God's miracles on earth. Incredible miracles that happened to people - paradigmatic. "Don't cry, you'll come last..."
Blessed Augustine noted: when reading the Gospel, we recognize the multiplication of loaves as an unconditional miracle, but no less a miracle is the growth of bread itself. After all, both the first and the second are from God, and equally. And in general, everything in life is arranged by God - bread, earth, and water... In this sense, the word "miracle" simply describes the presence of God in a person's life.
It turns out that "miracle" in the narrowly familiar sense - as an inexplicable violation of the order of things - is a word from the lexicon of atheists? After all, there is nothing inexplicable in the fact that God, at His discretion, controls the “order of things”.
And that means the next logical step: “miracle” does not exist at all, because the presence of God in our life is the most normal thing that is prepared for a person from the creation of the world? But what words, then, to speak of the miracle of the Resurrection of Christ?
About this - our conversation with Archpriest Pavel Velikanov, candidate of theology, rector of the Pyatnitsky metochion of the Trinity-Sergius Lavra in Sergiev Posad.
sign of weakness
- Father Paul, is it appropriate in principle to speak of the resurrection of Christ as a miracle?
From what point of view are we looking? From the point of view of a person who is used to the fact that all people die and is this normal? Or from the point of view of a God who did not create us to die?
The Church is not a miracle factory. And the central event of a person's church life is the Sacrament of the Eucharist, which would fit the formal criteria of a miracle: there was bread and wine, but they became the Flesh and Blood of Christ - we do not call it a miracle. And why? Firstly, this is what is done according to the schedule, which means that it entirely depends on the will of those people who participate in the commission of the “miracle”. And secondly - and this is the main thing - absolutely nothing happens during the Eucharist. Everything remains the same: bread and wine taste, smell and color remain bread and wine. And at the same time, we feel that the most significant and greatest event in the life of any person is taking place according to the schedule and without any external signs. The question arises: why is it so?
After all, how great it would be if, at the moment preceding the transubstantiation of the Holy Gifts, the temple would begin to shake with a slight tremor, some kind of flashes and lightning would appear, unearthly voices would begin to sound, sacred awe would attack everyone and everyone would understand that something is going on that requires special attention. How effective it would be! But nothing like that happens.
And not only among ordinary priests, but also among the saints. Only isolated cases are known when the celebration of the Eucharist by the saints was accompanied by some obvious miraculous evidence (for example, when St. Sergius of Radonezh took communion, those who served with him saw heavenly fire descend into the chalice), but otherwise it is a completely ordinary story.
It seems to me that there is a very deep and very simple meaning in such “commonness”: for God, the life that we live - so crooked, filled with human lies, sins, passions, and so on - is of great value. Perhaps much more than for ourselves. And only in situations where it is impossible otherwise, the Lord allows a miracle as an emergency, abnormal intervention in this life.
And if you look at the resurrection of Christ from this point of view, then it is no miracle at all. This is what was in the Divine plan from the very beginning. Archpriest Avvakum writes about the eternal council of the Holy Trinity, where God the Son asks God the Father whether it is worth creating this world if you have to die for it. Father Pavel Florensky writes that the whole world was created by the Cross, that the Cross is the principle of being of all things. But here we must clearly understand that it is not just the Cross that underlies the world, but the Cross for the sake of resurrection. And if from our point of view, as fallen people, the resurrection of Christ is a miracle as something abnormal, then from the point of view of God, the Resurrection is the only normal, the only correct thing that was prepared for man. This is the path that God intended for each of us.
- Do you think a person has a right to a miracle?
A person has a right, of course. But this is not a sign of his strength and capabilities. This is a sign of his weakness and infirmity. If he demands a miracle, then he has serious problems - not in the material plane, but in relations with God. If, without this miracle, a person has reached a dead end and cannot move anywhere else, then there is a problem of an internal search for one's place in God's world.
Remember the gospel story about a father who brought his possessed son to Christ?
... One of the people said in response: Teacher! I brought to Thee my son, possessed by a dumb spirit: wherever he seizes him, he throws him to the ground, and he emits foam, and gnashes his teeth, and freezes. I told your disciples to cast him out, and they could not. Answering him, Jesus said: O unfaithful generation! how long will I be with you? how long can I bear you? Bring him to Me. And they brought him to Him. As soon as the demoniac saw Him, the spirit shook him; he fell to the ground and rolled around, emitting foam. And Jesus asked his father, How long ago did this happen to him? He said: since childhood; and many times the spirit threw him both into fire and into water to destroy him; but, if you can, have pity on us and help us. Jesus said to him: If you can believe a little, all things are possible to him who believes. And immediately the father of the lad exclaimed with tears: I believe, Lord! help my unbelief. Jesus, seeing that the people were fleeing, rebuked the unclean spirit, saying to him: dumb and deaf spirit! I command you to leave it and do not enter it again. And, crying out and shaking him violently, he went out; and he became as dead, so that many said that he was dead. But Jesus, taking him by the hand, lifted him up; and he arose... (Mk 9:17-27).
If my father had no problems with faith, he would not have had to shout: “I believe, Lord, help my unbelief!” We see that it is fundamentally important for the father that an acute life crisis gives him a chance to break through the shell of his own disbelief. Otherwise, his whole life turns into continuous torment. The son suffers - and the father sees no point in this suffering. And when it's pointless, then it's painful.
Remember Turgenev's story "Living Powers" - about a woman who has been lying motionless for many years and still does not die. The landowner offers to transport her from the farm to the hospital, where she will be helped. At first she hesitates, but then she decides: no, no. In this weak state, she gains real, for her most tangible spiritual benefit. She needs this weakness. She is perhaps the most unfortunate of all people on earth, but she does not pray to God for a miracle of healing, although it would seem that God Himself ordered, pardon the pun. Why?
She's crazy, isn't she? Not at all. She is strong. And her strength lies in the fact that she does not want to interfere with the will of God with her will, she does not want to oppose her desire to the plan that God has for herself. She simply, with humility, with faith, with devotion, entrusts herself into the hands of God - and let Him mold from her what He wants, and not what she wants, no matter how painful and hard it may be for her.
In a word, we certainly have the right to a miracle. But we should not ask God for a miracle. St. Ignatius (Bryanchaninov) has a work "On the Miracles of Christ." The accents are very correctly placed in it: the meaning of a miracle is not in the very fact of performing a miracle, but in pushing those who would otherwise not be able to believe in Him to God. Therefore, in the time of the first Christians, miracles were needed not by believers, but by unbelievers. A miracle is a step that you need to step over in order to rise higher.
At the same time, a miracle is never one hundred percent irrefutable. Even in the most obvious and "inexplicable" miracle, the Lord still leaves a person the opportunity - a loophole - to maintain his unbelief. I have the right to decide: yes, what I see is a violation of the laws of nature, but I can assume that in a hundred or two hundred years scientists will explain this. The Lord gives us such an opportunity, and this shows His great mercy and love. He does not rape a person and does not drag him to the Kingdom of Heaven by force. Therefore, a miracle is only an occasion to voluntarily and freely turn to God. But it is voluntary and free. The Lord can surround us with miracles and circumstances that will catch, inspire, excite, but to see God behind all this and take a step towards him is up to us. Saint Clement of Alexandria calls God the greatest teacher. We have the right to add that He is also the most delicate teacher. He does not perform a miracle to push a person against the wall and say, “See? And now I quickly believed in God!” No, there is no dictate of a miracle.
Going to God without reacting to miracles or not attaching importance to them is, after all, a fairly high spiritual bar, to which one still needs to grow...
In my opinion, this is the only normal spiritual level on which the relationship between man and God can be.
One journalist told me a completely amazing story. She wrote a report about the bringing of the Belt of the Virgin to Moscow, stood in a queue for many hours and had the opportunity to observe what happens to people: how their motivation and feelings change as they stand in this queue. And it turns out - an amazing thing! - after three or four hours of standing, some kind of qualitative change occurs in people. Initially, they came with quite worldly "requests", and almost every second one, which is curious, was going to ask for the successful study of children. Among other "requests" were health and family well-being. But after three or four hours, their concentration on personal egoistic “requests” to God gave way to something new. People began to feel themselves not as a scattered collection of alienated personalities, but as a single whole organism. The queue acquired internal integrity.
I listened to this journalist and thought that this is exactly what we sorely lack in parish life. After all, for the people in the queue, metaphorically speaking, this was the liturgy - a common cause. After three or four hours of standing, they were transformed into a completely new community. And when they approached the Belt, they experienced happiness and joy not because they received answers to their requests, but because some new state was born inside them, and everything secondary was eliminated by itself. This new thing came to the fore and became something for which it was generally worth coming and standing in line.
There is a deep truth hidden here for me. God does not forbid us to pray and ask Him for something, to build our own idea of what we need now. But in the end, all this is for the sake of coming to Him. Our requests must begin with Him and end with Him.
Cake and freedom
- You are strict about miracles, but they certainly happened to you. How did you perceive them?
I received miracles as a gift I didn't ask for. When I was still a very young teacher, everything was quite difficult financially. My mother and I settled in a newly built house, it had neither heating nor amenities. And then there was an opportunity to conduct gas. It turned out that in order to do this, I had to pay two thousand dollars to a neighbor just for him to agree. There was nowhere to get that kind of money. The situation is deadlocked. At the same time, I was invited as part of a small delegation on a business trip to one of the Local Orthodox Churches. And when we were already leaving, I was unexpectedly handed an envelope - just as a gesture of goodwill on the part of the hosts. I didn’t even think that at least something would be paid for the trip. I unfold the envelope in the hotel room - and there are exactly two thousand dollars ...
It is difficult for me to convey what I felt at that moment ... It seems that I very accurately understood the feelings of the Apostle Peter, when he fished all night, did not catch anything, and in the morning Christ ordered to cast the nets again - and the fishermen caught so many fish that two boats became sink under her weight. And as the Gospel tells, Peter cried out: Get out of me, Lord! because I am a sinful person. Because terror seized him and all who were with him because of this fishing they caught... (Luke 5:8-9). The same horror fell upon me! From disbelief. From the fact that you lived up to this moment and did not notice that you exist in the space of God's constant mercy, and therefore such obvious and “wonderful” manifestations of it plunge you into shock. How could you not think before and not believe that the Lord is so close that for Him our worldly difficulties are of paramount importance - no less than for ourselves.
Another miracle is related to my now deceased wife, who struggled with severe cancer for four years. The tumor steadily grew twice a month, but at some point the growth suddenly stopped. Nobody could understand why. The doctor told us, “I don’t know what you were doing, but please keep doing the same. Because it's a real miracle." And for two or three months the tumor did not grow. And then it began to increase again. What was it? From a medical point of view, no one could explain. But for me it was a direct evidence of God's presence in our lives. The Lord has shown that He is here and He is the master of the situation. If He needs it, if He considers it necessary and right, He can stop the growth of the tumor. If He does not do this, it means that there is His will for that - and one cannot climb across. I took it that way. Who am I to go against God?
