VI. Father John, Who Casts Out Evil Spirits

When the Bolshevik Revolution took place in Russia in 1917, seventeen priests were detained in Odessa. All of them were sentenced to death. One of them managed to escape and hide in the forest. This priest's name was Father John, and he was Greek. His mother was arrested and shot. He found his two children, a boy and a girl, who had been rescued from arrest by his neighbors, and together with them he began to make his way on foot to safe places. Thus, through Romania and Bulgaria, he reached his homeland. Father served in parishes in Macedonia and Thrace[21] until he was appointed rector of the church in the village of Skotera near the city of Agrinio[22].

Outwardly, Father John resembled St. Kota of Aetolia[23]. He had a shabby cassock, instead of a button, a heather stick was used. On his chest he wore a wooden cross on a simple black string. From the strict fasting and the sufferings he had endured, he seemed to be incorporeal, all "skin and bones."

The inhabitants of Scooter received the new priest well. He was given a room where he began to live with his children - a ten-year-old daughter and an eight-year-old son. Father John performed Divine services, preached the Word of God, confessed and communed people. He hurried to visit parishioners at their first call, prayed for the health of sick people and domestic animals, which were healed through his prayers.

One girl, originally from the village of Scootera, got married and moved to the village of Stamna. Once, visiting her native village, she heard with what admiration people spoke of their new priest: "They sent us such a priest! He is as good and kind as Christ Himself!"

Then the girl told me that in Stamna there lived a demon-possessed woman who had been suffering for eighteen years. Relatives traveled all over Greece, took her to doctors and on pilgrimages, but the unfortunate woman never received help.

And so they turned to Father John for help. After Sunday Liturgy, he addressed the parishioners: "Christians, we must help a woman who has been possessed by the devil for eighteen years. We will fast for forty days, celebrate the Divine Liturgy daily. Let us confess and take communion. Every evening we will bring the demoniac to church and pray for healing. Let us also turn to the inhabitants of neighboring villages, let everyone come."

On Sunday evening, the demoniac was brought to the church of St. Nicholas. A lot of people gathered there. The woman did not want to enter the church, the demon mooed, cursed, threatened to burn down the temple. The possessed woman was led into the temple and placed under the chandelier. Father John, holding a cross in his hands, read prayers from the service book for the expulsion of evil spirits. When he placed the cross on the woman's head, she began to shout: "Remove this hammer from my head. You're hurting me. I can't stand this hammer." At this time, all the gathered Christians made prostrations to the ground and prayed fervently.

The priest admonished: "Christians, be patient, we will destroy the demon." He asked the teacher to bring all the schoolchildren to church, who prayed together with everyone else and made prostrations. And so every day. The demon through the mouth of the possessed woman said to the children: "Children, get out of here, this nasty priest is deceiving you. His mouth stinks from fasting all the time. Go outside, your mother is waiting for you, who wants to give you a piece of bread with sugar" (that is, he tried to lure children into the street, seducing them with what they most dreamed of in those hungry times).

People from the surrounding villages also came to pray in the temple. Once the demon said to a man who entered through the possessed: "Oh, hello, my friend, it was you who did this and that. (And he began to name his sins). And you have come to pray to torment me?"

One evening, during a common prayer for the health of a demoniac woman, a parishioner said to his neighbor: "Be baptized correctly and reverently. How do you get baptized? Do you play the mandolin?" Immediately the voice of the possessed woman was heard: "Leave the person alone, he will cross himself normally."

One day the possessed woman began to shout: "Bring my friend, priest so-and-so." This priest served in one of the surrounding villages and led a very unvirtuous life. He did not dare to come to church.

The struggle to heal the woman continued. The demon who tormented the unfortunate woman told Father John that he was the leader of the demons. He entered the woman, because her brother, in a fit of anger, said to her: "May the demon possess you." Since then, she has become obsessed.

Father John had a hard time. The devil was screaming all the time, threatening to burn down the village and destroy the church.