Back in 2001, I first encountered the amazing phenomena related to Saint Nicholas. That mysterious story, which happened before the bombing of Serbia in 1999 and which is still relevant today, I then presented in an article for the newspaper where I worked, and today I would like to remind you again about these inexplicable events.
In the Russian village of Derzhavino in the Orenburg region, back in 1999, in the house of Olga Yefimova, the icon of St. Nicholas the Wonderworker suddenly began to flow abundantly with myrrh. And all the other icons next to it started to stream myrrh as well. The people went to see the miracle, the government came, the clergy appeared, the fact was witnessed, but there was no hurry to draw conclusions. In Orenburg, the priests were cautious: “There is something incomprehensible, because even her paper icons stream myrrh, and this usually happens only with wooden ones…”. Some residents of Derzhavin did not like Olga: “Who is she that the Lord would show her a miracle?! She works in the post office, and I have worked in a dairy all my life, but my icons do not stream myrrh…” And the most serious argument was: “Her husband is a Muslim from the Caucasus, how can God send mercy to such a family?!” Others believed that there were bottles of oil and something like small drops on the back of the icons.
We were looking for a scam
I did not want to be deceived, and therefore I prepared very cautiously to meet the witnesses of these miracles, prepared questions from a pile of letters that I received from my readers. I arrived in Derzhavino with a journalist from the nearby town of Buzuluk, Alexander Bulgakov.
When I met Olga, she turned out to be a pleasant forty-year-old woman with a sad, tired face. Looking at us carefully, she invited us to enter the house. There we saw a wall that was completely filled with icons: large, medium, small. I counted about seventy of them. About half of them shone profusely because of the oil that was on them. The smell coming from the icons could not be compared to anything else. Dozens of them literally oozed oil, occasionally dripping onto the plates placed beneath them.
I immediately wanted to detect the fraud, so I asked to hold the icons in my hands. Olga agreed. My colleague and I looked at them from all sides, but we didn’t find anything suspicious. The icons, painted even on thin canvas, were completely dry on the back, and myrrh flowed from their faces. I asked Olga how it all started.
Flashing arrows
“More than a year ago, my spiritual sister, nun Margarita, gave me an icon of St. Nicholas the Wonderworker, consecrated on his relics. According to her, this icon was brought to the monastery from Italy, from the city of Bari. By the grace of God, it came to me,” said Olga.
On October 23, 1998, around midnight, Olga saw two luminous arrows that came out of the hands of the Miracle Worker. Other icons are also illuminated with bright light. The glow lasted about two minutes. Olga and her relatives, who saw this, were afraid at first, but then their hearts were filled with inexplicable joy. It was as if the great saint himself came and touched them…
A similar thing happened on the night of the Feast of the Presentation of the Blessed Virgin Mary. A fiery arrow hit the prayer book from the hand of Nicholas the Wonderworker and such a light shone over the icons, as if they had all caught fire.
“The day after that, I dreamed of St. Nicholas. – continues Olga. “He came to me with the Gospel, crossed me and said: Peace to you, even though there is no peace even among believers. Go and call for peace in your temple as well, because there are people who pray there, but harbor evil and envy in their souls.
When St. Nicholas the Wonderworker appeared to me, I realized that I had to baptize the children. But my husband was a Muslim from the Caucasus. He said that if I did that, he would kill me and the children. I did not decide to take this step for a long time. But one day I still took them to church, where they were baptized. There was also one of our villagers who warned me: just don’t tell your husband, he will kill you. I promised not to tell, but as soon as I heard him, I immediately informed him. And that night he burst into the house, furious as a beast. He ran into my mother first and threw her so that she hit her head on the stove. In the meantime, I managed to break the window and throw the naked children out of bed into the snow.”
“Then he grabbed the axe,” continued Olga, “he started at me, but I hit him in that arm.” He roared with rage, tore my hair, threw me on the floor and picked up the ax again. I was about to die, but…” – then she burst into tears, – “but at that moment the icon of St. Nicholas flashed again and blinded him. He got scared, dropped the ax and ran out into the street.
Tears for Serbia
During Great Lent, on Thursday or Friday, from the eyes of St. Nicholas came salty cloudy drops – real tears of a living man. The icon cried for two days, and then it became known about the beginning of the tragic events in Serbia. In those days, many Orthodox Serbs were killed, their houses and churches of God, the monastery of St. Nicholas were destroyed.
But that’s not all. Shortly before April 11, the day of the Holy Resurrection of Christ, the same icon of Saint Nicholas burst into tears again. Tears were dripping on the napkin, it was all wet. I took this icon and went to the elder of the church. He saw tears on the icon. In the church, we read the akathist to Nicholas the Wonderworker and went around the church. The next day the icon cried again. Mother and I lit the candle and began to read the akathist to St. Nicholas. The lamp burned until the oil ran out. About two hours later, it suddenly burst into flames and burned without oil until 12 o’clock in the evening. That was also a miracle. Our surprise was endless.”
