"I will get out of this dog and enter your son or your daughter.

"You have no right to go anywhere else, your place is in the abyss.

A month passed. One evening, after a moleben, when everyone had gone home, Father John closed the door of the church, knelt before the icon of Christ, and with tears in his eyes began to pray for the liberation of the suffering soul from the unclean spirit. He prayed continuously from eight in the evening to three in the morning. When he returned home exhausted and went to bed, he heard a voice in a dream: "Father, the woman will be delivered from the demon at midnight from the thirty-ninth to the fortieth day."

And, indeed, on the fortieth day, the woman got rid of the unclean spirit that tormented her. She regained full health and lived for many more years.

Father John lived very poorly, because everything that was donated and given to him, he gave away. For the first Easter, spent by the priest in the village, he was given a goat with a small goat. A goat is for the Easter table, and a goat is to drink milk on days when there is no fasting. Father John, of course, did not leave himself a gift. He sold the animals, and with the proceeds he bought clothes for the village orphans, so that they too would rejoice on the day of the Resurrection of Christ.

In the room where Father John's family lived, there was almost nothing but two blankets donated by the residents of Scooter. He slept on one himself, and his children slept on the other. He spread a blanket on the floor and slept on one half of it, covering himself with the other.

Father was a great faster. During Great Lent, he did not eat oil for sixty days, so in the village the Forty Days were called "the sixties".

Father John had great faith and hope in Almighty God. He believed that God could perform miracles through prayer: "If I ask God to raze a mountain to the ground, then by prayer, fasting and almsgiving, He will level it. A person who observes these three covenants already lives here on earth as in Paradise."

Once Father John saw in a dream a house in an unfamiliar area, the owner of which was eating a dead dog. After asking his parishioners about this house, the priest went to look for it. The owner of the house was not there (he was working in the field), his wife and son opened the door. However, warned by the villagers about the visit of the distinguished guest, he rushed in, washed, greeted the priest with a bow and kissed his hand. He had heard about the holiness of Father John, about the healing of the demoniac woman, but he was afraid to meet him, since his conscience was burdened. He did not go to church, ate meat during fasting and lived lawlessly with his wife (they were not married). But he had a good heart. He wanted to confess — and repented of his sins. Father John married them, and they henceforth lived as good Christians.

The fame of the pious servant of God, Father John, and his ascetic life, generously flavored with unceasing prayer and miraculous healings, spread throughout the area. People went to consult with him and receive healing through his prayers. He was considered a great man of prayer and a miracle worker. People came to him from various places with their worries and sorrows, and he knew where they came from and the purpose of their visit, and always helped all those who were truly in need of consolation and guidance.

The villagers, who loved him so much, grieved when Father John was transferred to another parish, to the village of Kenurio. He then served in a temple in the Peloponnese. Unfortunately, nothing more is known about the amazing and faithful pastor of the Lord John.

May his prayers be with us! Amen.

VII. Constantine Sotiriou[24]