Of course we prayed. As one bishop told me, “half of the Russian Orthodox Church is praying for your mother.” And I have no doubt that it was only thanks to these prayers that she died not a month after the diagnosis, but four years later. But praying is not the same as saying: “Lord, let it be either my way or nothing!” Or squeeze your whole life into this prayer: they say, Lord, if it doesn’t happen as I ask, I will not leave the place to spite you and will die in this feat. That I'm smarter than God?
Prayer for your neighbor is a true manifestation of love. And here comes a very subtle point. What does it mean to love a person? If I love, what do I - first of all - wish him? Salvation. But what if this disease, according to God's plan, is the only right way for a person to be saved. And what - I have to stand up and say: "No, Lord, wait, I need a wife"?
In addition to humility, there is also boldness in the spiritual life. There is a well-known gospel maxim: "Knock, and it will be opened to you." How do you understand it?
Knock and it will indeed be opened to you. But what you see behind the door is completely different from what you expected. God is not an errand boy rushing to run your errands. Yes, He will open the door you knock on - as a sign that they hear you, communicate with you, react to you, you have a relationship with God.
This is a very subtle point. Because, on the one hand, there is what I said. But on the other hand, it is interesting for God to see what a person asks for. Like any father, it is very interesting to watch their children. For example, it is interesting for me to watch how the priorities and preferences of my children change, how inner growth is going on. And a reasonable parent is unlikely to impose his opinion on a child: “You must become a good lawyer!” In the same way, God is interested in what a person will choose.
And here a conflict already arises: how is human freedom and Divine providence combined? At one end is the idea of human free will, and at the other is that, according to the apostle Paul, we bring every thought captive into obedience to Christ (2 Corinthians 10:5). On the one hand, God has a plan for each of us. On the other hand, if we ourselves do not choose anything, if we do not need anything, if we have formed a persistent chronic indifference to everything that happens, then we simply do not exist.
We become human as we choose our preferences, as we make daily and even momentary choices. Turn any situation for good or for evil. Until the last moment of death, a person makes a choice. Take away from us the opportunity to choose - and we will not have a permanent simulator for the soul, for the heart, for the brain, for the will.
And at the same time, no matter how you choose, no matter how you change your path, the Lord still knows better than you what you need and in what way, in what role, in what status you need to go. Moreover, even if you choose the wrong path, God will still make sure that in the end this path turns out to be exactly the way the Lord sees fit to lead you.
And how, after all this, will the tongue turn to ask for a miracle?
- What's wrong with that?
Here you live with God and feel that the Lord is here, at your fingertips, in every little thing, in every second, everything is saturated with Him, and everything that happens to you constantly testifies to His care, His love, His care ... Is this not enough and we need some other miracle?
Imagine a family where a child suffers from a serious illness of the digestive system, and parents spend their whole lives feeding the child exactly those foods that will allow him to live and recover. The child understands this, but suddenly says: “I want a cake. I want to death! Do whatever you want - but give me a cake. Parents, of course, can give him this cake and at the same time foresee that the child will become much worse and will have to invest even more effort, time and money to neutralize this result of the fulfillment of a person’s free will.
But after all, how unintelligent one must be to demand a cake from parents in such a situation! You need to live in your absolutely impenetrable world, not to see the care of your parents, not to see your own illness and consider that all life revolves around you alone. Perhaps I am deeply mistaken, but the demand for a miracle from God seems to me something like that.
St. Isaac the Syrian has such an idea that only due to the weakness of the human mind, God commanded us to ask Him for our daily bread, and to those who are “perfect in knowledge and healthy in soul”, Christ says: Seek first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things will be added to you... (Mt 6:33). This thought turned me around at the time. After all, really, what is the point of asking anything from God when we already live in the space of God's constant care.
So what - you don’t need to ask God for anything at all? What if the situation is difficult? After all, you yourself said that you prayed for the recovery of your wife ...
Of course I prayed! But here I always remember the thought of Metropolitan Anthony of Sourozh, which I met in one of his sermons: they say, I have such an agreement with God - I do not ask for anything for myself, but I ask for others. Of course, the Lord wants us to pray and ask for loved ones, because this is a manifestation of our love.
But there is another interesting point here.
Prayer cannot be understood only as a request. A request to God is just a certain kind of prayer and far from being the most perfect. The meaning of prayer is in the communion of man with God. It may seem that the holy fathers and ascetics of piety did not pray at all: they did not rise to pray, they did not ask God for this or that. It's just that their whole life - every second - and so was walking before God.
They did not let God out of their hearts and their consciousness for a moment - this was their prayer, as natural as breathing. In the same way that loving spouses do not need to constantly confess their love to each other. They just live together - and their actions, their unexpressed thoughts and words, the whole rhythm of their life reflect their love.
Therefore, prayer - I repeat - is not a request. Prayer is, ideally, the offering of oneself wholly as a sacrifice to God. Here is a monk-recluse - it would seem, what is the use of him for the world? It is generally accepted that we need to ask him to pray for us, because he, they say, is closer to God and he has more "leverage" of influence. Maybe it is so, but the meaning of his seclusion is completely different. He pleases God by being constantly in a state, figuratively speaking, of maximum "synchronization" with Him, and renders an invaluable service to all people in general by the fact that in our earthly world - in this kingdom of chaos and sin, where everything goes completely wrong , as God wants, and goes not because He planned it that way, but because we exist, and with us, such freaks, nothing can be done, although it is impossible to destroy us, because we are not yet completely hopeless, - in a word, in In this realm of disorder, an island suddenly forms, where everything goes as the Lord intended for man. The prayer of a hermit monk is a kind of representation, a real diplomatic mission before God.
It is also curious to assess the intensity of this prayer. Among the people with whom I have had occasion to communicate and who for me in one way or another personify holiness, I have never met such that in some difficult situation they, trying to beg something from God, changed the rhythm of their lives - rudely saying, they decided: “Now we need to add so many prostrations to the earth a day and increase the prayer rule so much, and then everything will be fine.” There was no such thing ... And I can not blame these people for indifference or coldness. Also, I can’t say that they lack willpower or do not allow loading. And in this, it seems to me, there is some very serious, deep truth. When a person already lives in a certain approximation to the ideal, when he serves and prays every day and physically could no longer physically - there is trust in God in this. Daily living as commanded is much more important than provoking God to “miraculously” invade our lives.
Everything is good!
If we feel that God is manifested in everything, in every movement of life, is there any danger here of falling into a kind of “blissful calmness” - everything is already fine, the Lord is near. Where then is the place for internal tension, for work on oneself?
When a person calms down, it's wonderful. I do not see anything abnormal and contradictory in the fact that a person calms down. To be at peace with oneself is the only right state. The ability to achieve inner peace, inner silence - what is called "hesychia" in the Orthodox tradition - this is what distinguishes a believer from an unbeliever. This is the basic assurance that everything is in order. You can twist from passions, from anger, from lust - but it remains on the surface. And in the soul there is a depth where you can look at any moment and make sure that the world is harmonious. Because the depth is God, it is the Church, it is Christ, Who has already saved you. And all this is not subject to earthly cataclysms. It's more than them.
But you asked if a person who feels the real presence of God here and now does not turn into an inactive, powerless, powerless "don't care". No, nothing like that. On the contrary, only when a person understands the ultimate significance of every moment of his life and all that material in which he lives, only then can he begin to relate to life correctly. That is, to realize that there will be no other world and another life. You and I will not have a second interview like this. If it does, it's something completely different. The moment that you are experiencing here and now, with all its possibilities of making a choice, will never happen again. So, this is the most important and most significant moment in your life, because "there is only a moment between the past and the future, it is he who is called life." From this understanding of the exclusivity of every moment, of every person, of every object, comes the ultimate tension of life. Not relaxation, not calmness, but an extremely stressful life.
Imagine a plane is flying. Passengers are relaxed - they are doing well. But the pilot and navigator feel completely different. They have one wrong move - and that's it, hundreds of deaths. And a person who does not feel the value of every moment resembles a passenger - "we fly, we eat, we read a book, everything is fine." And the one who feels himself constantly on the crest of contact between human life and God's mercy is like a pilot: he cannot lean back in his chair and doze off. Because every second he is responsible.
Such inner tension is an inevitable consequence of the reality of God's presence in the world. A person understands that he needs to “twitch” precisely because everything is fine. After all, if you do not strain at the current moment, the next one will not be normal.
Some say: Christianity is the correction of sins, without which joy is impossible. Others say that Christianity is a joy that requires the correction of sins. The idea is the same - the emphasis is different. It is clear that these are not binary oppositions, but simply two ends of the spectrum…
The truth is both there and there, but Christ is primary in Christianity. It is Christ-centered, not "sin-centered" or "joy-centered." And when we talk about Christ, we are talking about something from another dimension, about something that cannot be divided into components. Because everything is in Christ.
What is the Person of Christ? It seems to me that a person experiences the deepest and most Christianly correct sensations not even when he sings “Christ is Risen”, but when he stands in the church on the days of Holy Week and goes to Calvary together with the Savior. What's in it? Consciousness of one's sin? Yes, because we see the terrible price of his redemption. Feeling of joy? Also yes. And it's not even that we know about the coming Resurrection. It's just that in the very way of the cross, through every event and every prayer, the light of God's Providence for us breaks through - and, therefore, God's love. The feeling of sin and the feeling of joy are strangely combined. And one cannot be discarded, and the other recognized as dominant.
“One person close to me recently uttered a phrase that touched me to the core: if there is forgiveness for me, it will be with huge tears. That is, he understands that, by and large, he cannot be forgiven. And at the same time, he knows for sure The objectivity and obviousness of this fact cannot but give birth in him to tears of repentance and deep gratitude, and through them, aspiration to God as such.Remember the gospel episode where Christ appears to the apostles after the resurrection:
After that, Jesus again appeared to His disciples at the Sea of Tiberias. And so he appeared: Simon Peter was together, and Thomas, called the Twin, and Nathanael from Cana of Galilee, and the sons of Zebedee, and two other of His disciples. Simon Peter says to them: I'm going to fish. They say to him: we go with you. We went and immediately got into the boat, and caught nothing that night. And when the morning had already come, Jesus was standing on the shore; but the disciples did not know that it was Jesus. Jesus says to them: children! do you have any food? They answered Him: no. He said to them, Throw the net on the right side of the boat, and you will catch it. They threw, and could no longer pull out the nets from the multitude of fish. Then the disciple whom Jesus loved said to Peter: This is the Lord. Simon Peter, hearing that it was the Lord, girded himself with his robe, for he was naked, and threw himself into the sea (Jn 21:1-7).
As soon as Peter heard that the Lord had risen - that's all, he throws the fish that he tried to catch with such difficulty all night and rushes to Christ. If the Lord is near, then Peter does not need anything else. After all, the most important thing is in Himself. And this is the state of mind that every Christian - and maybe every person in general - wants to come to. This is the state for which the Lord created us: to love Him not for what He does, but for what He is.
Andy Kays announcement photo
This is an interview. She collected under the cover a whole series of conversations with famous priests about the miracle in our lives.
Miracles performed through the prayers of the righteous are often referred to as something supernatural. In fact, the intervention of the Lord in the lives of Orthodox believers is miraculously a manifestation of His love and support, as exemplified by the miracles of Orthodox saints.
