Today’s feast of Vladimirskaya Icon of the Mother of God commemorates Moscow’s deliverance from Khan Akhmet’s hordes that took place in 1480. The Seraphim-Diveyevo monastery’s Trinity Cathedral has an upper left chapel dedicated to this holy image of the Queen of Heaven. An early-morning liturgy was served there today.

Father Seraphim used to say: “Though the enemy and devil seduced Eve, and Adam fell with her, yet the Lord not only granted them a Redeemer in the fruit of the seed of the woman Who trampled down death by death, but also granted us all in the woman, the Ever-Virgin Mary Mother of God, Who crushes the head of the serpent in Herself and in all of the human race, a constant mediatress with her Son and our God, an invincible and persistent intercessor even for the most desperate sinners. That is why the Mother of God is called the “Plague of Demons,” for it is not possible for a devil to destroy a man so long as man himself has recourse to the help of the Mother of God.”