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'It is meet ...', and the miracle that was wrought in front of it in the time of Patriarch Nicolas Chrysoverges.
This miracle came about thus: One night a monk was reading the Canon of the Mother of God and singing: `More honourable than the cherubim ...' in his cell in the monastery of the Pantocrator (now called after the icon). His elder had gone to Karyes. Suddenly a man appeared in the church and began to sing: `It is meet ...', a hymn which till that time had been unknown in the Church. The monk, hearing this hymn, was greatly struck both by the words and the heavenly singing. The stranger turned to the monk and said: `We sing it like this at home.' The monk desired to have it written down, and brought a marble tablet, onto which the stranger wrote the hymn with his finger as though the tablet were made of wax, and then suddenly disappeared. This stranger was the Archangel Gabriel. The tablet was taken to Constantinople, and the hymn is sung to this day in the Church.
(For those who are not familiar with the text, it is as follows: `It is meet to bless thee, who didst bring forth God; ever-blessed and most pure, and the Mother of our God. More honourable than the cherubim, and incomparably more glorious than the seraphim; thou who inviolate didst bring forth God the Word, and art indeed Mother of God, thee do we magnify.' -Translator.)
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