Gold chain. Stories about new miracles of the Optina elders

Orthodoxy.fm

Holy Tradition knows many wonderful stories that happened in the lives of Christian saints or with other people through their prayers. We have prepared several such heartwarming and interesting stories for you.

Saints who acquired the grace of the Holy Spirit were often granted special help from God in various difficult life situations. In addition, many of them received various gifts from God: they could heal people from diseases, prophesy, perform miracles, subjugate wild animals and even resurrect the dead. We would like to tell our readers today some wonderful stories about saints.

Pilgrimage on a demon to the Holy Land

In the 12th century, St. John happened to be one of the archbishops of Novgorod the Great.

From a young age he devoted himself to serving God. At first he served as a priest at the Church of St. Blaise, and later accepted monasticism with the name Elijah in the monastery he himself founded and, in 1165, was elevated to the episcopal department.

Through his prayers and the intercession of the Most Holy Theotokos, the miraculous salvation of Novgorod from the invasion of Suzdal took place in 1170. Taking care of the spiritual needs of his flock, the saint built seven churches in Novgorod, and was also very merciful and attentive to his flock, distinguished by meekness and unfeigned love.

One day, the holy Archbishop John was performing night prayer in his cell. And the demon got into his washbasin. Before washing, the saint crossed this vessel with water, and the demon could not come out of it. Then he prayed to the saint to let him out.

Saint John agreed, but on the condition that the demon would take him that same night to Jerusalem and bring him back. The evil one promised to fulfill the will of the miracle worker.

The demon took the form of a saddled horse, and the saint sat on it and was miraculously transported through the air to the Holy City. The saint of God commanded the demon to stand still, and he himself went to the Church of the Resurrection of Christ.

Approaching, he began to pray, and suddenly the locked doors of the temple opened in front of him, and candles and lamps were lit at the Holy Sepulcher. Having bowed to the shrine and fulfilled his desire, Saint John left the temple. John that same night returned to Novgorod on his improvised “horse”.

Later, the saint told this story to his flock, out of humility not saying that it happened to him and pointing out a certain ascetic. Then the demon began to slander the saint. He began to turn into a woman, and people saw a harlot coming out of John’s cell. Through demonic delusion, the eyes of visitors in his cell were presented with women's clothing and shoes.

The townspeople decided to expel Archbishop John from Novgorod, seized the saint and defamed him as a fornicator. He was taken to the Great Bridge on the Volkhve River and put on a raft to float out of the city down the river.

But the raft floated against the current, up the river to the monastery of St. George. Meanwhile, the saint prayed for the Novgorodians. Seeing this miracle, people realized that they had condemned Saint John in vain, out of demonic delusion, they repented and begged to return to the pulpit.

Before his death, the saint accepted the schema with his former name John and peacefully departed to the Lord on September 7, 1186, and in 1439 his incorruptible relics were found.

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son foretold

Ksenia, later known as Saint Blessed Xenia of Petersburg, was the wife of Colonel Andrei Fedorovich Petrov, who served as a court singer.

At twenty-six years old, Ksenia was widowed and seemed to have lost her mind from grief. She distributed her property to the poor, dressed in the clothes of her late husband and, as if forgetting her name, called herself by the name of her late husband - Andrei Fedorovich. In fact, the saint took upon herself the feat of foolishness for Christ's sake.

The saint did not have a permanent shelter, but wandered among the poor people of St. Petersburg, and at night she went into the field, where she spent time in fervent prayer.

Over time, people began to notice the grace-filled gifts that the Lord bestowed on the saint: Blessed Xenia often predicted the future, through her prayers the sick were healed, and people who followed her advice miraculously arranged their destiny.

There is a known case when Blessed Xenia took care of the welfare and salvation of an unborn baby. She once came to her old friend Paraskeva Antonova, to whom she gave her house, and said: “You’re sitting here darning your stockings, but you don’t know that God sent you a son! Go quickly to the Smolensk cemetery!” Paraskeva was very embarrassed by this absurdity, but she obeyed the blessed one and went.

