On October 6, 2007, at 10:30 pm, a small, 7 by 9 inches, print copy of the Iveron icon of the Mother of God, gifted to Subdeacon Nektarios by the ROCOR Hawaii parish priest, Anatole Lyovin, started streaming myrrh in the former’s house. Subsequently the icon was taken to the parish church and presented to the community on October 14—old calendar feast of the Protection of the Mother of God.
In June of 2008, after it was verified by bishops, the "Hawaiian" Myrrh-streaming Iveron Icon was officially recognized by the Russian Orthodox Church as miraculous and worthy of veneration and was given the blessing and encouragement to travel to the various churches and monasteries of Holy Orthodoxy. Since June of 2008, the Iveron Icon has been to over 1000 churches in North America of all (canonical) jurisdictions and has been venerated by millions of people throughout the United States, Canada, Europe, and the world.
Numerous miracles have been attributed to the Theotokos through this "humble little Icon," hundreds of verified accounts were collected, and are indeed miraculous. Physical and spiritual healings have included the healing of blindness and eye disease, cancer, demonic possession, paralysis, kidney disease, chronic pain, and debilitating viruses. Yet, wherever the holy Icon goes, the Grace of Our Lord Jesus Christ and of His Holy Mother abounds.
We present a few documented miracles and the testimony of the current parish priest, Fr. Athanasius Kone, about his own miraculous experiences with the icon.
Pascha 2019
It’s actually a very small, very inexpensive icon. It’s just paper, which is actually astonishing, because after 11 years of streaming myrrh, the paper hasn’t diminished or faded or got ruined. This icon is actually kept in a wood kiot, in a case, that has cloth with plastic inside to keep the myrrh from streaming out, because it streams so much myrrh that there has to be a way to protect the icon and catch the myrrh. The volumes of myrrh are astounding.
It [the myrrh] comes right out of the icon and it’s not oil, it’s something else.
Our mission is very small and very poor and it’s not in a safe neighborhood, so we actually don’t keep the icon at the church, it’s kept at the house of Subdeacon Nektarios. So the sad, sad thing is that we have this miracle-working icon and our church is very, very small and impoverished; it’s just a storefront.
On Pascha this year, the icon was brought to church about 9:00 pm on Great and Holy Saturday. The icon was actually streaming so much myrrh, both this year and last year, that the people who brought it to church had to put it in a plastic bag because the myrrh was getting everywhere. By the time it got to church in a 20-minute drive, it had left enough myrrh in the shopping bag alone that it filled a jar. And so when the icon comes to church, the priest is dressed in his phelonion and epitrachelion and he takes and greets the icon like he’d greet a bishop. He goes through the royal doors, and as the hymn of the Icon is sung, he blesses the four sides of the altar, puts the icon on the analoi, and censes it. And so this year, when I grabbed the icon, it was like grabbing a towel that is completely saturated with moisture, and there’s nothing left you can put in it; when you grab it, it just leaks everywhere all over you. And so this is what it did. As I put the icon over the altar, it left myrrh, like a constant stream of myrrh all over the altar, so it had maybe a good half-cup of liquid over it. Even today, my vestments are still saturated wet with myrrh from Pascha. And last year, it actually soaked through my vestments. I had my riassa, sticharion, phelonion, and epitrachelion as I was dressed up for Liturgy, and by the time I went around the altar in about a minute, it soaked through all those layers and made my skin wet with myrrh.
The icon stops streaming myrrh
The icon will stop streaming myrrh every year on Palm Sunday and won’t start streaming myrrh again until the Liturgy on Great and Holy Saturday morning, the Vesperal Liturgy. She’ll start streaming again around that time, but she’ll dry up completely from Palm Sunday until that Saturday. During Passion Week she does not stream myrrh. And that’s astounding because the icon completely dries up.
But usually when people pray, she streams myrrh, and when there are not prayers going on, she’s not streaming myrrh. It does kind of react to the piety of people.
