On the first Saturday of Great Lent in 1995, my spiritual father blessed me to go with him to the All-Night Vigil in Suroti. Before we set off, I felt an unusually cruel curse. During the whole vigil I was not at all sleepy. I was sitting on the floor in the center of the church, with nuns standing around. When the vigil was over, the priest began to perform a prayer service with the blessing of the water. I went into a frenzy when I was taken to venerate the relics of St. Arsenius of Cappadocia. For the first time I felt that the demon burned not only my soul, but also my body. Even now: I write about it, and my hair stands on end. Then I tried with difficulty to say: "Shares... Shares..." The abbess asked me: "Paisius?" After that, I fell into a terrible crisis of possession, began to scream, they brought me to the grave, and there I cried out the word "Saint!" three times. And at that moment I saw Elder Paisios – he seemed to be getting up, waking up from a dream. He was alive, not dead. I saw him from the waist up. It was definitely him: with a beard, in a cassock. The vision lasted only a moment. The elder put his hand on my forehead, and at the same moment black smoke burst out of my mouth. I calmed down completely, but the bodily pain did not go away immediately. I fell asleep, but I woke up several times from the pain with the words: "I am in great pain, I am in great pain."

After that, for about forty days, I felt such joy that I cried from this joy. And then I said these words – perhaps they were very, very impudent: "Oh my God," I said, "even if I suffered as I used to, for a whole life, then it would be okay, it would be enough for me to experience this joy again – at least for one minute."

Saving a child

Priest Christos Tsandalis, a parish priest from the village of Kerasia in the Nea Michanion district near Thessaloniki, a father of nine children, testifies: "My children climbed onto the flat roof of our house. There was an open hatch of the lighting shaft that went down. The children began to jump through this hatch. One of the sons, a six-year-old boy with a speech delay, who had not yet spoken, also wanted to jump over this hatch, but could not, stumbled and flew into the mine like a stone. He fell from the fourth floor to the first. With a trembling heart, I opened the door of this shaft below, preparing to see the terrible sight of a broken child. Imagine my amazement when I saw my son, yellow with fear, but whole and unharmed. I took him to the hospital. After examining the boy, the doctors made sure that there was not a scratch or the slightest fracture on him.

We realized that a miracle had happened. I thought that the child was saved by the miraculous icon of the Most Holy Theotokos, which is located in the church of our village of Nea Michaniona. I brought my son to the icon and asked him: "Did She save you?" "No," the kid answered. He led me to a photograph of Elder Paisios and began to point at it, making it clear that he had been saved by the Elder."

Apparition in a dream

Catherine Pater's testimony: "I suffer from osteoporosis. One doctor prescribed me pills. I started drinking them and lost ten kilograms in a few days. I felt very bad, I was very exhausted. One evening, going to bed, I looked at a photograph of the Elder and said to him: "Father, I am not feeling well." And so he appeared to me in a dream and said: "I have come because you called me. Read a piece of paper that is enclosed in the package with the pills that you take." After that, he disappeared. I jumped out of bed, pulled a piece of paper out of the pill box, and when I read it, I saw that these pills were intended for obese people. Oh, if I continued to drink them, I would definitely give my soul to God! And the Elder is next to us, we just don't see him."

Miraculous Appearance and Help