Listen to Father Pimen Vlad who is briefly speaking to us about the feast of the Entrance of the Theotokos into the Temple, the feast day of our cell. On this occasion, the father also relates a stirring miracle that happened a few years ago with the Mother of God.
Enjoy!
Behold, my dear ones, that we see each other again, on a wonderful autumn day. I want to talk a little, about my Direct Mistress, about our Lady. Soon will be the Entrance to the Church of the Mother of God, the patron saint of our cell here, of our protector. Even when I started the church, I always wanted one thing: I said “Mother of God, I want the church to be very beautiful, within the hermitage here, to be the most beautiful!”. Here are seventeen cells, that are seventeen churches. I wanted it to be the most beautiful, not from Athos, because there are many, hundreds in Athos, the most beautiful here. The Mother of God helped and it came out the most beautiful, as I wished. Many times I would enter the church, especially after sanctification, so dear to me, as I call it, like a beautiful glass candle.
And I imagined Her many times, the Mother of God, whom we celebrate here, the Entrance to the Church of the Mother of God. The Mother of God entered the Temple at the age of three. Think about it, a three -year-old child, who is barely able to speak, becomes used to speaking better. However, the Mother of God at that age was taken to the temple, and was separated from her parents. How do you think a small child of three would react today? The Mother of God went there with much love.
Her parents, because they had promised to give her to the Lord, being both old and aware that they no longer had much longer to live, took her to the Temple with great honor, they were not of the poorest in Jerusalem, but they were also not of the richest either. When they arrived at the temple, there were many steps to climb to the entrance, it was quite tiring even for the adults.
The Mother of God, upon arriving downstairs, broke away from the hands of her parents and ran up the steps up to the entrance to the temple, where Saint Zechariah, the father of St. John the Baptist, was waiting for her (he was a priest that year). He was waiting for her at the temple. He received her and took her to the temple, into the Holy of Holies, where only the priest entered once a year, where he burned incense there and cleaned. Do you understand? This is how God ordained: He enlightened her and knew that she was not a little girl like any other and took her to the Holy of Holies. Her parents returned home. The Mother of God did not cry, she did not ask “Why have my parents left? “ So, it was God’s grace towards her. She went there and lived in joy in the Holy of Holies.
So, let us not imagine that she entered the Holy of Holies and was unable to leave there until she was fifteen years old, when she had to follow her path further. That was her place of prayer, because at the temple, there were several virgins also being raised. They were learning to weave, to do different tasks like that by hand. There, it is said, he also taught the Mother of God to weave, to be accomplished at this. We also see in the Savior that she had the one-piece shirt, made by the Mother of God, as she had learned at the temple. We have the belt of the Mother of God (which is kept partly at Vatopedu, and another part being kept at Kato Xenia, in Greece), this was braided by the Mother of God, out of camel hair. So the Mother of God had learned everything that had to be learned in order to cope in life, because the girls did not stay in vain at the temple.
She said her prayers in the Holy of Holies, that was her place of prayer, of which God allowed her. She was constantly being studied by the Archangel Gabriel. The Mother of God was taken there as a child. That’s why I have often thought about how the Mother of God comes and enters our church. A child of three years. How can our little church not be clean and cared for all the time, when the Mother of God comes? It’s a shame for us not to be clean. That’s why we also adopted a habit: always, those who came knew, at the entrance to the church we have the salon and there we have the slippers and everyone takes off their shoes, takes their slippers and enters the church. We try to keep it clean, as it should be, being the house of the Mother of God. We must give great honor to the Mother of God! I used to say the more honor you give, that’s how much you receive.
You want help from the Mother of God, give Her honor, offer Her respect, and the Mother of God will help you with everything. If you come with carelessness, with indifference and just give a pomelnic there, do not expect results. As the Savior says: “Son, give me your heart.” From here you go – everything should be done with faith, with godliness, with respect. We do not go to the icons and lay hands on them! I don’t respect that! We don’t put out hands on the holy relics! There we worship and kiss with respect, not on the face of the Savior, nor on the face of the Mother of God! We kiss the hand, we kiss the feet. So respectfully! We show respect and we will get help!