Near the cemetery she saw a crowd of people and, approaching, learned that some cab driver had knocked down a pregnant woman. Here on earth, a woman gave birth to a boy, and she herself died. Everyone tried to find out who the woman was and where her relatives were, but they were unsuccessful.

Seeing the finger of God in what happened, Paraskeva took the boy to her, adopted him and raised him in all the rigor of Christian life. Her son supported his mother until a very old age and highly revered her. Paraskeva thanked God and God’s servant Ksenia for her command to accept her son.

Blessed Xenia labored in the feat of foolishness for about forty-five years; it can be argued that she departed to the Lord at the very beginning of the nineteenth century.

Gold chain. Stories about new miracles of the Optina elders

Before the canonization of the Optina elders, I was given the obedience to collect materials about miracles that happened through their prayers in our days.
“Yes, there are so many of these miracles,” the guide Tatyana immediately told me, “that I never use examples from books, but I only talk about what happened in our group, and at the same time in front of everyone. There was an incident a week ago.

And Tatyana told a story about an old woman, God’s servant Galina. This Galina was once a famous weaver and set records, because since childhood she was fleet-footed and demanded an outlet for the prowess of her soul. And then something happened to the fleet-footed Galina that happens to everyone: youth left - did not say goodbye, old age came - did not say hello. Baba Galya’s legs were now bulging with knots of varicose veins and swelling so much that of all the shoes she could only wear slippers.

Once in a store, a former weaver tried on all the shoes, it seemed, but her feet hurt in any shoes.

“Try to try on these,” the saleswoman offered her Italian boots made of soft leather and with delicate sheep fur inside.

Grandma put on them and couldn’t believe herself: they were soft, comfortable and warm for her feet.

“I’ll take it, wrap it up,” she melted with happiness.

And then she looked at the price tag and realized: these boots were not from her impoverished pensioner life, but from the life of, say, Princess Diana. This is how the temptation began, when the former shock worker of communist labor made an oath to herself - she would break into pieces and buy boots. She now lived from hand to mouth, saving every penny. She also got a job as a concierge in a house for new Russians, where they gave generous tips for services of the kind when you need to drag a drunk high school student to the elevator and clean up her mess. The girl, having sobered up, thrust dollars at the concierge and, swearing, promised that she would break off her grandmother’s horns if she “told” her parents about her adventures.

This lackey's bread was bitter, but we managed to buy boots. It was in these Italian boots that the servant of God Galina came on an excursion to Optina Pustyn and flew here on the wings of happiness. And before leaving the monastery, the boots disappeared. It happened like this. Then the pilgrims spent the night in a room where there were people like in a barrel of herrings: three-story bunks, and in a narrow passage there were a lot of shoes and things. The pilgrims woke up while it was still dark, so that, having hastily visited the temple, they could then move on to other monasteries. The first to wake up that morning was a student from Vologda and, having mixed up her sleepy shoes, put her feet in her grandmother’s boots and ran away in them to the bus or, perhaps, to the temple. In a word, the pensioner got the student’s boots - exactly the same, Italian, but several sizes smaller. How the old woman squeezed her sore legs into them and groaned as she hobbled to the bus, it’s better not to talk about it. But on the bus she burst into tears so bitterly that the guide Tatyana postponed departure for half an hour and told Galina to go to the relics of St. Ambrose of Optina and ask him for help.

“Father Ambrose always helps,” she convinced the sobbing pilgrim. - This is an experience.

- How can I ask for help? – she timidly asked.

- Usually - first repentance, and then petition.

A prayer service was served at that hour at the relics of St. Ambrose of Optina. The old woman fell prostrate before the relics, wanting to repent, and suddenly boiled with anger: it turns out that her boots were stolen, and yet you still repent? Does anyone know at what cost of humiliation she earned her boots? And then she vividly remembered the first time when she helped a high school student in a torn dress get to the elevator, and she was crying so desperately that it was clear: she had been violated. She should feel sorry for this girl or throw herself at the feet of her parents, begging: protect your child! But she only silently condoned the fall when the girl became an alcoholic in front of her eyes.

