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A miracle was said to have happened today on Russia’s National Unity Day, which celebrates liberation from Polish invaders in 1612. A holy icon which was declared missing over 100 years ago was ’miraculously’ found. It is the icon which is connected to the events which the National Unity Day celebrates. Read below: “The Kazan Icon of the Mother of God, considered lost more than 100 years ago, was presented today at the Assumption Cathedral by Patriarch Kirill. The image is dated 1580. It was before him that Minin and Pozharsky prayed before battles with the Polish invaders. What happened today in the main Russian temple, the Assumption Cathedral in the Kremlin, is something that neither my head nor my heart can contain. It is a great miracle, which happens hardly once in the life of a whole generation. The Second Finding of the Kazan Icon of the Mother of God took place. Now I will try to explain what happened and what it means for each of us. The Kazan Icon was miraculously - by a revelation in a dream to a girl - found under the ashes of burnt Kazan in the 16th century. Since that time this icon has been in the knots of all Russian history: one of the most famous knots: with a copy of this icon and with a prayer in the Time of Troubles the militia marched to Moscow and restored the collapsed Russian state. The icon was with us and with the Russian army in many of our military and civilian challenges. In 1904 the icon was stolen from the Cathedral in Kazan. The thieves were quickly found - it was a drunken peasant retsedevist and his mistress. They testified that the precious risa was stripped off, and the icon was burned. Found on the ashes, in the fire it perished. Though not everyone believed it. This terrible event - by holy and spiritually sensitive people of that time considered correctly: the Virgin for departure from the God left His people. The chronicle of Russian catastrophe began at once: first the Russian-Japanese war and the first Russian revolution. Then God has given time for repentance. But the people did not realize much. And then came the tragedy of 1917 - the collapse of the country and decades of persecution. The same thing happened to Russia that happened to the Kazan icon: its precious risa was stripped off and burned. In the following year, 1918, the list of the Kazan icon, with which Minin and Pozharsky came to liberate Moscow during the Troubles, disappeared from the Kazan Cathedral on Red Square. The Bolsheviks destroyed the Kazan Cathedral. And on its place they built a toilet. And 105 years later this very list is miraculously found again. And again, like the first Kazan icon - from the ashes. From the ashes of our history and the entire fire of persecution and god-fighting of the twentieth century. This means only one thing: the Mother of God gives us a chance again today. She left us when our ancestors themselves began to persecute Her - in the pre-revolutionary cooling towards the faith and towards the spiritual treasure of the Church, which we possess. We barely through generations of atheistic captivity, madness, godlessness and the colossal terrible sacrifice of the holy martyrs killed in these persecutions on the Russian land, found - or rather, we are still finding - God again. And His Mother has come again. Through the prayers of the saints - those who were killed for the faith and those who are still alive and again glorify Her. She came at the time of another terrible shock for all of us to say: “I am with you. And no one else is with you. She is giving us a chance again. And somehow I have no doubt that this time it is the last one.“