Now I want to tell you (I wrote in a book before and I think he said it sometime) about a miracle of the Mother of God, that was done in 2004, about eighteen years ago. I think many of you have heard of this, but I want to remind you of it because it’s a miracle that goes beyond a lot of things. Somewhere in Saudi Arabia There was a very wealthy, young man, married for a year or two and loved his wife very much. He had a beautiful wife, whom he loved dearly. The man was very wealthy, from a wealthy family, but there was a problem in their home. The wife was unable to become pregnant, almost three years had passed, and still she did not become pregnant, and in Saudi Arabia they are used to having many children. We also see in the Old Testament: the woman who could not bear children was considered cursed by God.
It was considered a shame not to be able to make babies! The more children they had, the more blessed they were considered by God. The law with them was that the man could have two wives and three, as for Muslims. But he loved his wife dearly and said: “I don’t want to take another wife, she is enough for me, I love her, as she is, she is indeed enough for me.” But they were sad, nevertheless, because they couldn’t have children. And that’s when they thought: “Let’s go through Syria to take a vacation, to get away from the complaining from relatives, who always ask why we do not have children?” And that’s how they arrived at Damascus. They rented a taxi from there to take them through the area. While taking them through the area, the driver explained one thing to another but he saw that they weren’t so attentive about what he was saying, they appeared sad.
At one point he asks them:
“Maybe I’m not behaving properly or I’m not explaining properly to you, I see you sad! Don’t you enjoy these areas?”
“Our problem is different,” they replied.
“You can’t help us, but we will explain! My wife cannot have children. We’re really sad about this.”
“This is not a problem” the driver said. ”The Orthodox Christians here have a monastery devoted to the Mother of God, ” said The driver, “where women who cannot have children go, they say a prayer, are given a little wick from the candle of the Mother of God, swallow it, I do not know what they do then, make a promise to the Mother of God and the woman becomes pregnant.”
When they heard, their faces lit up: “Now leave everything and take us to that monastery!”. He being a taxi driver, he knew the roads and took them to that monastery. They prayed there as best they could to the Mother of God, even though they were Muslims. They were given the wick from there and said what prayers they needed and left. When parting from the taxi driver they told him… “If it’s true and this miracle happens, we’re going to return and donate $80,000 to the monastery, and we’re going to give you $20,000!”. He took them to the airport and the couple left… A few months later, the woman became pregnant, which, according to doctors, was no chance of happening. Great joy was in the family, they waited for nine months to pass and a healthy baby boy was born.
There was great joy from them, and they were a family now with possibilities. A few days after the birth the man left telling his wife… “Rest assured, I am going to fulfill our promise.” He took more money with him and went to fulfill their promise. Of course, he called that taxi driver, that he had kept in touch with. “Behold man, we have been granted what we asked” “I want to come and fulfill my promise come and wait for me at the airport in Damascus!”. When the taxi driver heard that this man was coming with so much money, he thought: “Why give the money to the monastery?” He, even if he saw miracles as a taxi driver, still did not believe in such a thing, because he was also a Muslim. When he heard it was about so much money, his eyes glazed over and so he told the client to come.
But then, he talked to two of his friends – with whom, perhaps, he had done these things before when they had caught someone with much money – and told them about the opportunity for enrichment. They all came to the airport with the limousine. The limousine was large and there was room. He told the client: “Look, I’ve got two friends of mine , I think perhaps you don’t mind us going together.” He didn’t get upset, he was happy, and was trusting. Upon hearing that they were the driver’s friends, he gave them $10,000 each, and to the driver gave him $20,000. He went to the monastery to give $80,000, according to his promise. The three of them wanted to take the rest of the money. The road was long, they also passed through the wilderness. At one point, the driver veered off into a more deserted area.
