Waiting for Miracles

This fall, hundreds of thousands of Russians lined up in the cold, waiting for a dozen hours or more to kiss a glass-covered reliquary – reputedly containing the Virgin Mary’s belt – that was visiting Moscow from a Greek Orthodox Monastery on Mount Athos.

The contemporaneous reports on those waiting to revere the Belt of the Virgin increasingly sounded like reports from the front. The line stretched from Savior’s Cathedral to Sparrow Hills. The number of pilgrims standing in line reached 82,000. The wait was nearly two days. Dozens were hospitalized. The line was filled with old women, expectant mothers, children, and multitudes of pilgrims who had traveled from all across Russia.

All of this because the vestment fragments of the Blessed Virgin lay in wait in Savior’s Cathedral. Yet in the Church of the Prophet Ilya, just a seven-minute walk from Savior’s Cathedral, there is a fragment of the very same belt, and pilgrims could pay reverence to it there without waiting in any lines whatsoever.

What then did these people standing in line really want? Perhaps to become better people, to be a bit nicer to their relatives and friends, to be more like the Mother of God? For some, perhaps. But the overwhelming majority wanted something else entirely. They longed for a miracle. A swift, miraculous healing – be it from cancer, infertility, or just the resolution of some personal problem. They felt that nothing would happen if they simply visited the Church of the Everyday Ilya. Yet, if they stood in line, suffering for a day or so, read 40 akathists, bowed 500 times, then everything would work out. In short, they longed for signs, for direct proof of the presence of God. They wanted more.

It is not enough that God has died a painful, shameful death for them. Too few are the mysteries of the Church that allow them to touch the divine. Too few are the miracles which each of them has already experienced. Some cheated death; others who had lost hope nonetheless got pregnant; still others succeeded at exactly the time and place where they needed to. They have eyes and memories able to recall at least a few incidents from their lives that would be extremely difficult to explain rationally. Yet just like blind children, not even opening the Gospels (where the expectation of signs is given a firm rebuff), they continue to seek a sign.

And so they froze, sang, cried, stood all but motionless – not even noticing how, from time to time, VIPs drove up and hurriedly and confusedly approached the belt without waiting in line – and they waited, waited, waited...

The most surprising thing is that perhaps they did stand and wait long enough to see a miracle. Simply because God is merciful.