The old woman was now burning with shame, horrified by the darkness of her mind when boots and damned dollars became more valuable to her than honor and God. She no longer regretted the loss of her boots. But she was so sorry for this stupid schoolgirl that the old woman now prayed for her. Contrite with all her heart, she bowed to the ground in front of the relics and discovered that a student was praying next to her in her boots.

What happened next is already clear. And when pilgrim Galina returned to the bus in her soft, comfortable shoes, everyone was so happy about this quick, immediate help from the wondrous elder Ambrose that they sang together: “Rejoice, Venerable Ambrose, God-wise teacher of faith and piety.”

“Boots are a damn thing,” the shaven-headed brother interrupted the guide’s story. “But a real miracle happened to me.” Listen everyone - I am responsible for the market!

- Don't listen to him. He's a bandit! – said the strict praying mantis, the bandit’s aunt.

“Not a son, but a fiend of hell,” the narrator’s mother supported the aunt.

“Mom, I promised to stop,” the bandit whined.

In general, the story here is like this. Nikolai, that was the name of the “bandit,” grew up in that purely female environment, where his aunts and mother strictly fasted, prayed for a long time and even tried to re-educate their parish priest. As a child, Nikolenka’s aunts called her an angel and often took her to church. And as he grew up, he lost his faith and flatly refused to go to church.

Unfortunately, such stories are not uncommon, and here, for example, is one of them. An old nun raised her orphan nephew. The boy grew up as a meek pilgrim and shunned everything worldly, for his aunt said: “The world lies in evil.” In a word, he was constantly in the temple, but sometimes he asked in surprise:

- Aunt, why is there life and life everywhere, but with us there is only sin and sin?

The boy grew up and drank himself to death, forgetting about God. Something similar probably happened to Nikolai. True, he didn’t drink, but through his friends he got involved in the criminal business and now lived “by the rules.” And all attempts to reason with the apostate gave one result - a scandal.

But there would be no happiness, but misfortune helped. Nikolai, having caught a cold, became deaf and rushed around the room like an animal from unbearable pain in his ears. The aunts declared the disease a punishment for sins, calling for repentance. And the doctor at the clinic ordered me to undergo surgery to remove the accumulated pus from my ears. And then our brave robber became so afraid that he decided to choose the lesser of two evils: it was better to go to the temple to repent than to go under the knife. That’s when the relatives took their “bandit” to holy places in the hope of healing his soul and body. First they visited St. Seraphim of Sarov in Diveevo. Then we visited the Kiev-Pechersk Lavra, and from there we moved to Valaam. When the sick Nikolai was finally taken to Optina Pustyn, he was already so exhausted that he sat indifferently on the steps of the temple and only moaned in pain.

- What's wrong with you? – a hieromonk passing by asked him.

“Father, I’m a fiend from hell, but my ears hurt a lot.”

“God is merciful,” said the hieromonk and led him to the relics of the Venerable Optina Elder Barsanuphius.

The temple was empty, and the hieromonk had disappeared somewhere. And Nicholas stood alone in front of the relics, looking at the fresco depicting the miracle when, through the prayers of the Monk Barsanuphius, a deaf man was healed. He believed that such a miracle happened, because before people loved God, and the Lord helped them. But who needs God, he thought, in the present world, where you have to be tough in order to succeed? From somewhere in his childhood, he suddenly remembered the words of the Gospel about the loneliness of Jesus Christ, when He had nowhere to lay His head. And Nikolai began to cry, repeating to himself: “Lord, there is nowhere for You to bow your head, and there is no place for You now on earth. What kind of life is there if you don't need God? And You, Jesus, for all Your mercies, only they will crucify you again out of anger.” He himself didn’t know why he was crying. But then everything came together at once: unbearable pain in the ears, anguish from a meaningless life and the bitterness of the loss of God.

The tour entered the temple, heading towards the relics. Nikolai hastily brushed away his tears and then discovered that not only his cheeks were wet, but his neck and shoulders. The pus flowed out of the ears, the pain disappeared, and hearing was restored.

“Where sin abounds, grace abounds” (Rom. 5:20). And the healing of the great sinner Nicholas once again testifies to this.

