With the blessing of Bishop Mitrophan of Gatchina and Luga, the wonderworking Icon of the Mother of God, “The Seeker of the Lost”, which first began to stream myrrh at the church of Marienburg (a historic district of the town of Gatchina in the Leningrad region) thirty years ago, is currently traveling through the Diocese of Gatchina visiting its churches. We talked about this with its rector, Archpriest Anthony Antipov [the interview took place in 2024.—Trans.].
Wonderworking Icon of the Mother of God, “The Seeker of the Lost”, in the church of Marienburg, Gatchina. Photo: Marienburg-hram.cerkov.ru —Father Anthony, how did the icon appear in your church?
—The story of its appearance at the church of the Protecting Veil of the Mother of God in Marienburg (the area is called Yeygerskaya Sloboda because the gamekeepers of the Imperial Hunt used to live there) is inextricably linked to the tragedy that shocked the whole of Russia, including the clergy. On October 17/30, 1888, over twenty people perished in the Imperial train derailment near Kharkov. But the whole Orthodox country saw a miracle in the fact that no member of the Royal Family was injured or killed. Emperor Alexander III was so strong that he held the collapsed roof of one of the train cars on his shoulders until everyone got out from under the wreckage. Then he provided first aid to those injured. It happened on the feast of the 
Monkmartyr Andrew of CreteThe Hieromartyr Andrew of Crete lived during the reign of the iconoclast emperor Constantine Kopronymos (741-775), who ordered Christians, under penalty of death, to remove the holy icons from their churches and homes.
“>Venerable Martyr Andrew of Crete, a defender of the holy icons (he should not be confused with his namesake—the author of the famous Great Penitential Canon). Icons were painted and churches built in different parts of Russia to commemorate this miracle. People saw in this the Providence of God and the intercession of the Most Holy Theotokos.
Tsar Alexander III, who miraculously came out unscathed, wrote to his brother, Grand Duke Sergei Alexandrovich, about the tragedy he had experienced that he would never be able to forget the day that “was too dreadful and too miraculous, because Christ wanted to prove to the whole of Russia that He still works miracles and saves those who believe in Him and in His great mercy from imminent death.”
On the myrrh-streaming Icon, “The Seeker of the Lost”
I, a sinner, love this beautiful icon very much, and I was vouchsafed to see a miracle in 2017, on the feast of this icon, which is celebrated on February 18. The Divine Liturgy and prayer service were presided over by Archpriest Vladimir Feer, the head of Gatchina town deanery. I concelebrated with him. We prayed with him before the icon, sang the glorification and went to the refectory to fortify ourselves. All of a sudden, the church shop assistant on duty came running and exclaimed: “The icon is streaming myrrh!” It turned out that a trickle of holy myrrh was flowing from the face of the Mother of God to the feet of the Savior, the trace of which is still visible. It was for the first time in my life that I saw this miraculous phenomenon “here and now”. It was wonderful and strengthened the faith of all the people who became witnesses of the miracle.
And for the first time myrrh (oily odorless drops) appeared on the icon on February 17, 1994, during the Vigil on the eve of the icon’s feast. A commission of experts was appointed under the diocesan administration, and it confirmed the miracle. It was repeated twice under the reposed rector of this church, Archpriest Anatoly Pavlenko († 2013). He liked to speak about the burials on the territory of the church and about the foundations of Hieromartyr Charalampus (Haralambos) the Bishop of Magnesia in ThessalyDespite the bishop’s advanced age (he was 113 years old), he was subjected to monstrous tortures.
“>St. Charalampus Monastery on the banks of the Kolpanka River—an unfinished project of the martyred Emperor Pavel I. From Fr. Anatoly many learned about the icon of the Savior, which was donated to the church from Kronstadt where St. John of Kronstadt served at St. Andrew’s Cathedral; about the large crucifix where Fr. Anatoly himself and many parishioners saw myrrh streaming; and, of course, about miracles of the myrrh-streaming Icon, “The Seeker of the Lost”.
Archpriest Anthony Antipov, Photo: marienburg-hram.cerkov.ru One woman, with the blessing of her father-confessor, asked Fr. Anatoly to celebrate three prayer services in front of this icon, as her son was missing. She had divorced her military husband, who served in the Far East. After moving to St. Petersburg, she came to the faith, became a churchgoer, and worked as a cleaner in St. Alexander Nevsky Lavra. Her son, a border guard, was shell-shocked as a result of shelling, and he spent two years in hospital. Then he was told at home that after the divorce his parents had left for an unknown destination. His letters did not reach his mother. She didn’t known anything about him for eleven years. But suddenly, after two prayer services celebrated by Fr. Anatoly, on the third Sunday the woman happily announced that her son had miraculously found her!
