"Did I not weep for him who was in sorrow? Did not my soul grieve for the poor?" (Job 30:25)

Miracle 1

To the Kingdom of the Most Serene Tsar and Grand Duke Alexis Mikhailovich, Autocrat of All Great, Small and White Russia, under the Right Reverend Father Lazar Baranovich, Orthodox Archbishop of Chernigov, Novgorod and All the North, in the year 1662 from the Nativity of Christ, in the month of April, in the Ilyinsky Monastery, under the hegumen Zosimus, from the 16th day to the 24th, the image of the Most-Pure and Most-Blessed Virgin Mary was weeping in the church. All the people of the city of Chernigov looked at this miracle with great horror.

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When the fleece of Gideon was watered, this foreshadowed God's love for people, for the sake of which the Father's Word was incarnated from the Virgin: "For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son" (John 3:16).

And when the icon of the Most Holy Virgin watered itself with tears, what sign was seen in this? Nothing else but a sign of Her love for us. And that those tears serve as a clear manifestation of love — behold, I will immediately reveal the truth to you.

Jesus wept over Lazarus, the Jews saw His tears, and what did they say? It is narrated about His love for Lazarus: "Jesus shed tears, then the Jews said, 'See how He loved him' (John 11:36). Likewise, Job's friends, seeing their beloved friend in scabs from head to foot, "lifted up their voices and wept" (Job 2:12).

Hence also know the cause of the tears of the Most-Pure Virgin: she weeps over us, for she loves us, and seeing us rotten with the scabs of iniquity, and lying in the tomb of evil custom, and completely dead in soul, she sympathizes with us and has compassion for us, shedding tears, like Jesus over Lazarus and like the three friends over Job.

For truly, by evil deeds we are like the rotting Job and the dead Lazarus: Job was in the pus, Lazarus was lying in the tomb, but we are in sins! Each of us cries out in need: "I am all possessed by immeasurable passions, and I lie down on a bed of evil!" We lie down and do not get up, as St. David said of us: "All those who do iniquity have fallen, they have been cast out, and cannot rise" (Psalm 35:13). And we do not even care about our rising, according to what is written: "When the wicked fall into the depths of evil, he is not careful" (Proverbs 18:3).

Job was barely alive, and Lazarus was already dead. And we, when we sin because of our weakness, but wish to repent, are then still barely alive, barely feeling ourselves. When we come to the sinful custom, then we are already dead in soul, because we cannot be alive without the grace of God, taken away from the soul because of sin.

As the life of the body is the soul, so the life of the soul is God, and as the body without the soul is dead, so the soul is without God. That is why Blessed Augustine said: "Many have dead souls in a living body." And St. Theophylact with the most holy Chrysostom speaks of the rich man thus: "His soul is buried in him while he is still alive, and bears flesh like a grave."

And it is not surprising that the Virgin weeps over us, as if we were barely alive or even dead. The Mother of Life does not want to see us dead, but alive. "I," he says, "do not desire the death of the sinner, but that the sinner should turn from his way and live" (Ezekiel 33:11).