* * *

Still, Nikolai’s story was confusing. Of course, he promised to “kick it off,” but is the price of communication high? However, anything can happen. I remember how ten years ago a racketeer often came to Optina Pustyn in a jeep. In front of the jeep there was a pipe welded with a bracket, which, as it turned out, played the role of a ram. This is exactly how the racketeer rammed and crushed the stalls of those traders who dared to resist the bandits, refusing to pay them tribute. He was a strange pilgrim - he lived for a long time in the monastery and tearfully repented here, and then returned to the world to his robber trade. This story ended with the strange man distributing his property to the poor and leaving forever for a distant northern monastery.

And yet, the fathers of Optina Hermitage tend to have a cautious attitude towards miracles. You used to say in delight:

- Father, Igor changed so much after the miracle that was shown to him.

And the father sighs:

- How long has it changed?

Unfortunately, I myself had to observe how a miracle, seemingly capable of turning a person’s whole life upside down, caused only a temporary spiritual uplift. And then again I was sucked into that routine of life, where the soul had already become close to sin. In a word, what is said in the Gospel is also said about us - somewhere the seed of the Sower falls on a stone, and somewhere on fertile soil, and then the soul accomplishes its feat. That is why I will tell the story of the conversion of Svetlana, who grew up outside the Church and did not even have believing acquaintances who could in any way instruct her.

This is how Svetlana and I met. One day, a very young-looking pilgrim, an officer’s wife, as it turned out, entered the empty temple after a service.

“I am a representative of the regiment,” she said sternly. – Our regiment died in Chechnya. Can you tell me where I can apply for the death?

Hierodeacon Iliodor led the pilgrim to the candle box, and she began to submit not even notes of repose, but lengthy paper sheets with a list of the dead, certified by the seal of the regiment.

– It’s not written according to form. “We need to rewrite it,” the novice who received the notes reprimanded her.

“They have a regiment killed in Chechnya,” the hierodeacon told her quietly and menacingly. – So what, form is more important than soul?

There were so many killed on the battlefield that there were not enough prosphora and Father Iliodor went to the altar to fetch them. Meanwhile, Svetlana was telling me the story of her life, or rather, the story of that great love, where everything was simple and pure. She and Seryozha had been inseparable since childhood. And when Sergei graduated from military school, they got married. Svetlana was already preparing for the birth of her first child and was knitting booties when Sergei and his regiment were sent to Chechnya. A month later, the “black tulip” delivered the first coffins to their unit, and Svetlana was taken by ambulance to the maternity hospital. When other women in labor were screaming in pain, she was screaming in fear for her husband - what if they killed Seryozha and how could she live without him? Thus began her motherhood and path to God. There was not a single church near their military unit. And she and Sergei went to the city to get married, although here they followed, rather, the custom: “that’s how it should be,” it’s so beautiful, and for some reason a civil unmarried marriage did not evoke respect. But they really liked the church, and as a memory of this bright day, Sergei bought a book about the Optina elders from the icon shop. This is all that Svetlana had - one single book about the great saints of God, but she felt with a sensitive heart a breath of holiness unknown to her before. Day and night, while the baby was sleeping, she tirelessly bowed to the ground and prayed to the Optina elders to save, protect and protect the warrior Sergei from death.

According to her, Svetlana did not know how to pray at all. But so great was the love of the young wife that her prayer seemed to go to Heaven. Colleagues later said that Sergei was indeed saved from death by some miracle. The bullets seemed to bend around him, and the shells exploded in the place from which he had just left. The soldiers now huddled closer to their officer, believing that it was safe to be around him. This was such a clear miracle that the regiment’s command decided to send a representative to Optina Pustyn to find out what the conditions of accommodation were and whether the monastery could accept them if their military unit came to pray here. So Svetlana ended up in the monastery and now from the bottom of her heart she thanked the Optina elders for the miraculous salvation of her husband.

She did it in her own way: she would get down on one knee and reverently kiss the icon, just as they kiss the regimental banner at the oath. The novice who was on duty behind the candle box was again worried that everything was “out of shape.” But she did not dare to make a remark, because behind the strange behavior there was the main thing - the experience of living faith.

