.
SAINT NEKTARIUS GUARDS HIM
Testimony of Mr. Georgios Tsitsopoulos, Athens
My brother first told me about Saint Porphyrios around 1973 and I went and met him in Kallisia.
A little while later, without us having informed him where I was working, he came late at night to the sheet metal shop in Agios Fanourios where I worked as an employee with my cousin.
The Saint asked us to take a barrel and showed us how to cut it to make a wood stove. Because it was winter and very cold, I made him and his companion sit at the back of the shop, inside the closed office. As I was cutting the barrel, the electric wheel slipped from my hands, fell on me, got tangled and cut my clothes. I called to my cousin to unplug the cable from the socket, but he did not hear me. At the same moment the wheel stopped.
The Saint had unplugged the cable and was next to me. I was wearing a lot of clothes and they were torn to pieces, but in a miraculous way I was not injured at all and embarrassedly I said to the Saint:
-Elder, do you see how calm I am?
-You are not calm, blessed one... Above your head was Saint Nektarios. Can't you see across? The whole area became day!
Opposite the shop were plots and fields. All I could see was darkness, because it was 12 midnight.
***
It was August 14, 1978 and I was passing through the bars of a building in Ano Liosia. It was early noon and I said to my assistant. Gather the tools, we're going to school. Tomorrow is the Virgin Mary's. Great is Her grace, glorified is Her name!
And as I hit the hammer to nail the last cement nail, it broke and hung off the balcony, a piece of concrete slab 2.5 x 1.3m., because the contractor had reinforced it with thin iron bars, and I ran straight over the railing into the void. From the third floor I ended up on the street! First I hit a PPC cable, from there on the pillar, then on a fig tree to end up in the lime. A driver who saw the whole fall stopped immediately, picked me up and took me to the hospital in Kifisia. I was in a coma for a week. They only gave me 8 stitches and when I came to, I went straight to the Virgin Mary of Tinos to thank her.
I also owe gratitude to Saint Nektarios, because - as Saint Porphyrios told me - he is my patron.
When the Saint was building his Monastery, I volunteered to make the iron structures, mainly doors and windows. He didn’t want them made of wood or aluminum.
One day I was hanging at 9 meters. I was holding on with one hand and with the other I was clinging to a window. I was standing level on a small ledge of the wall and the Saint passed by with Mr. George A..., who said to him anxiously:
-Elder, George is hanging up there!
-Go ahead... He has Saint Nektarios above his head.
He once told me:
-God has given you a great gift.
What is this and I don't know it?
You never get angry and you never blaspheme!
Bibliography. Saint Porphyrios the Prophet.
Testimonies.
Publications. Agios Paulites Holy Cell of Saints Theodores Mount Athos. Volume C.
Δεν υπάρχουν σχόλια:
Δημοσίευση σχολίου