Alaska 2014
When I was a priest in Walla Walla, together with another priest who knew the keeper of the icon, we had this idea to get a blessing to take the icon on a trip in Alaska to all these ancient, old churches of America, all around Alaska and Kodiak Island. So this trip happened over two weeks.
And every day in Alaska, the cotton at the bottom of the kiot would fill up and become so saturated with myrrh that we would have to replace the cotton, and this usually takes maybe two weeks. In Alaska, we were seeing so many miracles. We were seeing people be healed, so many extraordinary miracles!
Pacific Ocean. We were taking the icon on a boat to go to some of the villages and this is the ocean in Alaska. And when we took the icon out on the boat, the ocean stopped and was completely calm like a lake, like the most flat, calm lake you could imagine. It was this way for three days. And as soon as we got done with our trip and we went on land and the boat turned around, there were two-foot waves.
Healing double-vision. When we were praying at St. Innocent cathedral in Anchorage, a lady who had double vision for 7 years came up and asked for a prayer. We held the icon over her and you could feel heat running down the icon into this lady; and she went home and took a nap and she woke up and her vision was completely healed. And her husband was an ophthalmological surgeon and he couldn’t fix it. There were miracles like this every day.
Streaming like a hose. When we were doing Liturgy in the village that’s on Spruce Island, the icon streamed so much myrrh that it ran down the outside of the icon on the glass, and it was running like somebody was pouring a hose, an invisible hose. People were just putting their scarves and their icons in the myrrh. It streamed for about 10 minutes. You could see it, everybody in the whole church could see it with their eyes. This really had a big impact.
Repentance. The most astonishing thing though wasn’t just the miracles of the icon, but that people were very repentant. We would see rough, coarse Alaskan fishermen in tears before the icon and asking to go to Confession. In one church, there was so much of a spirit of confession that a line of maybe 30 people formed, people demanding to go to Confession right then and there. We, as priests, had to hear their confessions that very night because people were so moved, and these were people who hadn’t been to Confession in 10, 7, 13 years. I mean, these were hardened Orthodox people that were estranged from the Church who came into the presence of the icon, and they were just completely repentant and broken and willing to make changes right then and there.
It’s an extraordinary miracle to have people repent like that.
There’s been a great repentance that comes with the icon, and I think that’s the most important thing to say. When God visits us, the first thing we experience is repentance, and the miracles are astounding and it’s such grace, but it’s also important that she always points people towards her Son, and that spirit of repentance seems to really be something extraordinary with the encounters.
People from other backgrounds
A lot of people here in the community are Roman Catholics, and they come to services, are astounded by the icon, and pray with great devotion and veneration. This is something that’s quite frequent in our parish. And to be honest, many people who are Catholics seem to get healed as well at times in front of the icon when they pray, so it’s odd, it’s astounding; the healings that happen are not just merely to people who are Orthodox and pious, it happens to people from all sorts of backgrounds and all sorts of different places of where they’re at spiritually. It happens all the time, so it’s kind of astounding.
Myrrh sent throughout the world
There are so many healings. I’ve heard and seen people be healed, and there have been people who literally are blind and have terrible cancers who prayed in front of the icon. We send myrrh out from the icon—we send it to whomever requests, we don’t charge—we send it free around the world, and people will get the cotton that has myrrh in it that’s dripped down from the icon. And they’ll anoint themselves and pray, and we’ll hear back many months later that they’ve been healed of something terrible.
The icon comforts and corrects
The icon does something to very much comfort everyone. It’s so hard to describe and so many miracles happen. But then the other side of it is that, many times the icon will go to parishes, and after the icon leaves, after a short amount of time, things that aren’t right all of a sudden get exposed. She comforts like a mother but also corrects and cleans up after she visits.
We don’t use the icon to the evangelism
The icon is for people who already believe in God and have a very strong belief in Him. It doesn’t seem to really help people who are agnostic or atheist. You can see it. When the very overly educated come to the icon, they can see the miracle right in front of them, and all they can think in their mind is, "How are they doing this?” they can’t just believe; they struggle so much. Instead of seeing and feeling grace, they just can’t accept it. We’re not using the icon to do evangelism. We’re servants, we’re trying to be servants to the icon, not use the icon.
