A Contemplation of Miracles

...and an encounter with the unseen

Sep 12, 2024

At my little parish in the woods today I venerated an icon. In fact, it was the very first icon I ever venerated as a still-skeptical catechumen. I wasn’t sure how I felt about icons in general, and was full of doubt about “wonder-working,” “miracle-working” and “myrrh-streaming” icons. It was completely alien to my experience and thinking.

This is the Hawaiian Iveron Icon that is in the custody of Fr. Nectarios of Honolulu, Hawaii. This icon is so peculiar because of its story. It is a common type of icon—a printed replica of the original Iveron icon of the Theotokos, mounted on wood. There was another Iveron replica which was also myrrh-streaming, but her custodian, Brother José Muñoz-Cortes, was tragically murdered and the icon was stolen and her whereabouts are not known. The current icon came into the possession of Fr. Nectarios. In 2007, he began to notice a wonderful smell coming from the vicinity of the shelf where the icon had been placed in his home, and I even heard him describe how his cat was attracted by the smell to the area. The scent, resembling a garden abundant with blooming roses, was coming from the icon, which had begun to emit copious amounts of a light, fragrant oil which we call “myrrh.” After a series of clerical steps taken to discern whether this was truly a miracle or not, the icon was pronounced by a bishop to be, in fact, a miraculous, myrrh-streaming icon of the Mother of God. Fr. Nectarios suddenly found himself her custodian and since then has traveled countless miles to bring the icon to parishes all over the United States and the world to bless the faithful who would venerate and pray before her.1

I have had the honor of seeing this icon three times now. The first time I was a skeptic, a stranger to Orthodoxy, and completely overwhelmed with what was happening. My daughter, 16 at the time, was also in the nascent stages of entering Orthodoxy. She was not on the same page with us most of the time in her journey—she took her time and worked things out the way she needed to. The night we saw the icon, though, she eagerly venerated it, embraced the experience, and happily told her peers about it that evening at the ice cream shop where she worked, when they noticed the profound fragrance that accompanied her from being anointed with the myrrh. She was not riddled with doubt and confusion. I however, was. I wanted to see the back of the icon, see if there was some mechanical or chemical reason as to why this flat piece of wood with a printed image of the Mother of God appeared to sweat profuse amounts of this powerfully fragrant stuff. I wondered what this guy who was the custodian of the icon was getting from this potential chicanery. Even so, I decided to set aside my skepticism and venerate the icon and be anointed. I didn’t want to be “that guy.”

The next time she came through our area I missed her for some reason that I can’t recall, and the time after that I visited St. John the Baptist Orthodox Church in Washington, D.C. to see her during a hierarchical liturgy, served by my own bishop. It was a beautiful and touching event to behold—majestic and royal—but crowded. The presence of the icon was of course very special, but there was no space or time to linger and pray before her, to take in the fragrance or to contemplate the image. Everyone was jockeying for their turn to venerate, so it was much more of a community and cultural experience than an intimate encounter with the Theotokos, albeit a valuable one that I will never forget. It was rather amazing to see the devotion that so many people had to the Theotokos and the precious desperation they had to be in her presence.

Today’s opportunity arose rather suddenly. There was an open space in the schedule and the icon’s custodian, Fr. Nectarios, was available not only to visit our parish, but to also join us for the service of Divine Liturgy and stay for lunch! When I heard the announcement I was not only excited, but strangely so. I could not wait to see her again. I felt I would not have missed it for anything. She was to be at my home parish on a Tuesday morning on short notice—the crowd was bound to be smaller. I was not disappointed. There was the rare luxury of elbow room in the chapel, there were multiple opportunities to venerate, we received the Holy Mysteries and were anointed with the fragrant myrrh that was streaming abundantly from the icon.

Fr. Nectarios at the end of service, distributing the cotton that absorbs the streaming myrrh. We then bring it home to anoint ourselves with the oil. You can see how his hands are quite coated with the myrrh.

