Panagia Portaitissa

A number of different traditions exist to explain this, but the one most commonly held by Orthodox Christians is that the icon was stabbed by a soldier in Nicaea during the period of Byzantine iconoclasm under the Emperor Theophilus (829–842).

The original in Iveron is encased in a chased riza of silver and gold covering almost all the figures except the faces, as is common with the most venerated icons.

Much later (c. 1004)[4] the icon was recovered from the sea by a Georgian monk named Gabriel the Iberian (later canonized a saint in the Orthodox Church), who was laboring at the Iveron Monastery on Mount Athos.

This occurrence was repeated several times, until St. Gabriel reported that he had seen a vision of the Theotokos, wherein she revealed that she did not want her icon to be guarded by the monks, but rather she intended to be their Protectress.

This title was not new for the Virgin Mary, but comes from a verse of the Akathist to the Mother of God: "Rejoice, O Blessed Gate-Keeper who opens the gates of Paradise to the righteous."

In 1648, Patriarch Nikon of Moscow, while he was still Archimandrite of Novospassky Monastery, commissioned an exact copy of the Iviron icon to be made and sent to Russia.

For fifteen years (1982–1997), as myrrh continued to flow from the Icon, Brother José Muñoz Cortés devoted himself to its care, accompanying it on numerous trips to parishes all over the United States and Canada, to South America, Australia, and Europe.