Feast of the Hodegetria Icon

Life

This icon was painted on wood by the Evangelist Luke himself. The Most Holy Theotokos saw it and blessed it. Saint Luke gave this icon to the illustrious Theophilus, for whom he wrote the Acts of the Holy Apostles. From Antioch the icon was later transferred to Jerusalem, and from Jerusalem the Empress Eudoxia took it and sent it as a gift to Constantinople, to the emperor's sister, the pious Pulcheria. Pulcheria placed it in the Blachernae Church, her own endowment. Once the Most Holy Theotokos appeared to two blind men and led them to the Blachernae Church, before Her icon, and there She restored sight to both of them. Because of this the icon was called Hodegetria — the Guide. When the armies of the Persian King Chosroes and the Scythian Khan attacked Constantinople, Patriarch Sergius brought this icon out upon the city walls and carried it along the ramparts. And the Most Holy Theotokos then saved the Christians from the non-Christians. The enemy armies were thrown into confusion, the sea was agitated, their ships sank, and the surviving enemies took to flight. From that time the commemoration of this miracle of the Most Holy Theotokos was established on the Saturday of the fifth week of the Great Fast with the reading of the Akathist. During the time of iconoclasm this icon was transferred to the Monastery of the Pantocrator and there walled up in a wall, and a lamp was left before it to burn. As it had been walled up, so afterward it was found.