As I was driving home from this wonderful service, a thought occurred to me—where does this myrrh come from? At this point, all skepticism has been banished—I am certain of the miraculous nature of this icon, but where does the myrrh come from? It is not present in the wood or paper of the icon. Indeed the icon does not show any signs of being ruined or stained by the myrrh, as a typical wood-mounted print would show if oil were spilled on it, but there is this powerfully fragrant oil that is manifesting and appearing to “sweat” out of the icon, so much so that the box in which it rests must have absorbent cotton wadding to catch the substance, lest it run out all over the cloths covering the stand or onto the carpet. Today the streaming was so abundant that it was seeping through the padded blue fabric case that frames the icon.

On the drive home, I was pondering this mystery, and this was my line of thinking:

We believe that icons manifest the presence of the Saint they depict. These Saints are outside of time and may be present with us at any time they choose.
Sometimes an icon will present in an unusual way, by streaming myrrh, by changing positions, by self-restoration or cleaning itself, by having a powerful presence of Grace, or by healing the faithful who seek the intercession of the Saint depicted. These are the phenomena I am most familiar with, though certainly there are others. We do not understand why or when or how this happens—it is the work of God.
Myrrh-streaming icons in particular are unique because we are the recipients of a material substance that may have a fragrant aroma that inexplicably collects on the surface of the icon. The only explanation is that it comes from God, Heaven, and the Saints. It is not of this world.

So I began to think about this third point and pondered the physical manifestation of a spiritual reality. Something tangible and material passed into our hands today that did not originate from this world. We did not ask for it. We did not expect it. The icon streams more abundantly at some times than others, and there is no guarantee of her doing so. Some day it may suddenly stop streaming and never do so again—we have no certainty of this miracle continuing, but must simply rejoice as long as we are the beneficiaries of it.

This is the miracle of incarnational reality. God, who is Spirit and cannot be seen by man and live, presented Himself in human, physical form for us to see, touch, and experience. He came into reality in order to manifest the actuality of the unseen world.

In the case of the Iveron icon of the Theotokos, we who encounter her are experiencing her presence, manifest powerfully through our senses of sight (the image), smell (the fragrance), and touch (through anointing). She has presented us with a gift to remind us that she, the Handmaiden of the Lord, was blessed to be the means by which the Creator of the Universe made himself known to us, the unseen, immaterial Almighty into tangible, human form, condescending to be with us. Today, I experienced a gift of Grace that was completely miraculous—not just the material presence of this beautiful myrrh, but an additional gift of the awareness that the Theotokos is with us, and loves us as her Son loves, and intercedes with him on our behalf.

If we disbelieve in the Theotokos as the mother of all Christians and intercessor for our souls as I did, it does not change the truth that she is both of these things. All Christians have historically accepted and believed this until 500 years ago, and still today Protestants are the only sect to reject this dogma of the Church. I regret that in the past I ever disbelieved or refused to accept her as part of my faith. I tried to ignore her, but she did not ignore me.

Being witness to the manifestation of a heavenly substance before my physical eyes has caused me to contemplate seriously what I thought I knew about miracles in the past. In the past I was a participant in the Charismatic movement2 that happened in the Protestant world. I have attended services where people are being “slain in the spirit,” experiencing “holy laughter,” uncontrollable weeping, physical jerking, shouting, running, speaking in tongues, and “faith healing”—all going on at the same time. I have also heard charismatic prophets teach and receive clairvoyant messages about peoples’ lives. In past articles, I have described how I accepted these events without judgement and allowed them in my life because I greatly desired to experience God and the movement of the Holy Spirit. I had not seen an alternative.

There were real consequences to the pursuit of these experiences. Without the context of the Ancient Church and the proper interpretation of the Scriptures, we were taught that Christ’s words, “your faith has healed you” (Matt. 9:22) and St. James’s exhortation “you have not because you ask not” (James 4:2-3) were the litmus tests of how much faith we had and how effective we were at getting what we wanted from God. My faith was tested time and time again, when my mother who was quite crippled with rheumatoid arthritis, did not receive miraculous healing no matter how many times hands were laid on her and prayers prayed over her (to give a personal and prominent example, of which there are many.) Eventually I came to the conclusion that either the miracles were not real or the preachers were misguided at best and fake at worst, or some combination of all three. I was dangerously close to giving up—my faith clearly was not sufficient, or I did not know what questions to ask in order to get the things I needed from God.