Svetlana wanted to stay longer in the monastery, but she was breastfeeding her baby and had to leave.

“Oh,” she realized before leaving, “I haven’t venerated the relics of St. Seraphim of Sarov in Optina yet.” And I prayed to him so much about Seryozha.

* * *

Who would dare to assert that only the Optina saints helped the warrior Sergei, and that the Monk Seraphim of Sarov did not help? Or how to isolate purely Optina grace, if the miracles that took place in the Optina Hermitage were preceded by prayers at the shrines of Kyiv, Valaam, Diveevo? These were the questions that ended my obedience.

Once I shared my doubts with Hieromonk Mark from the Pafnutievo-Borovsky Monastery, and instead of answering, he told me the following story.

One married couple did not have children for thirty years, although doctors claimed that they were healthy. All these years they traveled to holy places, begging for a child. Both were already old when they visited the Optina Hermitage and fervently prayed here to the Mother of God and the Optina elders. Leaving Optina, they bathed in the monastery spring of St. Paphnutius of Borovsky. And nine months after this bath, they had a wonderful, healthy son. And the happy spouses believed - a son was given to them through the prayers of the Monk Paphnutius of Borovsky. So they came to the Pafnutyevo-Borovsky Monastery with a request to baptize their child here.

“They didn’t baptize in our monastery then,” said Hieromonk Mark. “But I gladly baptized this baby.” This is truly a child of prayer, whom his parents have been begging for for thirty years.

In happiness, past sorrows are forgotten. And the happy parents no longer remembered how they had prayed and grieved over their infertility for thirty years. Now the baby smiled at them like the clear sun and they remembered only the bright waters of the spring with the icon of St. Paphnutius of Borovsk on the wall.

Actually, the same thing happened at my obedience: people remembered only the “result” - the wonderful help through the prayers of the Optina elders. And the most important thing was forgotten: how, for the sake of healing the soul, the Lord tested them with sorrows and the miracle was preceded by a long path of repentance and pilgrimage to holy places.

In general, I filled up several notebooks at that obedience, and in the end I discovered: a purely Optina “small miracle” was only the story with the boots. In other cases, the Optina elders helped people together with other saints, and this spiritual connection was inextricable. Such stories were not quite suitable for canonization, and I hid my notes away, forgetting about them for a long time. And recently I read the following from St. Simeon the New Theologian:

“...The saints who come from generation to generation through doing the commandments of God are combined with the saints who preceded them in time, are illuminated like those, receiving the grace of God through communion, and become like a kind of golden chain, in which each of them is a separate link, connecting with the previous one through faith, works and love, so that in the one God they form a single chain that cannot be easily broken.”

This is truly an unbreakable golden chain. Therefore, I will tell you a few stories from those forgotten notebooks where the connection of the Optina saints with the Monk Seraphim of Sarov or the Monk Paphnutius of Borovsk was clearly revealed.

One local resident asked to record such an incident. Her younger sister’s newborn baby was dying of pneumonia in the hospital. The doctor was good and tried to help, but the baby was fading away before our eyes. One day, a young mother heard a doctor say to a nurse:

“It’s a pity for the baby, he’ll die in an hour or two.” The agony has already begun.

Then the mother grabbed the child in her arms and, escaping from the hospital, rushed by taxi to Optina, to the monastery spring of St. Paphnutius Borovsky. It was thirty-degree frosts at Epiphany. But she remembered her grandmother’s stories about healings at this source and, with a prayerful cry for help, she dipped the baby three times into this icy font. Then she wrapped the child in her fur coat and took him home. Let, she thought, at least die among his family. And the baby slept for almost a day and woke up healthy.

And one of my village acquaintances, the already deceased grandmother Ustinya, saw with her own eyes the Monk Paphnutius of Borovsky. Once, when she was still a girl, she was too lazy to go to the river to rinse her clothes and decided to rinse them in the spring of St. Paphnutius of Borovsky. By that time the monastery was already ruined and closed, the chapel over the spring of St. Paphnutius of Borovsky was also destroyed. And the pioneer leader explained to them at school that the holy springs are a blatant lie of the priests, because the water in them is just water. But when Ustinya dipped soapy laundry into the spring, the Monk Paphnutius of Borovsky began to rise from the water - she immediately recognized him from the icons. And the monk looked at her so sternly, threatening with his finger, that the girl ran away from the source in fear, throwing the basket of laundry to the ground.

