St. Paul Antiochian Orthodox Church and the Lehigh Valley Orthodox Clergy Brotherhood invite you to join them in pilgrimage on June 10-11, 2019!

The Axion Estin Icon of the Mother of God is an ancient, wonder-working icon on the Holy Mountain of Athos. A copy of this icon was painted in 2018 and enshrined in St. Paul Antiochian Orthodox Church of Emmaus, PA, to serve as a place of veneration for all faithful Christians. The feast day of the icon as celebrated in the Orthodox Church is on June 11.

This pilgrimage celebration is sponsored by the Lehigh Valley Orthodox Clergy Brotherhood.

SCHEDULE OF EVENTS:

MONDAY, JUNE 10: 6pm Great Vespers & Litia, with Anointing of Pilgrims

The service will be followed by a potluck meal (bring a dish to share!) and a presentation on Pilgrimage by Fr. Theodore Petrides.

TUESDAY, JUNE 11: 8am Matins, 9am Divine Liturgy

Copies of the Axion Estin Icon of Emmaus will be for sale in the parish bookstore.

MORE ABOUT THE AXION ESTIN OF EMMAUS:

This icon, enshrined at St. Paul Antiochian Orthodox Church of Emmaus, Pennsylvania, is modeled on the original Axion Estin (“It Is Truly Meet”) icon of Mount Athos (feast day, June 11).

It was in AD 982 before the Athonite icon that the expanded version of the hymn “More honorable than the cherubim…” was first sung by the Archangel Gabriel, who added the prelude “It is truly meet to call thee blessed, O Theotokos, ever-blessed and all-blameless and the Mother of our God,” and inscribed the hymn miraculously with his finger on a slate tile. The hymn has been sung ever since in the Divine Liturgy of the Orthodox Church.

The original Axion Estin icon is kept in the apse of the Protaton Church in Karyes on Mount Athos. The Axion Estin of Emmaus was painted by iconographer Protodeacon Paul Drozdowski (Paul Drozdowski Icons) in 2018. It features the main inscription in four languages: Greek (next to the head of the Virgin), Church Slavonic and Arabic (at top), and English (at bottom).

The six saints who surround the Theotokos and the Lord Jesus are the Holy Hierarchs of America: (top) Tikhon of Moscow and Raphael of Brooklyn, (middle) Innocent of Moscow and Mardarije of Libertyville, (bottom) John of San Francisco and Nikolaj of Žiča. All served in America, and several of them spent time in Pennsylvania.