The challenge with being a Western-minded person is that you’re so taught to think in a certain way and to be so scientific in your approach to things that you can’t see the most obvious miracle right in front of you, you can’t even sense the tremendous amounts of grace, and it’s astounding. Yes, one thing that was really apparent in Alaska when we were dealing with the native Alaskans, was that they don’t have that Western thinking. When they come into the icon, they stream tears and they repent, and you see gruff fishermen with tears streaming down, just merely from the icon landing on a runway in a plane. Before the icon is hardly out of the plane, they’re already sensing it. And they’re so touched that they’re actually moved to tears, there’s no thought whatsoever about how this could be real or not be real. There’s just this reaction to God’s grace. It’s pretty astounding!
Even if they didn’t go to church for 20 years and haven’t gone to Confession, they have just some innate understanding that this is something that is holy and they’re responding to it. And this is something that has been taught out of people here in the West, they don’t have it anymore, they’re so educated, they can’t respond with their hearts.
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I'm thirsty – miraculous healing
After the Great Canon service last night, I was asked to visit a coma patient named Duke at Castle Hospital in Kailua. He has been in a coma for many months. I was invited by a Roman Catholic family, who have been to our parish many times to venerate the holy Icon. In fact, one of their family members was healed of cancer after being anointed with myrrh from the Iveron Icon.
We finished the canon service a little before 8pm and I arrived at the hospital around 8:20 or so. Several family members were patiently waiting for the Mother of God, to escort us to intensive care. They had been waiting for over two hours. Security let us in, and we proceeded to the second floor.
I noticed that Bishop John Frederick was there [he is a relative of Duke]. His Grace Bishop John is a Chaldean (Assyrian) Catholic bishop who resides here in the islands. He has a small parish in Waipahu. He has been to our church several times to venerate the Holy Icon. He is a friend. He is highly regarded in the local Roman Catholic community.
As the Iveron Icon was escorted into the ICU, we were required to wear masks, gloves, etc., so as not to bring in any outside bacteria or contamination, standard procedure in the hospital nowadays. I approached the young man, in his 40s (I imagine?), and noticed he was hooked up to various machines, a breathing apparatus, etc. I removed the Holy Icon from Her carrying bag (Chuhol), and placed Her on the hospital bed, next to his head. I then anointed him with the Holy Myrrh.
The family asked me to lead a simple prayer service for the sick, according to Orthodox custom. They were not too familiar with our Church traditions. I was happy to oblige.
I chanted a basic prayer service; the introductory prayers, Trisagion hymns, psalms, and finally the prayer to the Mother of God that I usually read when I make hospital visits with the Holy Icon throughout the country. When asked, I visit anyone who's sick, including non-Orthodox Christians.
As we came to the part of the prayer where we ask the Mother of God to lay her Veil upon the individual, the coma patient, Duke, grabbed my hand, opened his eyes, and said, "I'm thirsty." A shock to all of us to say the least. I could barely finish the prayer; it was very emotional. The Intercessions of the Mother of God are quick indeed.
The family related, that they were talking to him all day, whether he could hear them or not, and letting him know that the Mother of God is coming to visit him that day. She did, in more ways than one.
Please keep Duke and his family in your prayers. I found out today, after additional tests, they cannot find any meningitis in his system. And God willing, after more additional tests, will be releasing him from the hospital. He's awake and alert and eating. Praise God!
There’s an Assyrian Church here in Hawaii, and the priest and bishop there, one of his family members was in a coma for many months, and the icon was brought to the hospital and left there by his side for about five minutes, he woke from the coma and said, "I thirst.” He was completely healed out of this coma with the icon being there, he was doing simple prayers. I think this group of Catholics and Assyrians that keep having multiple, pretty amazing healings that are happening in front of the Mother of God want to become Orthodox, but it’s challenging when you’re a cleric in another church like that.