On February 18, the icon’s feast-day, we reminded Vladyka Mitrophan who celebrated the Liturgy at our church about this and other miracles, as this is a second patronal feast for us. He said that not everyone in our large diocese can come to Marienburg to pray at such a great relic, which seems to be under a bushel. According to him, the Icon, “The Seeker of the Lost”, should be accessible to all of us, because in a sense we are all “lost”, but especially to wives, daughters and mothers who pray for their wounded or missing husbands, fathers and sons who have been defending their Motherland. When human strength is not enough, we rely on Heaven, on God’s help. Then faith grows stronger.
In sorrows, difficulties, illnesses, and trials a person is spiritually strengthened—this is the law of Christ. Since the beginning of the Special Military Operation, as the rector of the church I have rather often received requests in the form of letters, text messages and phone calls: “Please pray that the Mother of God will help!” And miracles occur.
—Tell us about at least one of them.
—Recently, a woman told me that her son was on the front line—in the very thick of it. She came to this icon and prayed on her knees that the Mother of God would protect him. A shell hit the vehicle on which her son was travelling: all the others died and only her son survived through the prayers of his mother in front of the Icon, “The Seeker of the Lost”. Wounded, he was sent to the hospital, then recovered and now continues his service in the flanks. There are plenty of such stories.
—Which churches has the icon visited so far?
—It has already visited various deaneries. From March 8 to March 31 it visited the Church of Sts. Peter and Paul in the village of Vyritsa, the Church of the Transfiguration of the Lord in the village of Starosiverskaya and the Church of Prince Vladimir Equal-to-the-Apostles in the town of Kommunar, where the patronal feast was celebrated on July 28. In April parishioners of the Church of Blessed Matrona of Moscow in the village of Maloye Karlino, two Churches of the Kazan Icon—in the village of Vyritsa and the village of Ushaki, and the faithful of the Church of the Exaltation of the Cross in the village of Opolye were able to venerate the relic. In May we brought the icon to the Church of the Transfiguration of the Lord in the village of Orlino and the Church of the Resurrection of Christ in the village of Voskresenskoye. In June and July the icon visited Volosovo, Kingisepp, Slantsy, Luga, Rozhdestveno, Novoselye, Ropsha, the Churches of the Burning Bush and the Righteous Lazarus in Sosnovy Bor and the Church of the Holy Trinity in the village of Gora-Valdai. From July 28 to August 4 the icon stayed in the Church of the Tikhvin Icon of the Mother of God in Siversky, then until August 18 in Tosno—first in the Church of Sts. Peter and Febronia, then in the Church of the Kazan Icon. I hope that from the St. Nicholas Church in Sablino, where the relic will remain until August 25, it will return to our church. We really miss our main icon, which is dear to everybody here.
Marienburg Church of the Holy Protection in Gatchina
—What is known about the origin of the Icon, “The Seeker of the Lost”?
—Unlike many other icons of the Mother of God, there is no reliable information about the origin of this one. According to tradition, the icon became famous back in the sixth century A.D. in Asia Minor, in the town of Adana in what is now Turkey. There are several wonderworking Icons of the Mother of God, “The Seeker of the Lost”, through which She showed Her mercy to people who had already crossed the threshold of death.
In Russia the earliest is the icon that was painted in 1707 and was kept at St. George’s Church of the town of Bolkhov in the Orel province. A copy of it was painted in accordance with the vow made by the pious peasant Fedot Obukhov, who lived in the village of Bor of the Kaluga province. On the feast of the Theophany, freezing in his sleigh during a blizzard, he cried out to the Queen of Heaven and vowed to order an icon, “The Seeker of the Lost”, for his parish church. The Mother of God helped him through a peasant from a neighboring village who found and rescued the half-frozen Obukhov. Immediately after his recovery he ordered a copy of the icon from St. George’s Church in Bolkhov. Over time, the Icon, “The Seeker of the Lost” of Bor, became famous for many miracles and signs.
