The icon of the Virgin “Donskaja” is exhibited in Moscow to encourage the Russian victory in the Ukraine conflict. The Orthodox authorities had already done the same with Rublev’s “Trinity”. Patriarch Kirill continues with his bellicose rhetoric in favor of Putin and closes himself even more to dialogue with the West by refusing to participate in the XI assembly of the World Council of Churches (CEC), the main ecumenical body, which meets in Karlsruhe.
Mosca () – Moscow () – After enlisting the Holy Trinity in the army with Andrei Rublev’s famous icon, Orthodox Patriarch Kirill now summons the Mother of God with another icon stolen from the Tretyakov Gallery.
The Virgin “Donskaja” is exposed from yesterday until September 2 in the great cathedral of the Donskoy monastery, in the center of Moscow, for the “militant” veneration of the Orthodox faithful, committed to the restoration of Holy Russia with the war liberation of Ukraine, invaded by the “corrupt” West.
The symbolism of the war is closely related to the similar transfer of the “Trinity”. Indeed, the Rublev icon had returned to the Lavra of Saint Sergij, where the holy monk of Radonezh is buried. He had commissioned his disciple Andrei and blessed the troops of Prince Dmitry of Moscow for the battle against the Tatars on the banks of the holy Don.
The Kulikovo victory in 1380 is considered the birth date of Muscovy’s Holy Russia, which later proclaimed itself “Third Rome”. Dmitry earned the title “Donskoy”, from which the name of the great monastery is due, which was closed by the Soviets and reopened again in the years of Mikhail Gorbachev (recently deceased), marking the beginning of the post-communist religious revival. The “Donskaya” icon is considered miraculous because of the numerous prodigies obtained through its intercession, but also because of the historical-ideological evocation it represents.
If the Rublev Trinity was “written” (as they say about icons, which are revelation texts more than paintings) around 1420, then for the origin of the Virgin Donskaja there are only legends, according to which the Don Cossacks carried her as a gift of auspiciousness to Dmitry on the eve of the Kulikovo battle.
Before this image the first Tsar Ivan the Terrible prayed in 1552, before leaving for the conquest of the Tatar Khanate of Kazan, the definitive victory over the invaders of the Golden Horde. Later Ivan carried into battle another icon that became even more famous, the Virgin of Kazan, confirming the active participation of the Mother of God in the triumphs of the Russian army. This warlike devotion is ratified in the Victory Church, inaugurated in 2020, where a mosaic represents Mary assumed into heaven in the midst of the Soviet machine guns that expel the Nazis.
Patriarch Kirill thus chooses to erect himself even more solemnly on the throne of the Church that fights against the entire world corrupted by the devil, at the same time that the XI Assembly of the World Council of Churches (CEC) opens in Karlsruhe, Germany. ), the main ecumenical summit in which he himself had actively participated several times many years ago. Kirill’s spiritual-ideological itinerary is particularly emblematic of the drift of Putin’s Russia, from dialogue to isolation.
The Council Assembly was considered Kirill’s last chance to show himself directly in the West again and confront other Christian denominations, having also refused the invitation to meet Pope Francis in the “neutral” land of Kazakhstan. Several voices had proposed in recent months to the executive committee of the CEC that the Moscow patriarchate be expelled from membership, and if this had not happened so far, it was to offer the Russians the possibility of explaining themselves in Karlsruhe.
In any case, a delegation from Moscow headed by the young Metropolitan Antonij (Sevrjuk) will attend the Assembly, who has recently replaced Ilarion (Alfeev), exiled in Hungary. Kirill was probably also thinking about this confrontation when he decided a few weeks ago to unexpectedly install a man who was more faithful to him, to prevent Ilarion from giving in to any proposal from Catholics and Protestants. Today Russia does not give in to anyone, neither in Ukraine nor in Germany, because it has to save the world from the Antichrist with the help of the Virgin of the Don (bass).
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