On Saturday of the fifth week (week) of Great Lent in 2024, April 20, the Orthodox Church will celebrate the Praise of the Most Holy Theotokos – the reading of the Akathist of the Mother of God (Saturday of the Akathist).
This celebration was established in the 9th century in Byzantium in gratitude to the Mother of God for Her repeated rescue of the imperial capital Constantinople (Constantinople) from invaders.
For the first time, the akathist of the Mother of God was read in the Blachernae Church of Constantinople after the miraculous deliverance of the city from the enemy fleet in 860. According to the Tradition of the Church, the fleet was killed by a rising storm when the Robe of the Blessed Virgin Mary was lowered into the sea.
Initially, the celebration was held only in the Blachernae Church, where the miraculous Blachernae icon of the Mother of God, painted by St. Luke the Apostle, was kept.
Later, the holiday was included in the charter of the Studi Monastery, and then in the liturgical books, becoming common to the entire Orthodox Church.
During this service, believers pray to the Mother of God for spiritual intercession, as She also helps in the fight against invisible enemies – evil spirits.
In early March 2017, the list of the Blachernae Icon of the Mother of God of the XVIII century was returned to the Vysoko-Petrovsky Monastery in Moscow.
Traditionally, on the feast of the Praise of the Most Holy Theotokos, His Holiness Patriarch Kirill performs divine services in front of the icon of the Mother of God "Tenderness", before which St. Seraphim of Sarov prayed.