Thanks to the internet it became known that the wonderworking icon, before which people pray for a miracle when someone is dying spiritually or physically, disappeared from Bolkhov, but in May 2012 it returned there in the form of its newly painted copy, blessing the town and seeking all, living and dead. It is a true story of repentance for a man named Victor who was born and raised in Bolkhov, but then left the town, where as a child in the godless years of the 1930s he used to sled downhill on icons without realizing that this was a great sacrilege and sin. In 2011 his son came to Bolkhov from Moscow. It turned out that on his deathbed his father, Victor, had asked his son to atone for his guilt before God and the Mother of God. This is how a new copy of the Icon, “The Seeker of the Lost”, appeared in Bolkhov.
—Of the surviving ancient copies the most famous ones are kept in two churches of Moscow: of the Renewal of the Temple of the Resurrection of Christ in Jerusalem in Uspensky Vrazhek and of the Deposition of the Lord’s Robe.
—Another ancient copy is housed in the Holy Protection Cathedral of the city of Samara. The fourth copy is kept in our church. According to the reminiscences of the female altar server Alexandra Ivanovna Savina, who reposed in 2007, the Icon, “The Seeker of the Lost”, appeared in the church after the Second World War—in the late 1950s. On the way to the church two elderly women had to cross the Kolpanka River over a ramshackle plank bridge. During its renovation it was discovered that one of its planks was actually an icon of the Mother of God! It was brought to the church. Of course, it was damaged, but an inscription remained, stating that the icon was painted on October 31, 1888, through the efforts of Abbess Anatolia of the Rakovsky Holy Trinity Convent1 and her sisterhood in memory of the miraculous deliverance of Alexander III and his family from death after the train disaster. The icon, painted in just two weeks at the convent workshop, was presented to the Emperor. At first, it was kept in the sacristy of the Church of the Resurrection of Christ in the Winter Palace, and then Alexander III gave it to Marienburg, to the cavalry church he had built at his own expense, which needed to be filled with icons. When the church was closed during the Soviet persecution, the church utensils and icons, as in many other churches and monasteries throughout the country, were stolen or destroyed. The Icon, “The Seeker of the Lost”, presented to the Royal Family, disappeared as well. It is unknown where it was after 1917. A copy of the royal icon can be seen in the center of the home iconostasis in a photograph taken in the 1920s in the cell of the Venerable Martyr Maria of Gatchina. It was famous for healings and was available for veneration by the faithful.
The icon found by the old women on the bridge was transferred to our church. There were many artistic intellectuals among people who came here. Restorers from the Russian Museum restored the icon, and someone made a silver-plated brass crown on it. When the icon returned to our church, miracles started occurring through it—sick people were healed and the suffering began to receive the Lord’s help through the Mother of God. Miracles began to occur in a visible way too: the icon started streaming myrrh.
There are a wealth of other relics in our church. Miracles are performed from the “Queen of All” Icon (“Pantanassa” in Greek), which is commemorated on August 31, as well as from the icons of the holy Right-Believing Princess Anna of Kashin, Great-Martyr Catherine and St. Maria of Gatchina, with particles of their relics.
On St. Maria of Gatchina
—In ROCOR Nun Maria, who died in 1932 in a prison hospital in Leningrad, was canonized back in 1981 together with the New Martyrs and Confessors of Russia. On July 17, 2006, on the recommendation of the Diocese of St. Petersburg, the Russian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate added her name into the Synaxis of the New Martyrs and Confessors. On March 26, 2007, Nun Maria’s relics were uncovered at the Smolensk Cemetery (not far from the Chapel of Blessed Xenia of St. Petersburg, where her relics rest). They were moved to St. Paul’s Cathedral of Gatchina. The shrine with her relics is currently in the small wooden Church of St. Maria of Gatchina. The relic will return to St. Paul’s Cathedral after its restoration. By the grace of God, particles of St. Maria’s relics are kept both at the Cathedral of the Protecting Veil of the Mother of God in Gatchina and in our church with the same dedication.
—A memorial stone was recently set up on the site where St. Maria lived, not far from St. Paul’s Cathedral. But she wasn’t born in Gatchina. How did she end up there?