Miracles Given by Jesus
God's miracles in no way violate the laws of nature that the Creator Himself established. All unusual phenomena refer to God's special actions, which mankind cannot yet explain.
Until recently, mobile phones seemed like a fantasy, laser treatment was beyond the scope of the human mind, and now it is the most ordinary thing.
The concept of miracles includes cases of healing, resurrection, curbing natural phenomena and many others that cannot be explained in terms of scientific research.
Read about miracles:
- Lanchan miracle
Miracles of Jesus Christ The Lord reveals himself to faithful people as they become churched, infused into the life of the Church.
Miracles as the power of God's grace
Jesus left examples of Christian miracles as a gift to his disciples:
- turning water into wine;
- walking on water;
- stopping storms;
- resurrecting the dead;
- feeding thousands of people with a few loaves.
Reading the New Testament, one can find more than one evidence of miracles performed through the prayers of Christ and His disciples from different angles. The first inexplicable act was the very birth of Jesus, both God and man, from the Holy Spirit.
Healing
A miraculous healing touched a woman who suffered from bleeding for 12 years, spent all her savings on doctors and was healed by one touch on the edge of the savior's clothes. Faith saved her. (Matthew 9:20)
The cleansing of a leper (Matthew 8:2), when a man suffering from leprosy said that if the Savior wanted, he could heal him. The patient did not doubt the power of Jesus, he gave Him the right to do so and obeyed the Divine will. Heal if you want.
Giving sight to the blind from birth as evidence of God's glory (John 9:1-33)
Miracles of the healing of Jesus Christ
Restoration of friends who are paralyzed by faith (Mark 2:1-12)
Jesus gave hearing to the deaf, freed from demons, restored diseased bones, no one who asked Christ for healing was refused. During the sermons on the mountains and in the deserts, all who followed the Teacher were healed.
The New Testament describes the miraculous healings performed by the apostles, according to the power of Jesus. (Mark 3:15)
Important! Miracles of healing have not lost their power even now, because the apostles left a command on how to act in case of illness.
Through the prayers of Peter and John, the lame man began to walk. Paul, Philip and all the apostles healed in the name of Jesus.
If any of you suffers, let him pray. Is anyone cheerful, let him sing psalms. Is any of you sick, let him call for the elders of the Church, and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord. And the prayer of faith will heal the sick, and the Lord will raise him up; and if he has committed sins, he will be forgiven. Confess your wrongdoings to each other and pray for each other in order to be healed: the fervent prayer of the righteous can do much. (James 5:13-16)
Modern miracles performed in Orthodoxy
The grace of the Savior did not exhaust itself after His return to the Father. By the feat of faith and fidelity in the Christian life, God granted Orthodox people to see the miracles of Orthodox saints performed at the present time.
One of the famous miracles known throughout the world is the Descent of the Holy Fire on Orthodox Easter. There is a lot of controversy on this issue, they tried to accuse the Orthodox Church of fraud, but the facts are a stubborn thing. The fire continues to go down at the same time of the year, and in the first minutes of its appearance it does not burn. There is a tradition to bring candles from Jerusalem, consecrated on the Holy Sepulcher.
The miracle of the appearance of the blessed fire
The second inexplicable phenomenon of nature, which is observed by thousands of pilgrims, is a change in the direction of the flow of rivers during Theophany or Baptism of the Lord. This happens in many places on the planet, but the most famous was the water miracle on the Jordan River, where Jesus Himself was baptized.
Reversal of the Jordan River at Epiphany
The prophet, seer, holy man Seraphim of Sarov is loved throughout Russia for the miracles that happen through the prayers of the hero of the faith. A great gift for the monk who lived in seclusion and silence was the visit of the Mother of God, who ordered Seraphim to go to the people and bring them the Good News.
An unusual event happened to a girl named Zoya in the 20th century, in 1956 in Samara. A Komsomol member, an activist, took a portrait of Nikolai Ugodnik, began to dance with him, saying: “If there is a God, let him punish” and turned to stone, so much so that the strongest men could not move her. So the petrified Zoya stood in the former club from January to Easter, after which she came to life and became very pious.
The monks on Mount Athos managed to record the singing of angels, which are repeatedly shown in holy temples.
Singing Angels on Mount Athos
There are numerous testimonies of parishioners receiving answers to their prayers from the icons of the Mother of God and saints. Each temple keeps its own unique history of miracles revealed by the Lord, given by God to strengthen the faith of the parishioners.
Help of the Saints:
Miracles in the life of a Christian happen even now.
The recent event surprised all doctors. In 2018, when the doctors, having called the mother of a five-year-old girl Sophia, told her that the treatment for a year for cancer, a tumor in her head had not yielded results, and they were transferring the girl to palliative chemotherapy, brought all her relatives into deep grief. It was said right in the eyes of the mother: "We have done everything, your girl will die soon."
There was no end to the grief of the mother, but there were relatives and friends nearby. The cry of "Pray!" flew to all corners of the globe. Within a month, notes were submitted in churches, people accepted round-the-clock fasts, and God showed His mercy. A month later, MRI showed no tumor.
It happened in Ukraine in 2001, a huge tornado was rushing at a speed of 350-1000 km / h. Everything that got in his way was torn to pieces, cars, people, animals. Officially confirmed 5 deaths of people. Before the appearance of a tornado, nature seemed to freeze, and only a rumble was heard, according to eyewitnesses, reminiscent of the rumble of 100 tanks.
Christians of one village, standing in the way of the raging elements, gathered in the church and prayed fervently. The tornado, as it were, stumbled in front of the village, split into two pillars, which went around the village and connected behind it. Not a single building in this village was destroyed when the neighboring villages were struck by a great disaster.
Many Christians read the story of the prophet Jonah as a legend, but the events of 1891 are caught on tape when a missing sailor was found alive in the stomach of a whale.
Incredible Stories of Survival
The Lord remains unchanged in His deeds both thousands of years ago and today. By the great mercy of the Creator, people receive instant healing from incurable diseases, some of them grow limbs, miraculously the Lord solves financial problems.
Svetlana (Simferopol) took a loan from a bank, but she could not repay it on time and paid only interest, the amount of which already exceeded the debt itself. Svetlana constantly prayed and one day she was called to the bank.
With a heavy heart, the woman crossed the threshold of a financial institution, but the news announced by an office worker shocked her. The entire debt was written off, and there was still money left in her account, like an overpayment. In tears, joy and surprise, Svetlana rushed to the temple, because she knew exactly who had given her such a gift.
The miracles of the Orthodox faith have not ended, they are available to everyone who gives his life to serve the Almighty and the Holy Church.
Orthodox Christianity differs from other world religions in many miracles that cannot be explained from a scientific point of view, but which are so obvious and undeniable that they cause heart awe and make even the most inveterate atheists believe. Orthodox miracles also exist today. They are evidence of God's mercy to people and his boundless philanthropy.
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Christian Testimonies of the Miracles of God
Miracles from our Lord Himself and the Saints are found everywhere and in our harsh everyday life. To do this, you should go to any temple, monastery, etc. where the relics of a Christian saint are buried, or there are miraculous icons and see guest books, which, as a rule, are always there.
Plunging into the stories of ordinary people like us, you can view a whole series of miraculous healings, resolutions of seemingly insoluble problems and a way out of difficult life situations. At the same time, the exit is usually located where it would seem that it could not exist at all, but what is impossible for a person is possible for God ...
Religious miracles are very common in our modern times. Hoping for miraculous help from above, people visit Orthodox churches of famous Russian saints. Thus, the flow of people at the Church of the Blessed Matrona of Moscow never dries up, it is always crowded both in Optina Desert and in Diveevo.
Rev. Seraphim of Sarov, Blessed Xenia of Petersburg, Mother Matrona of Moscow, etc. have always been and will be intercessors for mankind before the Lord. There is simply no point in enumerating all Christian testimonies of Orthodox miracles, for such a listing will turn out to be simply endless.
But we still mention one most striking and clear miracle - this is the death and miraculous resurrection of Claudia Ustyuzhanina. This sensational story of a simple Soviet atheist woman who died and after lying in the morgue for three whole days with unsewn body cuts, resurrected already in the morgue, caused shock and bewilderment among the community of non-believers.
A woman who was seriously ill with cancer and died, saw in the afterlife all the torments of hell and was returned to earth to testify about them and instruct people on the righteous path by her own example.
Miracles of Orthodoxy today
In our days, one can also cite many miracles of Orthodoxy, which are silent evidence of the truth of our faith.
So every year on Easter in the main temple of Jerusalem, the Holy Fire descends from heaven by itself, the flame of which does not even burn the first minutes. This miracle happens year after year, it is eagerly awaited by all believing Christians. Since, according to legend, the end of the world will occur precisely in the year when the Holy Fire does not descend on Easter in Jerusalem.
The Shroud of Turin is also a silent miracle of the Lord's presence with us all and his actual crucifixion and resurrection. The Shroud has baffled learned atheists from all over the world. The image of the Lord Jesus was imprinted on it and it turns out that it cannot be displayed in any way known today. This miracle is irrefutable and inexplicable from a scientific point of view.
Another obvious and inexplicable miracle in our days is the reversal of the Jordan River every year on the feast of the Baptism of the Lord. Thousands of pilgrims from around the world annually observe this miracle with their own eyes on January 19th. During the solemn rite of the consecration of water, the river suddenly begins to boil, and the current turns in the other direction, just as it happened during the baptism of Jesus Christ.
Apparitions of saints in our time
Our modernity is also replete with miraculous appearances of the holy fathers to ordinary people.
So there are many stories of ordinary people about the miraculous help of St. Nicholas, who more than once appeared in the form of an old man and showed the right path to people, then mysteriously disappeared.
Together with Nikolai Ugodnik, other saints often appeared and helped people who revered these saints and constantly turned to them in prayer.
Thus, the saints of God invisibly accompany us, and sometimes even visibly provide great help in our days.
Miracles of the Blessed Virgin Mary today
The Most Holy Theotokos provides miraculous help to all who turn to her with faith even now.
There are many examples of her miraculous help. Rereading the multiple testimonies of her intercession, I was particularly impressed by the story of a young believing family from Krasnodar. The family constantly visited the Mother of God Monastery, the wife was expecting a child. And suddenly, in the third month of pregnancy, according to the results of an ultrasound scan, they were told that the fetus was frozen and it was necessary to urgently clean it.
For the family, this news was a real blow, but there was nothing to be done, the diagnosis was beyond doubt. On the day of the operation, the husband fervently prayed in the monastery and ordered an akathist to the Most Holy Theotokos.
The operation passed, after some time doing a control ultrasound (to make sure of successful rehabilitation after cleaning), to their bewilderment, the doctors found that the child was a child there, as if there had been no operation. Moreover, he is alive. Not believing in what was happening, a whole council was convened, at which the doctors said that miraculously the fetus hid in the muscle and did not allow itself to be destroyed.
