This weekend the Tikhvin icon, now in the care of Rev. Sergei Garklavs, is going home to Russia. From the Chicago Sun-Times:
According to tradition, the 34-by-43-inch icon, which is usually shrouded in a bejeweled, gold-plated covering, was painted by St. Luke the Evangelist. Historical records trace it to the 5th century, when it was taken from Jerusalem to Constantinople.
The next 1,600 years of the icon's history are riddled with stories of miracles, divine intervention and harrowing escapes. It survived the fall of Constantinople, the Russian Revolution, the Third Reich, several fires, bombings and innumerable moves. Hundreds of healings and other miracles have been attributed to the icon throughout the centuries.
Garklavs' adopted father, Archbishop John Garklavs, the late prelate of Chicago for the Orthodox Church in America, rescued the icon from the Nazis and brought it to the United States in 1949 and was its guardian until his death in 1982. The Rev. Sergei Garklavs tells his own miraculous story of divine protection when he and the icon left Latvia in 1944. [continue]
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Tikhvin icon returning to Russia