Raise to Your Lord your God-given hands, in which You carried Jesus Christ, and plead with Him to deliver us from all evil.
She was unnoticeable, insignificant, and became broader than Heaven. She was endlessly patient in Her sorrows, and yet became the joy for all. Felt and called herself a “servant” and became the Empress of Heaven and Earth. We convey to Her our pains, sorrows, struggles, and doubts, and She came to be a source of mercy for us. Transforms our bitterness, because She is inexplicable sweetness. She perceived our darkness and came as a bright light. She experienced incomprehensible loneliness and became an intercessor for all. She saw violence and brought peace. Pure and undefiled by anything in this world, She transcended natural boundaries and became a conscious paradise. She became our Mother…
Mother of God. The very mentioning of Her name brings joy and comfort. Always here to make us happy and comfort us. She comforts those who love Her, inspires in them good thoughts, a hopeful appearance, a delicate consolation. She is present among the faithful mostly through Her numerous icons, radiating with Her sacred, divine image.
One of those miraculous representation of our Blessed Virgin Mary, favourable to all and well renowned, is the famous icon “Axion Estin”, that our Monastery is also blessed with. This is the icon our Elder and Abbot Parthenius grew up with, the one which preaches without words, teaches not with sermons, but through the miracles which emerge from the love and mercy of our Mother. That is why the vigils at The Bigorski Monastery for “Axion Estin” are always characterized with such beauty and grace. Equally this year the all-night Divine Service in the church of the Forerunner made everybody feel the graceful presence of the Blessed Virgin, Who spoke to our hearts, with Her abundant grace, with Her immaculate purity, with Her utter humbleness emanating from Her sweet kind face on the icon. She endowed us with everything She had: love, patience, humility, obedience, and kindness.
It is truly right to bless thee, O Theotokos, today, brothers! Let Bigorski plainly chant, let the Church rejoice! Because the Holy Mother of God called us to the annual Feast of Her Hymn, after the Archangel Gabriel taught us strangely at the beginning of Her Divine Magnificat. For this appeared to the monk in a similar image, to glorify the Mother of God, because He Who rests on the Cherubim, She carried Him with Her body. After Her prayers, Christ God save our souls.
During that quiet night of prayer, the Mother of God anointed our brother – the novice Gligorcho. He received the blessing, through the hands of our Spiritual Father and Elder, Archimandrite Parthenius, to wear the holy monastic cassock, burning with a scared aspiration towards the monastic life, equal to the angelic. Our new novice made a deep bow before his Elder and the fraternity as a sign of gratitude and a promise of life in love and obedience.