But in view of everything that was happening, the doctors nevertheless recommended that the woman get rid of him, scaring her with various deformities and diagnoses. But the believing parents left the baby and exactly on time, contrary to all the exhortations of the doctors, an absolutely healthy, beautiful and strong girl was born.
This is how the Most Holy Theotokos saved the baby and gave the joy of motherhood and fatherhood to those who relied on her help.
Olga was born into a large peasant family in the village of Ilintsy, 30 kilometers west of Chernobyl. During the offensive of the Nazi troops in 1941, she was left alone with her blind mother. The headman appointed by the Germans covered her and said that she was alone with her mother, whom she had to look after. Out of pity for them, the Germans did not take her to Germany. But in fact, Olga had three more brothers and two sisters, who all fought. One sister was a pilot and one was a nurse.
In 1943, the Germans retreated, this time their attitude towards the locals turned out to be more cruel. The Nazis ransacked the yards in search of hiding people. Olga, in fear, ran into a small closet with firewood near the house, pressed herself against the wall, crossed her shaking arms over her chest and prayed with all her heart: “Lord, if You exist, please save me. I will believe in you all my life." The door opened, and a fascist with a machine gun appeared in the opening. Looking at Olga, or rather through her, he turned without a single emotion and closed the door. Many in that village were shot or burned, all the rest were taken to Germany. Only two of the whole village survived - Olga and another boy who went to the partisans. Olga soon left the Komsomol and became a deeply religious person for the rest of her life.
Many years passed, Olga's son Sergey moved her to Blagoveshchensk-on-Amur, but throughout all these years Olga constantly retold her story and so she could not fully understand with her mind why that fascist, looking at her, immediately turned back.
So, what is it, and how should we treat it? Does the caring hand of God participate in our lives, or are we just witnessing a cold coincidence? Do we need to talk about anything supernatural at all when a modern person is looking, first of all, for a rational, rational justification?
Let's try to be impartial. If the miracle is removed from the Gospel, then nothing will remain of the Gospel. The miracle itself is from the Virgin, the miracle fills the life of the Savior and is repeatedly manifested in the deeds He performed on earth. Walking on the waters, healing the hopelessly sick with one word, resurrection of the dead, including the shining of Divine light on Mount Tabor, Resurrection on the third day after death, the Ascension and sending down of the Holy Spirit to people - all these are milestones in the history of the salvation of people by Jesus Christ, and these milestones are filled with Divine miracle
A miracle, in principle, cannot be explained by science, no matter how its tools are improved.
The fact is that where God works, there is always some kind of miracle. A miracle is something that cannot be explained scientifically. And not only from the point of view of modern science, but in general can never be explained from the standpoint of science. Because science, no matter how much microscopes and telescopes are improved, is always an earthly look, turned to the earthly and explaining everything from the standpoint of the earthly, and a miracle given by God is a merciful gift sent down from above, from a world that exceeds our material created world, and therefore a miracle is not subject to earthly explanations.
Atheists are quick to deny miracles. “Since there is no God,” they argue, “then there can be no miracles.” And people who are accustomed to relying only on themselves believe that God cannot interfere in our lives. So, Leo Nikolayevich Tolstoy, the greatest writer with an extremely tragic worldview, compiled, from which he eliminated everything miraculous, explained the miracles of Christ only as ordinary natural situations. For example, he explained the healing of a patient who had been lying for 38 years at the Sheep Pool (see: John 5: 1-9), he explained that there was a weak person who, like others, superstitiously believed in the annual descent of an angel into the water, but did not was the first to rush into the bath. Here is how Leo Tolstoy himself writes: “The patient is waiting for 20 years for a miracle, and Jesus tells him: don’t expect anything, what you have is what will happen. Wake up. There is strength to get up and go, and go. He tried, got up and went. This whole passage, taken for a miracle, is an indication that there can be no miracles and that the person who is waiting for miracles is sick, that the greatest miracle is life itself. The event itself is quite simple, it is repeated incessantly among us. I know a lady who lay in bed for 20 years and got up only when she was injected with morphine; 20 years later, the doctor who injected her admitted that he injected with water, and, having learned this, the lady took her bed and went ”( Tolstoy L. Combination and translation of the four gospels). But if everything were so simple and everyone would rise, just wanted to, then medicine would soon disappear. There are so many people in hospitals who would like to get up just as quickly, do without operations and expensive medical supplies, but the disease is often stronger than a person, relying only on their own strength is naive.
At one time, the philosopher Hegel also made an attempt at a “natural” reading of the Gospel: in his book The Life of Jesus, he depicted Christ simply as a great teacher, but eliminated everything miraculous as something invalid. As a result, with the crossing out of miracles, the presence of God in people's lives is eliminated: God does not act, it is impossible for Him, He is somewhere out there, outside the Universe, and perhaps He does not exist at all. The Orthodox faith says: The Lord God is near us, He sees and hears, He acts and helps when there is no one to wait for help.
Here's what happened to people close to me. They, while still students of the Moscow Theological Academy, went to the Arkhangelsk region. It was a missionary expedition, the participants of which talked with local residents about faith, answered questions, baptized those who had not yet been baptized, performed prayers (there were clergy among the participants). The plans of the expedition included visiting the site of the ancient monastery of St. Cyril of Chelmogorsk.
On the way to the ancient monastery there was a large lake. On this side of the lake there was a village, in whose temple the Liturgy had not been served for 70 years. And so the priests, after so many years of desolation of the temple, performed a divine service, and then they all decided to cross over to the monastery. The day was sunny, the sky was clear, but the locals, for some reason known only to them, foreshadowed a storm. Nevertheless, our missionaries decided to go ahead by hiring four motor boats with drivers. At first everything was calm.
Alas, the observations of local residents turned out to be prophetic. It began to rain, at first lightly, then more, the sky was covered with a gray cover in a matter of minutes. Then the waves rose and began to overwhelm the boats. They were scattered from each other in different directions, they had to bail out water, and one of the expedition members, close to the author of these lines, thought that, apparently, they would have to be left without all the equipment, a camera, shoes and swim on their own. They fought the elements as best they could. And here everyone saw the most terrible thing: a dark blue cloud was approaching the boats ahead, lightning flashed, the downpour was approaching with a gloomy wall, and the wind drove a powerful wave of waves right on the boats.
People on the shore watched the unfolding tragedy. And suddenly ... all four boats disappeared at the same time
More than once fishermen died here from waves and thunderstorms. The prevailing natural conditions did not spare those who lingered on the lake. And one must imagine the chagrin of the local residents, who saw the bold, it seemed, thoughtless step of our missionaries. Now, seeing this dark wall of downpour blazing with fiery flashes, everyone on the boats prayed, even unbelieving drivers. The wall was getting closer and closer, now it will overwhelm the boats. It was at this moment that the incredible happened. People on the shore watched the unfolding tragedy, saw four dots against the background of a dark cloud - boats. And suddenly all four boats disappeared from view at the same time. By the way, this dark cloud reached the shore, the hurricane damaged trees and buildings. And what about our missionaries? They themselves did not understand what had happened: just now they were praying with all their hearts and saw a dark blue wall with lightning in front of them, when suddenly it was behind them! One recalled: as if she stepped over us, completely without overflowing and without causing the slightest harm. So the Lord God, to whom people prayed from the bottom of their hearts, miraculously delivered them from the natural elements. On the site of the remains of the monastery, the missionaries consecrated the cross, and when they sailed back, the water was smooth as a mirror.
So what is a miracle?
God doesn't break His own rules. Therefore, a miracle does not violate the laws of nature - it exceeds them.
Sometimes you can hear that a miracle is a violation of the laws of nature. But the very laws of nature - so precise and expedient - are also a miracle of God. And if someone told me that the laws of nature appeared by themselves, from chaos and emptiness, then I would never believe it. Out of chaos comes chaos, and clear laws come from the Legislator. The laws of nature are established by God (and therefore they are also a miracle), and God does not violate His Own regulations. Therefore, a miracle does not violate the laws of nature, but, let's say, it exceeds them.
A miracle is a special action of God, which goes beyond the daily course of events. This is such an action of God, which exceeds the created limitations of the world. Let's make a comparison. If you take a piece of clay and leave it to the natural course of natural processes, then nothing much will happen, this clay will only dry out and crack. And if you give clay to a talented craftsman, he will be able to fashion a vessel, a vase, a decorative object, that is, he will do with clay what would not happen to it in the natural course of things. But after all, the talented master did not violate the laws of nature, he only actively influenced the material of his work. Likewise, a miracle is the active influence of God on our created world, changing it in the way that pleases God.
Here's another example. The plane consists of elements that are all found in the nature around us, but the plane will never appear from nature by itself, this requires the intervention of the mind, creative action. So God, Who is Omnipotent, Wise, can influence all of us and the world around us, He created this world and can restore health, save in a hopeless situation, pacify the cataclysms that have erupted, just as a reasonable master transforms drying clay.
In addition to the laws of our visible world, there are also the laws of the spiritual world, which exceeds our limited world. It's like two geometries: Euclidean and Lobachevsky. In Euclidean geometry, if a line and a point lie in the same plane, then only one line can be drawn through this point that does not intersect with the first line. And in Lobachevsky geometry, at least two straight lines can be drawn through this point that do not intersect with the first straight line. Lobachevsky's geometry operates with hyperbolic space, and this is in demand in cosmology. Thus, a more perfect science relies on laws that are incomprehensible at a lower level. God's miracle is the manifestation of the laws of the higher world, we call it supernatural, it exceeds our limitations, and the laws of this world the Lord, by His mercy, sometimes reveals here.
One person very close to me, Elena Alexandrovna Smirnova (she is a literary editor and prepared one of my books for publication), told the following story - I would like to quote it verbatim:
“What a miracle happened in our family. My mother has had Parkinson's disease for several years. This disease shook her to such an extent that she even jumped up and down in bed from shaking. She was already bedridden, and I took care of her. Before that, when I took her to the temple, literally everyone stood up in the subway when my mother, shaking all over, entered the car. It was Christmas 1996 and my mother had a heart attack. They called doctors who diagnosed a heart attack and a microstroke, they said that she had at most two or three days to live and that we should prepare for this. I told my mother that we urgently need to call a priest so that she confesses for her whole life from the age of seven. Although she had gone to Confession and Communion before, every person can forget something. And she could forget something, because of which this disease was allowed.
As we know, the priests are always very busy during the days of Advent, on the days of Christmas itself and the following days. But still, when the Christmas service ended, I called the priest. It was Father Vladimir Sakharov, then he still served in the church of St. Nicholas in Pyzhy. Batiushka was warned that my mother was dying and that we called him to consecrate the dying woman. In spite of being busy, he came and offered the Holy Wisdom to my mother. My mother confessed to him for a long time before the Unction, I sat in another room and heard her crying. It seemed to me that almost two hours had passed since she confessed: she told a long and emotional story. Then the priest came out and said that my mother confessed very cleanly, that every person should confess like that before her death. After Confession and Unction, he communed her, and together we went to the evening service, and after Communion, my mother fell asleep soundly. The service was dedicated to the Cathedral of the Mother of God - this is the first service after Christmas, and the priest and I prayed there fervently. There were few people in the temple.
