The Saint Theodore Tyron Monastery in Chisinau, also commonly known as the Ciuflea Monastery, is hosting the Our Lady of Baitaly, an icon celebrated by Orthodox believers as “wonderworking”. The icon, representing Virgin Mary and Child Jesus, has been brought for the second time to Ciuflea following numerous requests from believers and will remain on display until April 20, the monastery’s chief abbot Nicolae Roșca announced.
According to believers’ accounts, the icon began releasing myrrh in the presence of numerous supplicants when the icon was in Chisinau for the first time, last year in January.
On Saturday evening, the revisiting icon was welcomed by a large crowd gathered at the Monastery’s gates and on Monday a big queue of believers formed to see the object of worship in front of the altar of the Monastery’s main church. The ritual is to kiss the icon before kneeling and crawling under the table that holds the icon. Supplicants say they pray for their own and their families’ souls and bodily health, for peace and prosperity.
In addition to Our Lady of Baitaly, the Ciuflea Monastery also permanently holds relics of Saint John the Baptist, saint Nicholas the Wonderworker, Saint George, Saint Basil the Great and others.
The Our Lady of Baitaly is a Hodegetria-type (from the Greek “She Who Shows the Way”) icon from the village of Baitaly in the Ukrainian Oblast of Odessa. Already since 2005, the Baitaly archpriest has been gathering accounts of wonders that believers reportedly experienced after praying to the icon.