A similar case happened with a friend of mine. After baptism, he lived the whole summer in the Optina Hermitage and every day went to the spring of St. Paphnutius of Borovsky. One day after bathing, he discovered that clods of mud were stuck to his shoes, and he washed his shoes in the spring. The water in the font turned dark with dirt, and my friend’s eyes darkened. He was horrified to discover that he was going blind and could barely distinguish objects. Somehow he got to my house and said from the threshold:

“I am going blind because I desecrated the holy spring.” I already realized what a sin this is.

The doctor then told him something incomprehensible about dark water in his eyes. And it took two surgeries before my vision began to recover.

* * *

Naive stories about how some pilgrims like Svetlana are looking for the relics of St. Seraphim of Sarov in the Optina Hermitage, considering him the Elder of Optina, are also far from naive. And here is one of such stories.

One day a young woman came to Optina Pustyn and asked to be baptized here.

– Why do you want to be baptized in Optina? - Hegumen Sergius (Rybko), now the rector of the Moscow church, and at that time the Optina hieromonk, asked her.

“And one old man comes to me and keeps trying to persuade me to be baptized. So I came to be baptized by him.

The visitor described the appearance of her “elder” in such detail that Father Sergius suspected: what if one of the Optina elders really came to her? He began to show her photographs and icons of the Optina elders, but the woman confidently answered: “Not him.” And suddenly she beamed with happiness when she saw the icon of St. Seraphim of Sarov:

- Yes, here is my old man, here he is, my joyful one! He even says, you know, like this: “My joy, please be baptized.”

Great saints of God sometimes see saints. But for St. Seraphim to come to an unbaptized person in our days is, you see, worthy of surprise. Father Sergius began to question the woman, asking what was special about her. But there seemed to be nothing special in her life - she lives in a one-room apartment with her husband, son and paralyzed mother-in-law, and works as a saleswoman. The salary was more than modest, but the woman did not even think that she could shortchange or underweight someone. And she also couldn’t imagine how she could quarrel with her husband without ever quarreling with him. In addition to her son, she would like to have more children, but the Lord does not give children yet. And the young woman not only did not feel burdened by caring for her paralyzed mother-in-law, but literally doted on her mother-in-law.

“My husband and son and I hardly go anywhere, so as not to leave our grandmother alone,” she said. “But the three of us sit in the evenings, talking about something, but for some reason there is such joy in my soul that I don’t know how to tell it.

The bear fed from the hand of Flame

The Monk Seraphim of Sarov, especially revered in Russia, lived for a long time in solitude, the place of which he chose the Volga forests.

From childhood, the pious youth Prokhor was marked by the special patronage of the Most Holy Theotokos, who saved his life when he fell from a bell tower under construction. Prokhor always loved prayer very much and strove for the monastic life. In his youth, he entered the Sarov Monastery and accepted the priesthood.

After some time, the saint decided to become a hermit and went into the forests. For about three and a half years, the Reverend Father Seraphim ate only one herb, which grew around his cell. He spent a thousand days and a thousand nights in the feat of pillar-building on a stone boulder. They say that the old man in his solitude was visited by birds and wild animals.

He called the clearing and his cell on it “desert”, in memory of the hermits who lived in the desert. The miracle worker Seraphim gave his love to every living creature, be it human or animal. “My joy,” he addressed everyone who came to him.

A bear often visited the saint’s forest “desert.” Father Seraphim treated him like a meek lamb, and fed him bread from his hands, and the proud owner of the forest accepted the treat, presenting his huge head for affection and, contented, lay down at the feet of the old man, like a faithful dog.

“The Lord sent me a beast as a consolation!” said Saint Seraphim, stroking the bear’s shaggy skin.