I could not tear myself away from sleep, I only heard my dying mother get up and go to open the door
I came home, my mother was still sleeping, I kept coming up to her, I was still afraid that she would die without me, and so I did not sleep all night. In the morning I suddenly fell asleep, then the doorbell began to wake me up, but I couldn’t understand what was the matter, I sat in an armchair and couldn’t tear myself away from sleep, I just heard that my mother was getting up and going to open the door, and the thing is that she did not get up for a long time, I looked after her when she was lying down. Then I heard someone screaming and then finally woke up and rushed to the door. I saw that a doctor, a district police officer, was standing at the door, who was shouting: “Pelagia Ionovna, what is the matter with you?” And her mother says to her: “What? What should happen to me?" "So you're not shaking!" the doctor says in surprise. And my mother answers her - she was so witty: “I'm not afraid of you. Why should I tremble when I see you?" And then it dawned on us that my mother was standing completely straight, her hands, lips, or chin were not trembling, she was not shaking, that is, a completely healthy person was standing in front of us. We were terribly amazed, the doctor began to ask what had happened. The fact is that she got a call from the ambulance, they said that my mother was supposed to die today, and now she came. We understood that a miracle of God had happened, that the Mother of God had mercy and begged Her Son for the salvation and healing of my mother. Mom then lived until 2011, Parkinson's disease completely disappeared, and it is known that this disease is incurable, you can read about it in any encyclopedia, it shakes a person to death, a cure has not yet been found for it. However, Unction, ardent, sincere Confession, Communion and the prayers of loved ones saved a person from this deadly disease.
Many times she was later summoned to the consultations of various doctors, professors, and each time my mother spoke at these consultations as a confessor of Christ, each time she began her story: “My daughter called the priest ...” Everyone was terribly amazed listening to this story, but at first no one I didn’t believe it, they tried to find out what medicines she was treated with, they thought that a cure had finally been found, but it turned out that for the last year she had been given only very strong vitamins, that is, they practically abandoned her, and only the Lord God healed my mother. When they unctioned her, they thought that she would die, although prayers were for healing, but the Lord heard such a prayer. After that, my mother planted a whole garden around our house, she herself brought bushes, trees, flowers, and now this garden serves as a reminder of her for all the residents of our house and for the neighboring houses, but in fact this garden serves as a reminder of the miracle of God and maybe about the Garden of Eden, to which we aspire.
For a person, the visible, tangible is of great importance. After all, we are not only a soul, we live in a body, we are in the world of the senses, and a miracle is such an action of God that becomes obvious and visible in the material world evidence of God's presence.
Every miracle is a special grace of God, which confirms that God really cares about us and does not forget about us in our suffering. The miracle shows that the Lord God is not indifferent to us, He loves us, and He is also so close to us that it is very naive and strange not to turn to Him in sufferings and troubles. Well, we entrust the fulfillment of the request into the hands of God, because the Heavenly Father knows better than us what is really useful for us.
Best Stories about Miracles
In France, there is an ancient cross with words about the Lord Jesus Christ engraved on it.
If it were not for God's Miracles, then there would be no Orthodox Faith!
All over the world, at all times, there have always been, and are still happening today MIRACLES - amazing and inexplicable phenomena and events from the point of view of science. There are a lot of them, thanks to these miracles, many people on earth gained faith in Almighty God and became believers. History stores a large number of reliable facts of all sorts of amazing cases and events that actually happened on earth, and therefore people believe in God or not, but these miracles, as they happened before, they still happen in our time and help people gain real faith in God.
Therefore, no matter how unbelieving people say and assert that there is no God and cannot be, that all people who believe in God are ignorant and insane, nevertheless, let's leave room for existing real facts, that is, such events that occurred on really. And we will carefully listen to those people who themselves were participants and witnesses of these events ...
The Lord wants to save every person, and for this good purpose - He performs many Miracles and Signs through the saints He has chosen. So that people learn about God through these Miracles, or at least remember Him and really think about their lives - are they living the right way? Why do they live in this world - what is the meaning of life? ..
DEATH IS NOT THE END
Several testimonies of the professor
Andrey Vladimirovich Gnezdilov, St. Petersburg psychiatrist, Doctor of Medical Sciences, Professor of the Department of Psychiatry at the St. Petersburg Medical Academy of Postgraduate Education, Scientific Supervisor of the Gerontology Department, Honorary Doctor of the University of Essex (Great Britain), Chairman of the Russian Association of Oncopsychologists, tells:
« Death is not the end or the destruction of our personality. This is just a change in the state of our consciousness after the completion of earthly existence. I worked in an oncology clinic for 10 years, and now I have been working in a hospice for over 20 years.
During these years of communication with seriously ill and dying people, I have many times had the opportunity to make sure that human consciousness does not disappear after death. That our body is just a shell that the soul leaves at the moment of transition to another world. All this is proved by numerous stories of people who have been in a state of such a "spiritual" consciousness during clinical death. When people tell me about some of their secret experiences that deeply shocked them, then the great experience of a medical practitioner allows me to distinguish hallucinations from real events with confidence. Not only I, but no one else can yet explain such phenomena from the point of view of science - science by no means covers all knowledge about the world. But there are facts proving that in addition to our world there is another world - a world that operates according to laws unknown to us and is beyond our understanding. In this world, which we will all enter after death, time and space have completely different manifestations. I want to tell you a few cases from my practice that can dispel all doubts about its existence.
I will tell you one interesting and unusual story that happened to one of my patients. I want to note that this story made a great impression on Natalia Petrovna Bekhtereva, academician, head of the Institute of the Human Brain of the Russian Academy of Sciences, when I retold it to her.
Somehow they asked me to look at a young woman named Julia. During a serious operation, Yulia experienced clinical death, and I had to determine whether the consequences of this condition remained, whether memory, reflexes were normal, whether consciousness was fully restored, and so on. She was in the recovery room, and as soon as we started talking to her, she immediately began to apologize:
“Sorry for causing so much trouble for doctors.
- What kind of trouble?
- Well, those ... during the operation ... when I was in a state of clinical death.
“But you can't know anything about it. When you were in a state of clinical death, you could not see or hear anything. Absolutely no information - neither from the side of life, nor from the side of death - could come to you, because your brain was turned off and your heart stopped ...
“Yes, doctor, that’s all right. But what happened to me was so real... and I remember everything... I would tell you about it if you promise not to send me to a psychiatric hospital.
“You think and speak perfectly rationally. Please tell us about what you experienced.
And this is what Julia told me then:
At first - after the introduction of anesthesia - she was not aware of anything, but then she felt some kind of push, and she was suddenly thrown out of her own body by some 
then a rotational movement. To her surprise, she saw herself lying on the operating table, saw the surgeons leaning over the table, and heard someone shout: “Her heart stopped! Get started immediately!" And then Julia was terribly frightened, because she realized that this is HER body and HER heart! For Yulia, cardiac arrest was tantamount to the fact that she died, and as soon as she heard these terrible words, she was instantly seized with anxiety for her loved ones who remained at home: her mother and little daughter. After all, she did not even warn them that she would be operated on! “How is it that I will die now and not even say goodbye to them ?!”
Her consciousness literally rushed towards her house and suddenly, oddly enough, she instantly found herself in her apartment! He sees that her daughter Masha is playing with a doll, her grandmother is sitting next to her granddaughter and knitting something. There is a knock on the door and a neighbor enters the room and says: “This is for Mashenka. Your Yulenka has always been a model for her daughter, so I sewed a polka-dot dress for the girl so that she would look like her mother. Masha rejoices, throws the doll and runs to a neighbor, but on the way she accidentally touches the tablecloth: an old cup falls off the table and breaks, a teaspoon lying next to it, flies after it and falls under a stray carpet. Noise, ringing, turmoil, grandmother, clasping her hands, shouts: “Masha, how awkward you are! Masha is upset - she feels sorry for the old and such a beautiful cup, and the neighbor hurriedly consoles them with the words that the dishes are breaking fortunately ... And then, completely forgetting about what happened earlier, the excited Yulia approaches her daughter, puts her hand on her head and says: "Masha, this is not the worst grief in the world." The girl turns around in surprise, but as if not seeing her, immediately turns away. Yulia does not understand anything: it has never happened before that her daughter turned away from her when she wants to console her! The daughter was brought up without a father and was very attached to her mother - she had never behaved like this before! This behavior of hers upset and puzzled Yulia, in complete confusion she began to think: “What is going on? Why did my daughter turn away from me?
And suddenly she remembered that when she spoke to her daughter, she did not hear her own voice! That when she reached out and stroked her daughter, she didn't feel any touch either! Her thoughts begin to churn. "Who am I? Can't they see me? Am I already dead? In dismay, she rushes to the mirror and does not see her reflection in it ... This last circumstance knocked her down, it seemed to her that she would simply go crazy from all this ... But suddenly, in the midst of the chaos of all these thoughts and feelings, she remembers everything that happened to her before: “I had an operation!” She recalls how she saw her body from the side, lying on the operating table, recalls the doctor’s terrible words about a stopped heart ... These memories frighten Yulia even more, and in her confused mind it immediately flashes: “I must by all means be in the operating room now, because if I don’t have time, the doctors will consider me dead!” She rushes out of the house, she thinks about what kind of transport to get there as soon as possible in order to be in time ... and at the same moment she finds herself in the operating room again, and the voice of the surgeon reaches her: “The heart has worked! We continue the operation, but quickly, so that it does not stop again! A memory lapse follows, and then she wakes up in the recovery room.
And I went to Yulia's house, conveyed her request and asked her mother: "Tell me, at this time - from ten to twelve o'clock - did a neighbor named Lidia Stepanovna come to you?" “And do you know her? Yes, she came." “Did you bring a dress with polka dots?” - "Yes, I did"... Everything came together down to the smallest details except for one thing: they did not find a spoon. Then I remembered the details of Yulia's story and said: "Look under the carpet." And indeed - the spoon lay under the carpet ...
So what is death?
We fix the state of death, when the heart stops and the work of the brain stops, and at the same time, the death of consciousness - in the concept in which we always imagined it - as such, simply does not exist. The soul is freed from its shell and is clearly aware of the entire surrounding reality. There is already a lot of evidence for this, this is confirmed by numerous stories of patients who were in a state of clinical death and experienced a post-mortem experience in those minutes. Communication with patients teaches us a lot, and also makes us wonder and think - after all, it is simply impossible to write off such extraordinary events as coincidences and coincidences. These events dispel all doubts about the immortality of our souls.
SAINT JOSAPH OF BELGOROD
Then I studied at the St. Petersburg Theological Academy. I had a lot of knowledge, but there was no real faith. I went to the celebrations on the occasion of the opening of the relics of St. Joasaph with reluctance and thought about the huge crowd of people, thirsting for a miracle. What kind of miracles can be in our time?
I arrived and something stirred inside: I saw such things that it was impossible to remain calm. Sick people, cripples came from all over Russia - so much suffering and pain that it's hard to watch. And one more thing: the general expectation of something miraculous involuntarily passed on to me, despite my skepticism about what was to come.