There they all jumped on him, cut him into pieces, put him in a bag and put him in the trunk. They took away everything he had, the money, his watch, what the man had that was of value, and they decided to take him to an even more desolate place, somewhere else, to throw his body away. This is how the Mother of God allowed it, so that it would not be there. They put him in the trunk and left. To get where they wanted to go, they had to cross a larger road. When they entered the high road, their engine stopped. As they walked down that road, the car shook, the bag unfolded and blood began to flow into the trunk. As they were on the side of the road, someone passed by and saw these guys on the side of the road and stopped:
“Can I help you with something?”
“No, no,” the three of them replied, “we can handle it!”
The man saw them scared and when he glanced at the car he saw that there was already a puddle of blood dripping from the trunk, but he did not say anything, he went on. At the first place he could stop he called the police, he informed them he had met three suspicious people, stopped by a car from which blood was dripping.
Immediately a police car went there, quickly summoned them, the three of them were scared, it was visible on their faces that they had committed a crime. By the time they opened the trunk, the customer, although he had been cut into pieces, stood up whole, but had blood on him, everywhere.
“Glory to God!”, he says when he got up, ”thank the Mother of God of Christians, that She had just finished sewing all in their place for me and even when you opened the trunk She finished the last stich on my neck, sewed my head back and became invisible”
The three, who knew what they had done, started screaming like madmen, no longer controlling themselves: “You can’t, you’re not alive! We killed you, we cut you to pieces, It’s not possible you’re not alive.” The police had to tie them up and took them straight to the hospital. They took a testimony from the one who was cut, they also took him to the hospital because he was full of blood. There they washed him and looked at the cuts to his hands, feet and neck which were visible. The doctors consulted him and said that he looks as if he had recently had surgery on his neck, hands, feet, you can see the traces of the seams, all like a man who has been operated on and is now healthy.
And he recounted: “After they put me in the trunk, the Mother of God of Christians appeared, said not to be afraid, and began to sew me back.” Do you realize what a miracle this is?! The three were immediately taken away and imprisoned, because they had committed a crime, even though a miracle had happened. Our man, after recovering from this, took the plane, went home to his own family , told them the miracle and instead of the $80,000 that he had promised to the monastery, instead took $800,000 dollars and said that he wanted to go and give this to the Mother of God, who saved him. In addition to giving him a child, She raised him from the dead, gave him life. He took the money and went to the monastery with honor, gave the money there and after that began to inquire about the Christian faith.
He saw the miracle and he also wanted to believe in the Mother of God. And then slowly he learned the faith. His wife and his relatives saw the miracle, which was made public on the newspapers, on the radio, when he himself told the story. For those in Arab countries it was something out of the ordinary for a Muslim to say what miracles the Mother of God did for him. After fulfilling his promise, the man slowly turned to the Christian faith and because he and his family, lived in a country where the Christian faith was persecuted, they left there. When he recounts this, he ends his confession: “And all this happened to me when I was a Muslim” because now, he had converted to the Orthodox faith.
And he left there so as not to endanger his life, knowing that some Muslims who did not like the Orthodox faith, would have tried to persecute him and deny The miracle that the miracle would not be known. Thus, he moved to a country where he had the freedom to live his life in the Orthodox faith without fear, and later they were baptized, both they and the child. Do you see how many miracles the Mother of God performs? Even with those of another faith, if She sees that they have a pure heart and soul, that is – they are not cunning. And She finds them a way to get to know God, the Mother of God, the Orthodox faith. I wanted to remind you of this miracle to show indeed how wonderful the Mother of God is! Whenever we ask for Her help, She never leaves us. Let us ask Her in faith, with hope, as our Mother, whom we love and who loves us.
Yes, my dear ones, always pray to the Mother of God! No matter what is happening in this world, how crazy it is now, do not lose your hope, nor your time with all the news that is given and that stresses you, drives you crazy, but pray a good deal to the Mother of God! And you will see that the Mother of God can protect you, she can guard you and she can always help you. May the good God and the Mother of God help us! God help us!
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