The Holy Mandylion represents the first not made by human hands image of the Savior miraculously created by Christ himself. According to the Christian tradition, King Abgar of Edessa wrote to Jesus, asking him to come to cure him of an illness. Instead, one of the seventy disciples, Thaddeus, is said to have come to Edessa, bearing the words and an image of Jesus, by the virtues of which the king was miraculously healed. To create his likeness, Jesus used a face cloth that miraculously bore the image of His face. This image of Christ preserved on the face cloth was kept and venerated in Edessa and became known as “The Holy Image of Edessa,” the “Holy Mandylion” (from Greek “face cloth”), or “The Image Not Made With Human Hands.” This iconographic type is widely used by Eastern and Western Christian Churches.
In Orthodoxy, a Guardian Angel is a type of angel that is assigned at birth to protect and guide a particular person. Each human has a guardian angel who stands before the face of the Lord. This guardian angel is not only a friend and a protector who preserves from evil and who sends good thoughts; the image of God is reflected in the creature—angels and men—in such a way that angels are celestial prototypes of men. Guardian angels are especially our spiritual kin. Scripture testified that the guardianship and direction of the elements, places, peoples, and societies are confined to the guardian angels of the cosmos, whose very substance adds something of harmony to the elements they watch over.
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