Finally, the Emperor arrived with his family and a celebration was scheduled. At the celebrations I already stood with deep emotion: I did not believe, and yet I was waiting for something. It is difficult for us now to imagine this spectacle: thousands and thousands of sick, twisted, demon-possessed, blind, crippled lay, stood on both sides of the path along which the relics of the saint were to be carried. One crooked man caught my special attention: it was impossible to look at him without shuddering. All parts of the body have grown together - some kind of ball of meat and bones on the ground. I waited: what can happen to this person? What can help him?!
And so they carried out the coffin with the relics of St. Joasaph. I've never seen anything like this and I'm unlikely to see it again in my life — almost all the sick, standing and lying along the road — WERE HEALING: - sick members straightened.
With trepidation, horror and reverence, I looked at everything that was happening - and did not lose sight of that crooked one. When the coffin with the relics caught up with him, he parted his arms - there was a terrible crunch of bones, as if something was being torn and broken inside him, and he began to straighten up with effort - and stood up! What a shock it was for me! I ran up to him with tears, then grabbed some journalist by the hand, asked him to write down ...
I returned to St. Petersburg a different person - a deeply religious person!
Miracle of healing from deafness from the Iberian Icon in Moscow
The newspaper Sovremennye Izvestia published a letter from a man who was healed in Moscow in 1880 (newspaper issue 213 of this year). One music teacher, a German, a Protestant, but who did not believe in anything, lost his hearing, and at the same time his job and livelihood. Having lived everything he had acquired, he decided to commit suicide - to go and drown himself. It was July 23 of that year. “While passing by the Iberian Gates,” he writes, “I saw a crowd of people gathered around the carriage in which the icon of the Mother of God was brought to the chapel. An uncontrollable desire suddenly appeared in me to approach the icon and pray together with the people and venerate the icon, although we are Protestants - we do not recognize the icon.
And so, having lived to the age of 37, for the first time sincerely crossed myself and fell on my knees before the image - and what happened? An undoubted, amazing Miracle happened: I, having heard almost nothing until that moment for a year and 3 months, was considered by the doctors to be completely and hopelessly DEAF, having kissed the icon, at the same moment I GOT the ability of HEARING again, received to such an extent completely that not only sharp sounds, but also quiet conversations and whispers BECAME HEAR quite clearly.
And all this happened suddenly, instantly, painlessly ... Immediately, before the image of the Mother of God, I took an oath to myself to confess honestly to everyone what happened to me. This man later converted to Orthodoxy.
MIRACLES FROM THE HOLY FIRE
This incident was told by a nun who lives in the Russian Gornensky monastery near Jerusalem. They transferred her there from the Pyukhtitsky monastery. With awe and delight she set foot on the Holy Land...
This is the first Easter in the Holy Land. Almost a day later, she took a place closer to the entrance to the Holy Sepulcher in order to see everything well.
It was noon on Holy Saturday. In the Church of the Holy Sepulcher all the lights are extinguished. Tens of thousands of people are looking forward to the Miracle. Reflections of light appeared from Kuvuklia. The happy Patriarch brought out two bundles of lighted candles from Kuvuklia to convey the fire to the jubilant people.
Many people look under the dome of the temple - blue Lightnings CROSS it there...
And our nun does not see lightning. And the fire from the candles was normal, although she watched eagerly, trying not to miss anything. Great Saturday has passed. How did the nun feel? There was also disappointment, but then came the realization of one's unworthiness to see the Miracle...
A year has passed. Holy Saturday has come again. Now the nun has taken the most modest place in the Temple. The cuvuklia is almost invisible. She lowered her eyes and decided not to raise them: "I am not worthy to see the Miracle." The hours of waiting have passed. Again a cry of jubilation shook the Temple. The nun did not raise her head.
Suddenly, as if someone forced her to look. Her gaze fell on the corner of Kuvukliya, in which a special hole was made, through which burning candles are passed from Kuvukliya to the outside. So, a bright, flickering cloud SEPARATED from this hole - and immediately a bunch of 33 candles in her hand FIRED by itself.
Tears of joy welled up in her eyes! What a thank you to God!
And this time she also saw blue lightning under the dome.
THE MIRACULOUS HELP OF JOHN OF KRONSTAD
A resident of the Moscow region, Vladimir Vasilyevich Kotov, suffered from severe pain in his right arm. By the spring of 1992, the hand had almost stopped moving. Doctors established a presumptive diagnosis - severe arthritis of the right shoulder, but failed to provide significant assistance. One day, a patient fell into the hands of a book about the holy and righteous John of Kronstadt, while reading it, he marveled at the miracles and miraculous healings of patients from their illnesses, which were described in this book, and he decided to go to St. Petersburg. On August 12, 1992, Vladimir Kotov confessed, took communion and served a prayer service to the holy righteous father John of Kronstadt and anointed his hand, his entire shoulder with consecrated oil from the lamp from the saint's tomb.
At the end of the service, he left the monastery and went to the tram stop. Vladimir Vasilyevich hung the bag on his right shoulder and carefully laid his helpless hand on it, as he usually did lately. When walking, the bag began to fall off and he mechanically corrected it with his right hand, without feeling any pain. Stopping in his tracks, still not believing himself, he again began to move his sore hand. The hand was completely healthy.
One man's mother had a heart attack, had a stroke and became paralyzed. She could not even move, he was very worried about his mother, and as a believer he prayed a lot for her, asking God to help his mother. And the Lord heard his prayers, he accidentally met an already old nun, the spiritual daughter of the holy righteous father John of Kronstadt, he told her about his misfortune and she comforted him. She gave him a mitten that was once worn by the saint of God, Father John, and said that this mitten has great power and helps sick people, you just need to put it on the patient’s hand. He served a water-blessed prayer service to Father John of Kronstadt, dipped a mitten in holy water, and, having come home, sprinkled his mother with this water.
Then he put a mitten on his mother's hand, and ... immediately the fingers on the sore hand began to move. The doctor, when she came to the patient, did not believe her eyes - the former paralyzed woman was sitting calmly on a chair and was healthy. Having learned the story of the patient's healing, the doctor asked for this mitten. But the point here is not in the mitten ... But in the grace of God.
NICHOLAS PLEASANT HEALED A PARALLYZED
In Moscow, in the lower Cathedral of Christ the Savior, there is an amazing miraculous icon of St. Nicholas the Pleasant, donated to Russia by the state of Italy. This icon is unusual, it is made of mosaics, small multi-colored pebbles. Approaching the icon, I doubted the power and miraculousness of this icon, as I saw that the icon was not at all like ordinary hand-painted icons and thought to myself: “They say, where can the Italians get something good, especially holy and miraculous , they are not Orthodox, and the icon itself is somehow incomprehensible and does not look like an icon ”? A year later, the Lord dispelled all my doubts and showed that God, all His saints, all their icons and relics have divine miraculous power, which heals all the infirmities of people and helps the suffering in everything, all who turn with faith to the holy saints of God.
Here's how it happened. About a year after this incident, one of my relatives told the following story. She had an adult son, who, along with his wife, lived in a family hostel, where they had their own room. His mother often visited him, so that day, as usual, she came to visit him, but her son was not at home. She decided to wait on the watch for the return of her son, and got into a conversation with the woman watchman, who told her the following story. Her mother has three children, two sons and a daughter, that is, she herself. They had a misfortune, first the father dies, and then the youngest son dies after him, and the mother could not stand such a big loss, she was paralyzed, and besides that, she fell into an unconscious state. They did not take her to the hospital, because they recognized her as hopelessly ill, and they said that she would not live long. The daughter took her mother to her and looked after her for more than two years, of course, everyone in her house was very tired from such a heavy load, but the daughter continued to look after her paralyzed and insane mother.
And just then this icon of St. Nicholas the Wonderworker was brought from Italy, and she decided to go. When she approached the icon, she thought about asking “Nikolushka” a lot, but, going up to the icon, she forgot everything and only asked St. Nicholas to help her mother, kissed the icon and went home.
Approaching the house, she suddenly saw her sick, paralyzed mother walking towards her on her feet, coming up to her and, well, indignant: “What are you, daughter, you made such a mess in the room, there is so much dirt, it stinks, some kind of rags hang everywhere.” It turns out that the mother came to her senses, got out of bed, seeing that the room was a mess, dressed and went to meet her daughter to scold her. And the daughter shed tears of joy for her mother and a great feeling of gratitude to "Nikolushka" and to God for the miraculous healing of her mother. For a long time, the mother could not believe that she had lain unconscious and paralyzed for two years.
SAVED BATYUSHKA SERAPHIM
This happened in the winter of 1959. My one year old son is seriously ill. The diagnosis is bilateral pneumonia. Since his condition was very serious, he was taken to the intensive care unit. I was not allowed to see him. Twice there was a clinical death, but the doctors saved. I was in despair, ran from the hospital to the Elokhovsky Epiphany Cathedral, prayed, cried, shouted: "God! Save your son!" And here I come to the hospital again, and the doctor says: "There is no hope for salvation, the child will die tonight." I went to the temple, prayed, sobbed. Came home, cried, then fell asleep. I see a dream. I enter the apartment, the door of one of the rooms is ajar, and blue light comes from there. I enter this room and freeze. Two walls of the room are hung from floor to ceiling with icons, a lamp is burning near each icon, and an old man is kneeling in front of the icons with his hands up and praying. I stand and don't know what to do.
Then he turns to me, and I recognize him as Seraphim of Sarov. "What are you, a servant of God?" — he asks me. I rush to him: "Father Seraphim! My child is dying!” He told me: "Let's pray." Get on your knees and pray. I stand behind and also pray. Then he gets up and says: "Bring him here." I bring him a child. He looks at him for a long time, then with a brush, which is used when anointing with oil, he anoints his forehead, chest, shoulders crosswise and says to me: "Don't cry, he will live."
Then I woke up, looked at the clock. It was five o'clock in the morning. I quickly got dressed and went to the hospital. I enter. The nurse on duty picked up the phone and said: "She came". I stand, neither alive nor dead. The doctor comes in, looks at me and says: “They say there are no miracles, but today a miracle happened. Around five in the morning, the child stopped breathing. Whatever they did, nothing helped. I was about to leave, looked at the boy - and he took a deep breath. I didn't believe my eyes. He listened to the lungs - almost clear, only slight wheezing. Now he will live." My son came to life at the moment when Father Seraphim anointed him with his brush. Glory to Thee, O Lord, and to the great Reverend Seraphim!
IT CAN NOT BE
I work at the Moscow airport. Once at work I read in the book of Hieromonk Tryphon “ End Time Miracles about how St. Seraphim of Sarov appeared to people. I thought to myself: “This simply cannot be. It's all common fiction."
After a while, I go to the plane and see Father Seraphim walking quietly towards me. I could not believe my eyes, although I immediately recognized him, exactly the same as on the icon. We equalized. He stopped, smiled kindly at me, and said without opening his mouth: “You see, it turns out that this can be!” And he went further. I was so startled that I didn't say anything, I didn't ask him anything, I just looked away until he was out of sight. Valentine, Moscow.
