{"id":196,"date":"2018-09-27T09:31:00","date_gmt":"2018-09-27T09:31:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.smallpage.online\/2018\/09\/27\/three-personal-stories-about-miraculous\/"},"modified":"2019-03-04T10:50:59","modified_gmt":"2019-03-04T10:50:59","slug":"three-personal-stories-about-miraculous","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/catalog.obitel-minsk.com\/blog\/2018\/09\/three-personal-stories-about-miraculous","title":{"rendered":"Three Personal Stories About the Miraculous Power of the Cross"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/p>\n

For the preaching of the cross is to them that perish foolishness; <\/em>but unto us which are saved it is the power of God. (1 Cor. 1:18).<\/em><\/p>\n

A Visit to a Psychic<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cCan I help you?\u201d my acquaintance, who was a psychic, offered, \u201cI won\u2019t cost you anything. I\u2019ve healed so many people already! I can perform surgical operations at a distance.\u201d<\/p>\n

I was intrigued, so I agreed. She began moving her hands around my body and then said:<\/p>\n

\u201cI can\u2019t. You wear a metal object which causes an interference. Please take it off.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI have a wristwatch, a safety pin, and a cross on.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cYou can leave the wristwatch and the safety pin on but please take the cross off, it interferes with the scan, I can\u2019t see your internal organs\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n

I refused to take the cross off because I thought it was an illogical demand: a metal is a metal, why is one kind worse that the other?<\/p>\n

It took me a while to learn why the cross \u201ccauses an interference.\u201d A year after the experiment, I read the following words in an article by Hegumen Ephraim titled Corrupted by the Opium of Faithlessness:<\/p>\n

\u201cThe contemporary youth who have no faith and often lack the grace of the Holy Baptism, are brainwashed to become a submissive crowd, manipulated by several powerful sorcerers or psychics. <\u2026> The psychics conduct the brainwashing, i.e., induce demon possession, using secret spells, enchanted objects, and special hand movements. <\u2026> The cross is an obstacle for their sorcery. It makes it hard for them to do anything bad because it attracts God\u2019s grace to the human and doesn\u2019t allow demonic powers to penetrate the human body. That is why psychics always request to take off the cross.\u201d<\/p>\n

Recorded by the author<\/em><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Strange Wine<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve experienced something that I wouldn\u2019t have believed if someone else had told me about it,\u201d one of our parishioners told me.<\/p>\n

You know, I visit an old lady from time to time. She is my classmates\u2019 mother. Both her sons (who were twins) died of hunger several years ago. They hadn\u2019t been married, so their mother was left completely alone. She bequeathed her three-room apartment to her neighbors in exchange for food and care. Of course, they don\u2019t work too hard but they give her some food sometimes. And naturally, they are looking forward to her death.<\/p>\n

They dislike the fact that I visit the old lady. They know that she\u2019s not alone. I told my spiritual father about this situation, and he recommended, \u201cBe careful or else they will kill you, too.\u201d He never gives unreasonable advice, so I was very surprised, although I didn\u2019t take his warning to heart.<\/p>\n

So, I came to that old lady\u2019s place on a church holiday. She picked a bottle of wine from her cupboard and said, \u201cLet\u2019s remember my boys!\u201d Well, I never refuse to drink wine. \u201cOkay,\u201d I replied. Something about that bottle just didn\u2019t feel right to me. I made the sign of the cross on it. Imagine: the wine changed its color in front of our very eyes! It turned muddy red.”<\/p>\n

\u201c\u2018Where did you get that bottle?\u2019\u201d I inquired.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy neighbors gave it to me long time ago. I haven\u2019t had the chance to open it yet,\u201d she responded.<\/p>\n

We didn\u2019t find out what kind of wine it was but we decided not to drink it. Better safe than sorry.<\/p>\n

I related this story to my spiritual father later. He sees occasions like these as normal. \u201cIt\u2019s great that you made the sign of the cross on that bottle,\u201d he
\nsaid.<\/p>\n

Recorded by the author<\/em><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

The Ceiling<\/strong><\/p>\n

This story happened before my own eyes. My friend asked me to be his son\u2019s godfather. I agreed wholeheartedly. Beka was 10 months old. He was a happy and calm baby. His father used to say, \u201cHe doesn\u2019t seem to feel cold or pain. He\u2019s going to become a true warrior!\u201d<\/p>\n

We had a festive meal after the baptism, and the mother lulled Beka to sleep. Some time later, his mother said, \u201cI took off his christcross when changing his clothes but I forgot to put it on again!\u201d I rose to my feet and suggested that I put the cross on the baby, given that I was his godfather.<\/p>\n

I went to the baby\u2019s bedroom. He was fast asleep. I put the cross on his neck very carefully but Beka woke up and started crying. His mother ran into the bedroom and tried to calm him down. She was doing all she could to soothe him but she couldn\u2019t. The baby was screaming loudly. The frightened father entered the room and took the boy into his lap. The baby didn\u2019t want to stop crying.<\/p>\n

He decided to take the child to the dining room. The baby stopped crying and smiled.<\/p>\n

\u201cCan you guess what he wants?\u201d the mother was astonished.<\/p>\n

The toastmaster joked, \u201cHe wants to feast with us!\u201d<\/p>\n

Hardly did he finish his joke that we heard a noise that shattered the whole house. A cloud of dust filled the bedroom. We looked inside, and it turned out that the ceiling above Beka\u2019s bed fell down. Huge pieces of plaster lay on his bed and around it. The grace of the cross that we had put on his neck caused the baby to cry and thus saved him.<\/p>\n

Prepared by Maria Saradzhishvili<\/em><\/p>\n

Translated by the Catalog of Good Deeds<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

For the preaching of the cross is to them that perish foolishness; but unto us which are saved it is the power of God….<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":20492,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[71],"tags":[23,14,34],"class_list":["post-196","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-stories-and-parables","tag-modern-day-miracles","tag-stories-and-parables","tag-the-path-to-orthodoxy"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/catalog.obitel-minsk.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/09\/050217195213-1.jpg","views":{"total":179,"cached_at":"","cached_date":1767819068},"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/paPyw9-3a","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/catalog.obitel-minsk.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/196","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/catalog.obitel-minsk.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/catalog.obitel-minsk.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/catalog.obitel-minsk.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/catalog.obitel-minsk.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=196"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/catalog.obitel-minsk.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/196\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20493,"href":"https:\/\/catalog.obitel-minsk.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/196\/revisions\/20493"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/catalog.obitel-minsk.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20492"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/catalog.obitel-minsk.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=196"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/catalog.obitel-minsk.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=196"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/catalog.obitel-minsk.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=196"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}