Gerontissa Makrina: The Theotokos appeared to her as a fifteen-year-old girl

Gerontissa Makrina Vassopoulou, the blessed abbess of the Holy Monastery of Panagia Odigitria in Portaria, urges readers to love the Panagia greatly: to keep a prayer rope for her, to celebrate the Paraklesis every day, and she says that in this way she will lead all of us, men and women, to Paradise. She then recounts a vision she had during the Cherubic Hymn while kneeling.

She saw the Theotokos as a small fifteen-year-old girl, as she appears in the icon of the Gorgoepikoos at the cell of the Gerontissa, standing before the Beautiful Gate and holding the Christ child against her womb. The Gerontissa describes her sweet blue eyes and her two blond braids, but says all her attention was fixed on the eyes: that gaze entered her heart.

At that moment she was pleading with the Panagia about the monastery, asking what would become of it, since they were doing nothing and how would they be saved. The Panagia smiled, and from that day her disposition changed; a peace came into her from the gaze of the Panagia. The text then turns to how one can call upon the Lady Theotokos, whose mercy and love have no end.

Even though we grieve her, wound her and hurt her heart, she loves with boundless love, covers us with her vast protection and intercedes with her Son for all of us, saying: 'My Lord, sweetest Son and my God, save my creatures, help them, grant them Your Grace!' The Gerontissa concludes that no one can grasp in their mind the immeasurable love of our Panagia. The passage is from the book 'Logia Kardias' (Words of the Heart).