Miracle icon draws crowd to JC church..
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Tears linked to painting
Press & Sun-Bulletin
JOHNSON CITY - The church deemed it a miracle.
Beginning on Mother's Day 2004, a depiction of St. Anna, the mother of the Virgin Mary, inexplicably wept tears of myrrh, an aromatic resin.
The Rev. Igumen Athanasy Mastalski, pastor of a Russian Orthodox Church near Philadelphia who first witnessed the miracle, brought the religious icon to Johnson City on Thursday. About 400 people from Orthodox parishes across the Southern Tier filled St. John the Baptist Ukrainian Orthodox Church in Johnson City to see the icon.
Following a special service, Mastalski told the story behind the mysterious myrrh tears.
A nun in Jerusalem painted the icon in 1998, he said.
"Until 2004, there was nothing happening that was noticeable with the icon," he told the packed church. On Mother's Day in 2004, a parishioner noticed what looked like perspiration bleeding through the paint. "About two days later," he said, "when we came back to church, we lifted the icon and it was inundated with oil." Streams of oil poured from the eyes, he said.
In November, Metropolitan Laurus, leader of the Orthodox Church outside of Russia, verified the icon was weeping. Since that time, Mastalski has traveled to Orthodox congregations around the country carrying the icon in a wood-and-glass case.
It is clear why the grandmother of Jesus Christ would weep, the priest said. "I don't think I or you need an icon to tell us things are bad," he said. "There's trouble in the world. There's trouble in our communities. There's trouble in our parishes. There's trouble in our families. There's just plain trouble." But salvation, he said, could be found in the church.
"If only the churches were always as crowded as it is today," he said.
Following Mastalski's words, hundreds of parishioners came forward. Those who were able prostrated themselves before the icon, falling to their knees and touching either their hand or their forehead to the floor. They kissed a cross in a bed of carnations, then kissed the glass over the icon. A priest marked foreheads and hands of parishioners with oil from the icon.
"It's common in the history of the Orthodox faith to have miracles like this," said Jane Lazaros, of Endicott.