Anecdotes about the Virgin Mary

Matrona's dream and the Kazan icon

Kazan (Russia) (1579)

On the banks of the Volga, in the city of Cassava, one of the most loved icons of all Russia is venerated: the Mother of God of Kazan. His story begins with a disaster and a girl. In 1579 a great fire destroyed part of the city. According to tradition, the Virgin appeared in a dream to a girl about nine or ten years old called Matrona, daughter of a bouncer, and told him where, under the ruins of his burnt house, an icon was hidden.

After several insistent dreams, Matrona went with her mother to the designated place; they dug near the oven of the old house and found the icon wrapped in a cloth, intact despite the fire, with the colors still alive. He was first taken to the church of St. Nicholas and then, in procession, to the Cathedral of the Annunciation, where the fame of cures, especially of the blind, was soon spread.

El icono se convirtió en «Protectora de Rusia», invocado en las grandes horas de la nación: en la liberación de Moscú en 1612, en la batalla de Poltava de 1709, ante la campaña de Napoleón en 1812 y aun durante la Segunda Guerra Mundial. Está documentado el devotional and patriotic use of the icon in those critical moments; that victories should be due to the intercession of the Virgin belongs to the language of the faith of the people. From the famous anecdote of the plane that Leningrad would have overrun besieged with the icon, the prudent thing is to say that the concrete flight is popular tradition discussed, while the public veneration of the icon during the war is documented.

The original found in 1579 was stolen from the monastery of Kazan on the night of 29 June 1904 and disappeared; no consta con certeza qué fue de él. Una antigua copia, conocida como «vaticana», llegó a manos de san Juan Pablo II en 1993 —que la tenía en sus apartamentos y rezaba ante ella— y fue entregada a Rusia en 2004 como signo de unidad. La mayoría de especialistas piensa que la imagen hoy en Rusia es una copia antigua, no el original; la identificación segura no consta. El icono pertenece a la tradición bizantina, donde no existe el Rosario latino; su vínculo con el Rosario llegó por Fátima y por Juan Pablo II, que lo unía a su deseo de la consagración de Rusia al Corazón Inmaculado de María.