HOW TO QUIT SMOKING
I live in Italy, in Rome, I go to the Orthodox Church. In the library of this church I saw your book " End Time Miracles”, dear father Tryphon. Low bow to you for your work. I read it with great pleasure. Here, abroad, there is little spiritual literature, and each such book is of great value. I am writing to you about what happened to me. Maybe someone will benefit from knowing about it.
Once, in one book, I read a short story of a man who smoked a lot, as they say, one cigarette after another. One day, while traveling on an airplane, he was reading the Bible. There were no other books. When he reached his destination, he was surprised to find that during the entire four hours of the flight he never lit a cigarette and even - DID NOT WANT to smoke! This story sunk into my heart, because I myself had been smoking for a long time, but consoled myself with the fact that I smoked no more than three to five cigarettes a day. Sometimes I didn’t smoke for several days to prove to myself that I could quit at any time. What self-deception for all smokers! As a result, I eventually began to smoke a pack a day. It was scary to think what would happen to me next. After all, I also suffer from bronchial asthma, and smoking for me, especially in such quantities, was simply suicide.
So, after reading this story, I decided to try to quit smoking by reading the Bible. And I was absolutely sure that the Lord would help me. I read it avidly all my free time. And at work there was one desire - to quickly work out for the book. 1306 pages of large format in small print were read in three months.
During those three months, I STOP smoking. At first I forgot that I had not smoked since morning. Then one day the smell of smoke seemed nasty, which was very surprising. Then I noticed that I was literally forcing myself to smoke out of habit: I still didn’t understand what was the matter. And, finally, I thought: “If I don’t feel like smoking, then I won’t buy a new pack for tomorrow.” A day later I came to my senses - I did not smoke! It was only then that I realized that a real miracle had happened! Thank God!
WHEN CHILDREN ARE SICK, YOU SHOULD RELY ON GOD'S HELP
I got married early. I had faith in God, but work, household chores, everyday fuss pushed faith into the background. I lived without turning to God with a prayer, without observing fasts. To put it simply: I COOLED to faith. It never even occurred to me that the Lord would hear my prayer if I turned to Him.
We lived in Sterlitamak. In January, the youngest child fell ill, a five-year-old boy. The doctor was invited. He examined the child and said that he had acute diphtheria, prescribed treatment. They waited for relief, but it did not follow. The child is weak. He no longer recognized anyone. Couldn't take medicine. A terrible wheezing escaped from his chest, which was heard throughout the apartment. Two doctors came. They looked sadly at the patient, and talked anxiously among themselves. It was clear that the child would not survive the night. I did not think about anything, mechanically did everything necessary for the patient. The husband did not leave the bed, afraid to miss his last breath. Everything in the house was quiet, only a terrible whistling wheeze was heard.
They struck the bell for vespers. Almost unconsciously, I got dressed and said to my husband:
- I'll go and ask you to serve a prayer service for his recovery. Can't you see that he is dying?
- Don't go: it will end without you.
- No, - I say, - I'll go: the church is close.
I enter the church. Father Stefan is coming towards me.
“Father,” I tell him, “my son is dying of diphtheria. If you are not afraid, serve a prayer service with us.
We are obliged to admonish the dying everywhere. Now I will come to you.
I returned home. The wheezing continued to echo throughout the rooms. Her face turned blue, her eyes rolled back. I touched my legs: they were very cold. Heart sank painfully. Whether I cried or not, I don't remember. I cried so much during those terrible days that I think I cried all my tears. I lit the lamp and prepared the necessary things.
Father Stefan came and began to serve a prayer service. I carefully picked up the child, along with the duvet cover and pillow, and carried it out into the hall. It was too hard for me to stand up to hold him, and I sank into a chair.
The prayer continued. Father Stefan opened the Gospel. I hardly got up from the chair. And a miracle happened. My boy raised his head and listened to God's word. Father Stefan finished reading. I applied; the boy also joined. He put his arm around my neck and listened to the prayer service. I was afraid to breathe. Father Stefan raised the Holy Cross, blessed the child with it, let him kiss and said: "Get well soon!"
I put the boy to bed and went to see the father off. When Father Stefan left, I hurried to the bedroom, surprised that I did not hear the usual rattle that tears my soul. The boy slept quietly. Breathing was even and calm. With emotion, I knelt down, thanking the Merciful God, and then I myself fell asleep on the floor: my strength left me.
The next morning, as soon as it struck for matins, my boy got up and said in a clear, sonorous voice:
- Mom, what am I all lying down? I'm tired of lying!
Is it possible to describe how joyfully my heart beat. Now the milk was warmed up, and the boy drank it with pleasure. At 9 o'clock our doctor quietly entered the hall, looked into the front corner and, not seeing a table with a cold corpse there, called me. I answered in a cheerful voice:
- I'm going now. — Is it better? the doctor asked in surprise.
“Yes,” I replied, greeting him. The Lord has shown us a miracle.
Yes, only by a miracle could your child be healed.
A few days later Father Stefan served us a thanksgiving service. My boy, perfectly healthy, prayed earnestly. At the end of the prayer service, Father Stefan said: “You need to describe this incident.
I sincerely wish that at least one mother who has read these lines does not fall into despair in the hour of sorrow, but RESERVES faith in the great Grace and love of God, in the goodness of the unknown ways in which God's Providence leads us.
ON THE IMPORTANCE OF PROSCOMIDE
One very great scientist, physician, fell seriously ill. The invited doctors, his friends, found the patient in such a state that there was very little hope of recovery.
The professor lived only with his sister, an old woman. He was not only completely unbelieving, but he was little interested in religious issues, he did not go to church, although he lived not far from the temple.
After such a medical sentence, his sister was very sad, not knowing how to help her brother. And then she remembered that there was a church nearby where she could go and apply for a proskomedia for a seriously ill brother.
Early in the morning, without saying a word to her brother, the sister gathered for an early mass, told the priest about her grief and asked him to take out a particle and pray for his brother's health.
At the same time, her brother had a vision: as if the wall of his room seemed to have disappeared and the inside of the temple, the altar, was opened. He saw his sister talking to the priest about something. The priest approached the altar, took out a particle, and this particle fell on the diskos with a ringing sound. And at the same moment the patient felt that some kind of Force entered his body. He immediately got out of bed, which he had not been able to do for a long time.
At this time, my sister returned, her surprise knew no bounds.
- Where have you been? exclaimed the former patient. “I saw everything, I saw how you spoke to the priest in the church, how he took out a particle for me.
And then both with tears thanked the Lord for the miraculous healing.
The professor lived for a long time after that, never forgetting the mercy of God that was toward him, a sinner. He went to church, went to confession, took communion, and began to observe all the fasts.
They say that God's miracles cannot be hidden. So I decided to tell you how the Mother of God saved me from death. It was already many years ago.
FAITH IN GOD SAVE ME
I used to live in the village, and when there was no work, I moved to the city, they bought me half of the house. After some time, new neighbors moved into the second half of the house. Then we were told that our houses would be demolished. Neighbors began to offend me. They wanted to get a bigger apartment and told me: “ Leave here for the village". They broke my windows at night. And I began to pray every morning and evening, Alive in help”I learned, I will cross all the walls and only then I go to bed. On weekends I prayed in the temple.
One day the neighbors offended me very much. I cried, prayed, and in the afternoon lay down to rest and fell asleep. Suddenly I wake up, I look - there is no lattice on the window. I thought that the neighbors broke the bars - they intimidated me all the time, and I was very afraid of them. And then in the window I see a Woman - so beautiful, and in Her hands is a bouquet of red roses, and dew on the roses. She looked at me so kindly, and my soul became calm. I realized that it was the Most Holy Mother of God, that She would save me. Since then, I began to trust in the Mother of God and was no longer afraid of anything.
Somehow I come home from work. The neighbors had been drinking for a week already. I just managed to go home, I wanted to lie down, but something tells me: I need to go out into the canopy. Later I realized that it was the Guardian Angel who prompted me. She went out into the canopy, and there was already fire. She ran out and only managed to cross her house. And she begged Nicholas the Wonderworker to save my house so that I wouldn't be left on the street. Firefighters quickly arrived and flooded everything, my house survived. The neighbors died in the fire. Faith in God saved me.
HOW I SAVE MY SON'S LIFE BY HOLY BAPTISM
When my son was three months old, he contracted bilateral staphylococcal bronchopneumonia. We were urgently hospitalized. He got worse and worse. A few days later, the head of the department transferred us to a solitary ward and said that my little one did not have long to live. My grief knew no bounds. Called my mother “A child dies unbaptized, what should I do?” Mom immediately went to the temple to the priest. He gave Mother Epiphany water and said what prayer should be read during Baptism. He said that in emergency cases, when a person is dying, a layman can also perform Baptism. Mom brought me Epiphany water and texts of prayers.
The priest said that if there is a danger of the death of a child and there is no way to invite a priest to him, then let his mother, father, relatives, friends, and neighbors baptize him. Pour, reading the prayers “Our Father”, “King of Heaven”, “Hail to the Virgin Mary” - into a vessel with water a little holy water or Epiphany water, cross the child and dip three times with the words: "The servant of God is baptized(here you need to say the name of the child) in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen". If the child survives, then Baptism will then be supplemented by a priest.
There were glass doors in the ward, sisters were constantly scurrying along the corridor. Suddenly, at three o'clock, they had a meeting. Our nurse has instructed me to monitor my son's condition while she attends the meeting. And I calmly, without interference, christened my son. Immediately after Baptism, the child came to his senses.
After the meeting, the doctor came in and was terribly surprised: “ What happened to him? I answered: "God helped!" A few days later we were discharged from the hospital, and soon I brought my son to church, and the priest completed Holy Baptism.
EVERYONE WILL RECEIVE
One man bought a house in the village. There was a burnt chapel in this village, and this man decided to build a new one. He bought timber and boards, but, to his surprise, none of the inhabitants of this village wanted to help him. It was spring, vegetable gardens, crops, plantings - all their affairs were up to their necks. I had to build it myself, after planting my garden. There was so much work on the construction site that weeding and watering the plantings had to be forgotten. By autumn the chapel was almost ready. Guests arrived - colleagues with children. The guests had to be fed, and then only the builder remembered about his garden. He sent summer residents there - what if something grew up? The garden met them with a wall of overgrown weeds. "Impenetrable Taiga" the guests joked.
But, to everyone's surprise, along with weeds, plantings also GROWN, moreover, of enormous size. The fruits of the plants turned out to be just as huge. People from all over the village came to see this miracle.
So the Lord rewarded this man for his good deed. And in the village, for all the inhabitants this year, the harvest turned out to be useless, although they watered and weeded in their gardens ...
Everyone will get their own way!
WE NEVER TELL THE TRUTH
One familiar woman, no longer young, was addicted to talking with the "Voices". "Voices" gave her different information about all her relatives, and at the same time about other planets. Some of what they reported was false or didn't come true. But my friend did not consider this convincing enough and continued to believe them. As time went. She began to feel unwell. Apparently, doubts crept into her soul. One day she asked them directly: "Why do you often tell lies?" " We never tell the truth»
- answered "Voices" and began to laugh at her. My friend became terrified. She immediately went to church, went to confession, and never did it again.