—The future saint was named Lydia in Baptism. She was born in 1874 in St. Petersburg. The daughter of the owner of a sealing wax factory, she studied at a high school, but contracted encephalitis and was bedridden for the rest of her life. She was unsuccessfully treated by both Russian and European medical luminaries alike. On the advice of doctors, in 1909 the family took up their residence in Gatchina. For twenty years Lydia lay on her back motionless, without murmuring against God, humbly and meekly enduring her suffering. Any movement or touch to her caused unbearable pain. She prayed incessantly, and for the humble endurance of her sorrows God bestowed on her the great gifts of clairvoyance, spiritual consolation and healing of the sick.
—I’ve read about her miraculous help to the suffering. And who helped her?
—After the deaths of her mother and brothers she lived with her sister Yulia. They were supported by pious women. Over time, they began to sing not only at prayer services, which were celebrated by priests at St. Maria’s bedside, but also in churches. Numerous laypeople, priests, and even bishops came to the righteous woman asking her to pray for them or give them advice. The future new hieromartyr, Metropolitan Benjamin of Petrograd and Gdov, whom she comforted too, called her “the venerable much-suffering Mother Maria”. In 1922, shortly before his arrest, he gave her his photograph.
In 1922, with his blessing, Archimandrite Makary (Voskresensky) of St. Alexander Nevsky Lavra tonsured the ascetic into the mantiya with the name Maria. At that time a large group of people gathered at the Church of the Holy Protection in Gatchina. Nun Maria distributed all the money and food she was given among the needy. Ten years later, in February 1932, when she was arrested, OGPU2 officers dragged her by her twisted arms and threw her into a truck like a sack.
—Tell us about your royal church.
Photo from the Zodchy magazine in 1892 —In the 1870s, thanks to the railway built through Krasnoye Selo to Gatchina, the town’s population grew rapidly. Marienburg residents attended the town’s cathedral built under Nicholas I, and the gamekeepers attended the Gatchina Palace church, founded by Paul I. When Alexander III began to live in Gatchina permanently, the palace church was closed to outsiders. The Church of the Protecting Veil of the Mother of God in Marienburg was constructed by decree of Alexander III in 1885-1888. The Emperor personally approved the draft design of the church, made by the prominent architect David Grimm from St. Petersburg. Alexander III himself laid the first brick in the foundation of the church. He also paid for the construction of a separate church for the imperial gamekeepers, indicating the place where it should be built.
The icons for the iconostasis were painted on a golden background. Expensive utensils made of gilded silver and bronze were bought for the church, and a bronze chandelier was transported from the Gatchina Palace as a gift from Alexander III.
The three tiers of the splendid iconostasis were carved from dark oak. The five onion domes with crosses and the two bell-towers above the main entrance to the church shone with gold. The church facade, built in the Moscow style of the seventeenth century, was decorated with kokoshniks3 and pilasters. But after the February Revolution the church became a parish church because of the abolition of the Imperial Hunt. In the 1930s it was closed, and its incredibly rich interior was looted.
—Is it true that St. John of KronstadtSt. John of Kronstadt
“>St. John of Kronstadt served at the church of Marienburg on the patronal feast?
—It is believed that he served together with Archpriest Vasily Levitsky, whom he knew well and loved. For twenty years he served at the cathedral of Gatchina and almost as long at the Church of the Holy Protection in Marienburg. His grave is behind the church altar here.
Church of the Holy Protection in Marienburg, 1910
—When was the church reopened?
—At the beginning of the Great Patriotic War (1941–1945 in the USSR) the people of Gatchina petitioned the occupation authorities, and, strangely enough, they allowed them to open the church—this was in October 1941 or in 1943. A temporary plywood iconostasis was put up in the church, and the faithful brought icons and vessels. They earnestly asked Fr. Vasily Apraksin, who after six years of exile worked in secular service in Pushkin (formerly Tsarskoe Selo), to become a priest. The Soviet army liberated Marienburg from the Nazis, but Fr. Vasily served at the Holy Protection Church quietly only until 1945. On the eve of the Annunciation he was arrested again. He returned from prison at the age of seventy, and although he was exonerated, he could only work as a choir director—first in Marienburg, and from 1956—at St. Paul’s Cathedral in Gatchina. Prior to 1955 there was a succession of several priests at the church, of whom very little is known. Some of them are buried behind the altar of our church. After its repair, on January 14, 1952, the head of the suburban deanery, Archpriest Alexander Moshinsky, solemnly reconsecrated the Holy Protection Church, replacing the temporary iconostasis with a new one in the summer of the same year. It was given to us from the church of the St. Petersburg Theological Seminary. It is that same iconostasis that you see in our church today.
