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Our parish priest saw on the news a report about a flying icon in, I think, Romania.
It also leans over from its stand and bops on the head some of the people praying in front of it.
Has anyone else heard about this?
denise

What in the world?

What? I have never heard of it!

But I have heard of a flying nun!

SPDundas
Deaf Byzantine

[ 08-25-2002: Message edited by: spdundas ]

Denise,

Seach the web, maybe somthing will show up.

That (frighteningly odd) flying nun movie was on yesterday...I watched about 5 minutes of it and then turned the channel. I've never been much for the fantasy world. It seemed like Mary Poppins minus the children with a religious twist.

Soli Deo Gratia,
ChristTeen287

Could it be true? Careful the Devil lurks everywhere.

Dear Denise,

I saw this "flying icon" on a segment on "The Fox Report" with Shepard Smith on the Fox News Channel.

It's a rather large icon (by my standards) of the Mother of God. A priest brings it into the church for the "miraculous" occurence. People kneel in front of it, and supposedly it stands up on its own, and moves back and forth, touching them on the forehead.

In the segment I saw, a lady was kneeling in prayer before it, holding onto it, while it rocked back and forth, hitting her head rather hard. It rocked quite rapidly while onlookers watched.

I wasn't convinced of anything "miraculous" by the twenty seconds or so of footage they showed. It looked like the lady was shaking the icon herself and banging her head with it. It will take a lot more than the very short Fox story to convince me that there's anything to it. Of course, I won't bar the possibility of the miraculous -- it's quite possible -- but it looked rather silly.

I love it: a televangelist smacks people on the head and we laugh; an icon does so and it's a miracle. The double standards of Byzantium. haha

I did not see the news story, but it seems really bizarre. Sometimes I don't really understand the point of certain "miracles." How does a bouncing icon edify the faithful? What does it teach? How does it lead one to a deeper contemplation of the Unseen? I thought the same things about that bleeding icon from Moscow: what's the point?

Perhaps the moving of the icon is kind of like a "ouija board" effect (the person unconsciously moves the item in question). Religion and "miracles" can make people do strange things.

Stuff like this really gives ammunition to the modern Iconoclasts.

Maybe I'm too skeptical and cynical?

-Dave

Dear Mor
Well, I am glad SOMEONE saw the segment.
Even if it wasnt' too believable.

Dear Friends,

I know nothing of this icon.

However, the miracle of moving icons is something that has always been part of our tradition and Prof. Poselianin writes about several in his classic text on miraculous icons "Bogomater."

The most famous "moving" icon is that of "Gerondissa" on Mount Athos.

As I understand it, when the Abbot of the monastery (I forget which one) died, an icon of the Mother of God was found on his chair.

When they removed it, it again appeared on the chair, again and again.

The icon was acclaimed as miraculous and, to this day, that particular monastery holds the Mother of God to be its Abbot and is the only one not to have an elected Abbot.

Televangelists often stage their "miracles."

Unless someone can prove that wires or other devices are used to move the icon around, and that it still moves when prayers are said before it, I'd guess, off hand, that it could be a miracle.

Alex

[ 08-26-2002: Message edited by: Orthodox Catholic ]

Dear Alex,

The only people I know of who showed even a little bit of coverage on this icon were the people at Fox News Channel. And from what little they showed, you couldn't see wires or other devices, but it looked like a lady was kneeling in front of it and shaking it back and forth herself, kinda like if you grabbed someone by the shoulders and shoved them back and forth. Before that, the image shown was of a vested priest carrying the icon in. A priest carrying in an icon that, if miraculous, should move around on its own (right?), along with the site of a lady praying before it, and looking like she's doing all the icon-shaking herself, and hitting herself in the head with it, didn't exactly convince me.

This case, from what little I know of it, seems quite different from the incident you mentioned about the icon on Mt. Athos. That icon just kept appearing in the abbot's chair. This icon supposedly rocks back and forth and hits the faithful in the head. All twenty seconds of coverage left me asking myself out loud "What the...".

I don't mean to sound disrespectful about a possible miraculous occurrence, but it just looked silly.

Dear Catholicos,

Well, I don't know anything about that situation, as I said, and certainly the Church needs to investigate before the term "miraculous" can be applied.

Hopefully, the Church will look into it before too, too many people "lose their heads" over the matter . . .

Alex