One day one of the nuns, who came to the elder for advice, saw this and was amazed by the miracle. And he said to her: “Do you remember, mother, a lion served the Monk Gerasim on the Jordan, and a bear served poor Seraphim (as he humbly called himself).”

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The book shows the beautiful love of two people, it makes you love life and enjoy every moment spent with your family.

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Miraculous rescue from captivity by the great martyr

The Holy Great Martyr George the Victorious has always been considered the patron saint of the Orthodox army and was especially revered by military personnel.

The saint was born in the 2nd century, in Cappadocia (Asia Minor), into a deeply religious Christian family. His father suffered martyrdom for Christ when George was still a child, and his mother, who owned estates in Palestine, moved with her son to her homeland and raised him in strict piety.

In his youth, he enlisted in the Roman army, where he proved himself to be a courageous warrior and was noticed and approached by Emperor Diocletian.

The pagan emperor especially hated Christians and persecuted them. Saint George, having learned about the emperor’s decision, distributed his inheritance to the poor, set his slaves free, appeared in the Senate and professed himself a Christian.

The enraged Diocletian ordered George to be subjected to the most sophisticated torture. They wheeled the great martyr on the wheel, covered him in a pit with quicklime, put him in iron boots with nails, beat him with ox sinews and subjected him to other tortures, but each time Saint George was miraculously healed by God.

Finally, on April 23, 303, the holy Great Martyr George was beheaded with a sword. But even after his death, his miracles and exploits did not stop, but only intensified. So, once in a certain area he saved a noble maiden from death by killing a serpent with a spear - a terrible monster to which the locals made human sacrifices. This feat is depicted on Russian kopeks and in the coat of arms of Moscow.

But the miracles of St. George continue to this day. One of them happened at the beginning of the 20th century during the First World War, as evidenced by George Koktsidis from the city of Drama:

“My father Anastasius Koktsidis was born in 1884 in the Pontic village of Yazlakioi, located 35 kilometers from Amiso (Sampsunta). He had seven children.

In 1914, general mobilization was announced in connection with the outbreak of the Russian-Turkish War. The father did not want to fight for the Turks against Russia and went to the mountains with his family. Until 1922 he remained in the partisan detachment of Captain Christos Avraamidis.

He did not have time to escape to Greece; he was caught by the Turkish authorities and placed in solitary confinement. He was in constant fear. One day suddenly something flashed like lightning and some noise was heard.

"Forward!" - these were the first words that my father heard when he woke up. Before him stood St. George the Victorious, a saint whom he especially revered. The father saw that the path was open before him. So he left the camp. There was complete silence around. With a quick step, the father reached a populated area at dawn. I got my bearings and was able to find my family.

Dad often talked about his salvation and always emphasized that everything happened not in a dream, but in reality.”

Olga Lucas “Thirteenth edition. Drink of the Gods"

A fascinating book about a fabulous two-story mansion where people work, whose task is to fulfill the wishes of others. It is impossible to find this house, and outsiders are strictly prohibited from entering. The mansion is hidden from prying eyes, because even people who selflessly fulfill wishes have ill-wishers and competitors.

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Irwin Wallace "Miracle"

The work touches on religious themes, the issue of Faith in the Divine miracle and the search for the true meaning of life. The author does not impose his opinion, and on the contrary, he does not express it in any way. Each reader will find his own answers to the questions that concern him. This book is very easy and enjoyable to read and helps restore peace of mind.

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Elena Minkina “Morning of the Butterfly”

A work about human love, hope and deep faith. About the price you often have to pay for your own choices. Many situations in the book will remind the reader of his life. The story reveals the depth of human relationships. Truly mystical, it will help the reader answer questions that may have bothered him for a long time.

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Flagg Fenny "Christmas and the Red Cardinal"

A very kind and bright book. Here the characters find their true love and are cured of deadly diseases. A magical Christmas tale that makes you believe in real miracles. Fenny's story gives the reader a real belief in magic, which is so lacking on the eve of the Christmas holidays. Of course, if you close the book, throw off the veil and look at the world around us, everything will not seem so fabulous. But why wake up when you see such a wonderful dream?

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