Since becoming Orthodox, I have not worried at all about whether I was seeing or experiencing miracles, because in fact, they are all around me, constantly. Every single week when we participate in the Divine Liturgy we are witnessing and partaking in a miracle. In addition to this I have heard of incredible miracles that rival those of the apostles in the days of the early Church, the kind that Christ declared would be done through them. These miracles are still happening today through modern day Saints and elders of Orthodoxy.

But until yesterday this has question had never been answered as to why my mother was never healed, even though she had great faith and she asked. In the past I was a victim of the prevalent and deeply heretical teaching that God wants us to be comfortable and happy. The teaching of these charlatans is that our suffering is connected to lack of faith and that if we are experiencing these things we do not “have the victory” in Christ (a term so many of the charismatic teachers love to throw around.) Once it became apparent to me that this “prosperity gospel” was wrong, I still had the struggle of understanding the point of suffering and pain. It was never explicitly taught that suffering—not happiness—was our inheritance as Christians and therefore the implication remained that we might be happier if we just had stronger faith.

That our earthly happiness and comfort is in any way a sign of God’s approval of us and our faith is the teaching of demons. On the contrary, in Orthodoxy, I have come to understand that a person’s spirit, strengthened by God to endure tremendous adversity, torture, loss, and even painful death is a far greater achievement than having a problem miraculously fixed. That is not to say that miraculous fixes and healings do not happen and should not be celebrated. It is just not an end to be achieved which would certainly lead to spiritual pride, but rather should be a means to compel us to greater faith, repentance, and love.

Suddenly, visiting the Iveron icon, I had a keen awareness of the apparent randomness of the miraculous—that at any moment the veil between the seen and the unseen is lifted and heaven reaches us here on earth in a tangible way. The body and senses receive the noetic3 presence of the Divine, and the spirit of the person touched is healed of its sin-sickness. Sometimes a person’s physical body is touched and also healed, but even if this is the case, it is the soul that is the ultimate beneficiary.

But why?

The perfect miracle is of course the incarnation, life, death and resurrection of Christ. God in flesh by his own choice lived the suffering life, then defeated Death through His Resurrection. We are promised the same.

With this in mind we are sometimes granted miracles to remind us that Heaven is real, the Kingdom of Heaven is among us, and we are citizens in it. Our faith in the resurrected Christ avails us of this, and then from time to time we are privy to the lifting of the veil. If we are recipients of miraculous healing, it is to remind us that our bodies will be resurrected and made new in the age to come—that this is real and possible! That we are participants in THE Resurrection. This gift is not granted to all, but to those whom God chooses to reveal it. As witnesses we are to rejoice for that person and be strengthened—not to complain and compare ourselves and our faith to that of the one healed and say, “What are they doing that I’m not doing? Why doesn’t God answer my prayers?” We are like the paralytic by the pool of Bethesda who was full of excuses and circumstantial angst, (John 5:2-9) and we really ought to repent.

Miracles are not about us—they are entirely about God, the Holy Trinity, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. They are given to turn our eyes toward Him and bring about repentance from sin that will enable us to participate in the Kingdom of Heaven now, and unto ages of ages, Amen.

Though we may be comforted by them, miracles are not intended for our comfort, but for revelation of the Divine Reality.

Though we may be healed by them, they are not for our convenience, but rather to demonstrate the goodness of God and the ultimate Resurrection.

Though we may be witnesses to them, miracles are not stopping points, but conduits through which we draw strength to persevere through suffering unto Salvation.

If one never experiences something that is an obvious miracle, such as a piece of paper-covered wood that drips with heavenly myrrh, that does not negate the presence or the truth of the unseen world, just as disbelieving that the Theotokos intercedes for us does not mean she is not constantly doing so. Rather, we are continually invited to participate in the feast in which bread and wine somehow, mystically, become the promised mana from heaven, the body and blood of Christ, and thereby experience the miraculous.

Most Holy Theotokos, save us! +,+,+