On the fifth of May, the day of Pentecost, between 5 and 6 p.m., a pious local came to worship the icon. Suddenly he screamed: Olga, Olga, look – there are drops on the other icons too!…
The icons were covered with fragrant oil. Olga had never seen the streaming of myrrh before and thought it was the Saint crying again. But this time the liquid was completely different – oily, fragrant, viscous.
They ran to the elder of the church. Father Vasily Yegorovich Kondakov immediately invited Bishop Valentin to Orenburg. The bishop gave his blessing for the icon to be examined. A commission arrived – four or five priests headed by the dean, Father Leonidas. He took the icon in his hands, and right into his palm, from the forehead of St. Nicholas and from the blue stone of the painted crown, myrrh streamed. It was a pure miracle, as the commission later testified.
Olga, in the simplicity of her soul, took and wiped the icon with a towel. The priests scolded her for such boldness: what are you doing? “I wanted to see if the icon would still stream myrrh,” the woman explained.
Before the eyes of the clergy and neighbors, the drops of myrrh from the icon began to appear again, they began to flow in streams. Since then, every Thursday in Olga’s house, a prayer to St. Nicholas is obligatory, and akathists are read. Priests and laity began to arrive, pilgrims from other places began to arrive. On the other days, six prayers are offered at the myrrh-bearing icons (for some time they have been pouring myrrh and other icons attached to the icon of St. Nicholas: The Holy Trinity, many icons of the Mother of God – Kazan, Pochaevska, Pokrovska, Consolator, Quick Helper, Iverska… St. Sergius of Radonyez and St. Seraphim of Sarov, blessed Matrona and Xenia of St. Petersburg…
The bandits could not destroy the icon
On the first of September, the icon of St. Nicholas the Wonderworker was stolen. The thieves also took away the Pochaev icon of the Virgin and the large Crucifixion. Olga and her mother rushed to the police, but to no avail.
Nicholas the Wonderworker appeared to Olga in a dream, told who took the icons and ordered them to be redeemed from the thieves. The next morning, Olga came to that woman and began to beg her with tears: give back Nicholas, I’ll give you all my money, everything I have, just give it back… She only heard bitter scoldings in response: how dare you suspect me of theft !… Father Vasily Kondakov also went to that woman. Besides Olga’s money, he offered her much more. But he also left without any success…
Then word spread that the icon had reached two ex-convicts, but they did not sell it: one stabbed the other with a knife… At the end of September, Olga saw the expensive icon lying in the mud in her yard. The saint’s face was covered with mud. With the precious icon in her hands, she hurried to the house where a priest from a neighboring village was at the time. Seeing the shrine found in the mud, father Nikolai carefully washed it, cleaned it, sprinkled it with holy water. The icon was cut at the back – the blasphemers were trying to find out how the myrrh flows and how it got inside… Olga, with the help of the priest, removed the traces of barbaric desecration, and sealed the back of the icon, which again poured myrrh.
Where does myrrh come from?
During my visit, I remembered that I had in my purse a small icon of St. Nicholas the Wonderworker, which was given to me by the abbess of the nunnery in the village of Ib. I asked Olga to put her among her icons: what if it also starts streaming myrrh?
At parting, Olga anointed our foreheads with myrrh, I took my little icon from the table. It was completely dry. But the next day something inexplicable happened. We went to the editorial office of the local newspaper “Russian Province” to my colleague Alexander Bulgakov. They started talking about the miracle in Derzhavin, and I complained that nothing had worked with my icon. Then I took it out of the bag… the icon was covered in oil! The witness of this is Vladimir Ilyich Gadushkin. The icon immediately went from hand to hand, they rubbed foreheads, cheeks with it… it was returned to me wiped. However, by the evening, my Nicholas the Wonderworker was covered again – as if from sweat – with tiny drops of myrrh. In the district administration, the icon changed hands again and was deleted. In the morning the myrrh came out again in drops. And on the third day – again. After that, everything stopped, only large dried spots remained on the icon.
For several days the icon stood on the shelf at home. And then I put a photo of Olga behind it. Believe it or not, a day later the myrrh glistened on the icon, but this time on the back.
What did the scientists say?
I gave my myrrh-bearing icon to my colleague Anna Dobrjuha, who has good relations with the scientific world, for study. Anna took it to the Forensic Center of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Russia. Here is what Dobrjuha said after meeting with specialists. “The icon was typographically made with oil paints, so there was a mutual interpenetration and mixing of the oils that make up the icon and the oily matter that “flowed” from it. Therefore, the test does not make sense: it will not give a reliable result. Then we asked the experts to at least suggest with external signs what the traces of “miracles” look like. “Purely visually, it looks like oil and, most likely, of vegetable origin, because it does not dry.” The material from which the icon is made is, judging by its appearance, of such a composition that it is not capable of releasing oily substances on its own. So the mysterious spots must come from outside…”
Nikolai Varsegov
Source: weekly “Moscow” no. 49, appendix “Arguments and facts”