of the Mother of God, be healed.

This blessing is meant for the ill, but the blessings, I'm sure, are similar. He then anointed ansat in the same manner. When he got to Howler in the Shadows, Howler informed him he was not a Christian, but the monk told him that the blessing was open to all, regardless of faith, who want it, and Howler then accepted it. The monk took the tear-soaked cotton behind the partition behind the icon and came back without it, although I don't know what was done with it. Then, following a period of silent prayer, he closed the icon's frame, and we all left the Shrine.

Upon leaving the Shrine, upon the monk's suggestion, we went on to the main church. Here, too, we passed through an antechamber where the monk saluted some of the icons before entering the main body of the church. We all removed our shoes before entering here, but merely to save the floor; not for a theological reason. Here stood icon stands (much like that holding the weeping icon) holding an icon of Mary on our left and one holding an icon of Jesus on our right. The monk told us this is how the Congregation stands in the church -- men on the right, women on the left. Chairs and pews were entirely lacking. A pamphlet I picked up -- Anne K. Turley's The Orthodox Church: Heaven on Earth [--] explains that this represents humility, frees the worshippers to move to face particular icons, and allows for prostration during Mass. Between the congregation and the sanctuary stood the iconostasis, or "image stand," pierced, as the monk said with the icons, the windows to Heaven. A door which he opened to show us the altar is opened at high points of Mass. The Monk said the whole sanctuary is commonly referred to as the altar, meaning "raised space." On the altar proper . . . stands the tabernacle, just as in most Roman churches, as well as a book containing the four Gospels, covered by an altar cloth only a priest can remove. After closing the door once more we left the little church.

Before we left the monastery, the monk gave us each an envelope containing a plastic bag with a cotton ball soaked in the tears of the icon. . . . The envelope also contained:

-- "Tear of the Mother of God Instructions" (anointing instructions)

-- A short excerpt from the Shrine [of the Blessed Virgin Mary] pamphlet on the "History of the Icon" with an ad for mounted print reproductions of photos of the icon in tears

-- A copy of the Shrine pamphlet

-- A Mass intentions card

-- "St. Seraphim's Collection" icon catalogue

-- an ad for their biography of St. Seraphim and other books from their press

-- an envelope addressed to their monastery

I also bought one of the prints of the weeping icon advertised . . . as well as a Russian Pilgrim's Cross (which I wear now) . . .

. . . But I really don't think a miracle is the path to God. Those who go looking for miracles before coming to God can too easily either doubt even those miracles that are presented to them or merely live life from one miracle to the next, missing the true meaning of God's message. I believe that is the true gift of Faith -- the ability and the will to serve God in life's day-by-day toils, rather than only applauding Him when He puts on a good show. "Blessed are those who have not seen and have believed" (John 20:29). [Signed:] Marc A. Beherec 2 June 1998 -- 5:37 a.m.