WHAT CAN I SAY TO YOU WHEN YOU CALL ON GOD?
Nun Xenia told the following about her nephew. Her nephew is a young man of 25 years old, an athlete, a bear hunter, a karateka, recently graduated from one of the Moscow institutes - in general, a modern young man. At one time he became interested in Eastern religions, then he began to communicate with "voices from space." No matter how mother Xenia and her sister, the mother of a young man, dissuaded him from these activities, he stood his ground. For some reason, he was not baptized in childhood and did not want to be baptized. Finally - this was in 1990 - 1991 - "Voices" made an appointment for him at one of the ring metro stations. At 18.00 he was supposed to get into the third car of the train. Of course, his family dissuaded him, but he went. Exactly at 18.00 he got into the third car and immediately saw the person he needed. He understood this by some extraordinary power emanating from him, although outwardly the man looked ordinary.
The young man sat down opposite the stranger, and suddenly he was terrified. Then he said that even on the hunt, one on one with a bear, he had never experienced such fear. The stranger looked at him silently. The train was already making its third circle around the ring, when the young man remembered that in danger he should say: “Lord, have mercy,” and began to repeat this prayer to himself. Finally he got up, went up to the stranger and asked him: "Why did you call me?" “And what can I tell you when you call on God?” he replied. At this time, the train stopped, and the guy jumped out of the car. The next day he was baptized.
THE GOTHELESS'S REPENTANCE
“I had a close friend who got married. In the first year, her son Vladimir was born. From birth, the boy was struck by an unusually meek character. In the second year, her son Boris was born, who also surprised everyone, on the contrary, with an extremely restless character. Vladimir passed all classes as the first student. After graduating from university, he entered the theological academy and was ordained a priest in 1917. Vladimir embarked on the path he aspired to and was chosen by God from birth. From the very beginning he began to enjoy the respect and love of the parish. In 1924, he and his parents were deported to Tver without the right to leave the city. They had to be constantly under the supervision of the GPU. In 1930 Vladimir was arrested and shot.
Another brother, Boris, joined the Komsomol, and then, to the sadness of his parents, became a member of the Union of Atheists. Father Vladimir, during his lifetime, tried to bring him back to God, but could not. In 1928, Boris became chairman of the Union of Atheists and married a Komsomol girl. In 1935 I came to Moscow for a few days, where I met Boris by chance. He joyfully rushed to me with the words: “The Lord, through the prayers of my brother, Father Vladimir in heaven, brought me back to Himself.” Here is what he told me: “When we got married, the mother of my bride blessed her with the image of the “Savior Not Made by Hands” and said: “Just give me your word that you will not leave His image; let him now you do not need, just do not quit. He, really unnecessary to us, was demolished in a barn. A year later, we had a boy. We were both happy. But the child was born sick, with tuberculosis of the spinal cord. We did not spare money for doctors. They said that the boy could only live to the age of six. The child is already five years old. Health is getting worse. We have heard a rumor that a famous professor of childhood diseases is in exile. The child is very ill, and I decided to go and invite the professor to us.
When I ran to the station, the train left before my eyes. What was to be done? Stay and wait, and there is only one wife and suddenly the child dies without me? I thought about it and turned back. I arrive and find the following: the mother, sobbing, is kneeling by the bed, hugging the boy’s already chilling legs ...
The local paramedic said that these were the last minutes. I sat down at the table opposite the window and gave myself over to despair. And suddenly I see, as if in reality, that the doors of our barn are opening and my own late brother Father Vladimir is coming out. He holds in his hands our image of the Savior. I was stunned: I see how he walks, how his long hair flutters, I hear him open the door, I hear his steps. I went as cold as marble. He enters the room, approaches me, silently, as it were, passes the Image into my hands and, like a vision, disappears.
Seeing all this, I rushed into the barn, found the image of the Savior and placed it on the child. In the morning the child was perfectly healthy. The doctors who treated him only shrugged. There are no traces of tuberculosis. And then I realized that there is a God, I understood the prayers of my brother.
I announced my withdrawal from the Union of Atheists and did not hide the miracle that had happened to me. Everywhere and everywhere I proclaimed the miracle that had happened to me and called for faith in God. They baptized their son, giving him the name - George. I said goodbye to Boris and never saw him again. When she returned to Moscow in 1937, she learned that after the baptism of her son, he left for the Caucasus with his wife and child. Boris spoke openly about his error and salvation everywhere. A year later, being completely healthy, he suddenly died. The doctors did not determine the cause of death: the Bolsheviks removed him so that he would not talk too much and the people would not stir up ... "
Suggested by Saint Alexander Svirsky
It often happens to us that we make mistakes, and we know that we are doing wrong, but we continue to make them, without even realizing their significance. And then help comes from above. Either you find out in a book, or someone tells you, or you meet the right person, but God's providence is in everything.
I used to think that the form of clothing for an Orthodox woman does not play a big role: today I went in trousers or a miniskirt - it doesn’t matter, it doesn’t matter, the main thing is to come to the temple as it should be, but in the world - as you want. And I somehow have a dream, I go into the temple, to my left is an icon, I go up to it, and Alexander Svirsky comes out of the icon to meet me. He tells me: “Put on simple women’s clothes on your body and wear it as it should, and pray to St. Zosima.”
Subsequently, the priest explained to me the importance of the words spoken to me by the Monk Alexander. Trousers on a woman, a short skirt and other tight clothes are tempting. And now, imagine, you entered the subway in such clothes, and how many men looked at you and even sinned in their thoughts - that's how many people you will be the cause of their sin. After all, it is said: “Do not tempt!”
Healing from blindness
During the consecration of water, a wondrous prayer is said, in which HEALING POWER is requested for those who use this water. Consecrated objects contain spiritual properties that are not inherent in ordinary matter. The manifestation of these properties is like miracles and testifies to the connection of the human spirit with God. Therefore, any information about the facts of the manifestation of these properties is very useful to people, especially during times of temptation and doubts in faith, that is, in a person’s spiritual connection with God. This is especially important at the present time, when there is a widespread misconception that such a connection does not exist and that it has been proven by science. However, science operates with facts, and denying facts on the sole basis that they do not fit into a given scheme is not a scientific method.
To the numerous manifestations of the special healing properties of the consecrated water, one more quite reliable case can be added, which took place at the end of the winter of 1960/61.
An elderly retired teacher A.I. was sick with her eyes. She was treated in an eye dispensary, but, despite the efforts of the doctors, she became completely blind. She was a believer. When trouble happened, for several days in a row she applied a cotton swab moistened with Epiphany water to her eyes with a prayer. To the surprise of the doctors, one really beautiful morning, she again began to see well.
It is known that in patients with glaucoma such drastic improvements are impossible with conventional treatment, and getting rid of A.I. from blindness is one of the manifestations of the miraculous healing properties of Holy water.
Unfortunately, not all miracles are written down, even fewer get into print, and there are many things we simply do not know. The miracle that I have spoken about will obviously be known only to a narrow circle of people, but we, who by the grace of God have been honored to be among them, will give thanks and glory to God.
THE POWER OF FAITH IN GOD
One woman told a story about her father Ivan Safonovich Romashchenko, born in 1907, about how at the end of 1943, on a false denunciation of a traitor who collaborated with the Nazis, he ended up in camps for 10 years. And how many hardships he had to endure there. In addition, he was very ill with tuberculosis, which is why he was not taken to the front in 1941.
Even while there, in incredibly difficult conditions, her father continued to be a true Orthodox Christian. He prayed, tried to live according to the Commandments, and even... keep the fasts! Although it was hard exhausting work, and there was only gruel from food, he still LIMITED himself in food on fasting days. Father kept a calendar, knew and remembered the days of the great church holidays, calculated the day of the onset of the main bright holiday of Easter. He told his cellmates a lot of interesting things about the saints, sacred history, knew by heart many prayers, psalms and passages of Holy Scripture. Father especially honored the main Orthodox holidays, and in the first place, Easter.
Once he refused to go to work on this bright Holiday, for which, on the orders of the camp leadership, as a rebellious one, he was immediately taken to the so-called "Knee Bag". This building really looked like a narrow bag, but made of stone. A person could only stand in it. The guilty were left in it FOR DAYS without outerwear and hats. In addition, a bright lamp was burning, and cold water was constantly dripping on the top of the head. And if we take into account that in the North during this period of the year the temperature is minus 30-35 degrees below zero, then the outcome for the father was known in advance - death. Moreover, from numerous experiences, everyone knew that a person in this “Stone Bag” withstood no more than a day, during which he gradually FREEZED and died.
And so the father was locked up in this terrible deadly structure. Moreover, having learned that Easter had come, the camp authorities and guards began to celebrate it. The prisoner closed in the “Knee Bag” was remembered only at the end of the third day.
When the sent sentry came to pick up his body in order to bury it, he was taken aback. Father stood - Alive and looked at him, although he was all COVERED with ice. The sentry got scared and ran off to report to his superiors. Everyone ran there to look at the Miracle.
When they took him from the “Sack” and, having placed him in the infirmary, they began to ask how he could SURVIVE, because before him everyone DIE within a day, he answered that he had not slept for all three days, but incessantly PRAYED to God. At first it was terribly COLD, but by the end of the first day it became Warmer, then even warmer, and on the third day it was already HOT. He said that the heat came from somewhere INSIDE, although there was ice outside. This event had such an effect on everyone that the father was left alone. The head of the camp canceled work on Easter, and even allowed my father not to work on other church holidays for his great Faith.
But now the camp authorities have changed. The former head of the camp was replaced by a new one, just the same beast, not a man. Cruel, heartless, not recognizing God. The Holy Pascha of Christ has come again. And although no work was expected that day, at the last moment he ordered everyone to be sent to work. Father again refused to go to work on this bright Holiday. But the cellmates persuaded him to go to the place of work, otherwise, they say, this beast without a soul and heart will simply torture you.
My father came to the place of work, but refused to work on cutting down the forest. Reported to the boss. He ordered to immediately SET on him, specially trained to catch up and tear apart a person, dogs. The guards released the dogs. And so, more than a dozen big dogs with an evil bark rushed at the father. Death was inevitable. All prisoners and guards froze, waiting for the end of the terrible bloody tragedy.
The father, having bowed and crossed himself to the four cardinal directions, began to pray. It was only later that he said that he read mainly the 90th psalm (“Living in help”). So, the dogs rushed in his direction, but not having reached him 2-3 meters, they suddenly, as it were, RUNNED against some kind of invisible OBSTACLE. They jumped furiously around their father and barked, first angrily, then quieter and quieter, and finally began to wallow in the snow, and then all the dogs fell asleep in unison. Everyone was simply dumbfounded by this obvious Miracle of God!
So once again, everyone was SHOWN the huge Faith in God of this person, and God's POWER was also demonstrated! And “How near is the Lord our God to us, whenever we call on Him”(Deut. 4, 7). He did not allow the death of His faithful servant, who loves Him.
My father returned home to his family in Mikhailovsk in December 1952, where he lived for almost 10 more years.