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Three Personal Stories About the Miraculous Power of the Cross


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

A Visit to a Psychic

“Can I help you?” my acquaintance, who was a psychic, offered, “I won’t cost you anything. I’ve healed so many people already! I can perform surgical operations at a distance.”

I was intrigued, so I agreed. She began moving her hands around my body and then said:

“I can’t. You wear a metal object which causes an interference. Please take it off.”

“I have a wristwatch, a safety pin, and a cross on.”

“You can leave the wristwatch and the safety pin on but please take the cross off, it interferes with the scan, I can’t see your internal organs…”

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?

It took me a while to learn why the cross “causes an interference.” A year after the experiment, I read the following words in an article by Hegumen Ephraim titled Corrupted by the Opium of Faithlessness:

“The 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. <…> The psychics conduct the brainwashing, i.e., induce demon possession, using secret spells, enchanted objects, and special hand movements. <…> The cross is an obstacle for their sorcery. It makes it hard for them to do anything bad because it attracts God’s grace to the human and doesn’t allow demonic powers to penetrate the human body. That is why psychics always request to take off the cross.”

Recorded by the author


Strange Wine

“I’ve experienced something that I wouldn’t have believed if someone else had told me about it,” one of our parishioners told me.

You know, I visit an old lady from time to time. She is my classmates’ mother. Both her sons (who were twins) died of hunger several years ago. They hadn’t 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’t work too hard but they give her some food sometimes. And naturally, they are looking forward to her death.

They dislike the fact that I visit the old lady. They know that she’s not alone. I told my spiritual father about this situation, and he recommended, “Be careful or else they will kill you, too.” He never gives unreasonable advice, so I was very surprised, although I didn’t take his warning to heart.

So, I came to that old lady’s place on a church holiday. She picked a bottle of wine from her cupboard and said, “Let’s remember my boys!” Well, I never refuse to drink wine. “Okay,” I replied. Something about that bottle just didn’t 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."

“‘Where did you get that bottle?’” I inquired.

“My neighbors gave it to me long time ago. I haven’t had the chance to open it yet,” she responded.

We didn’t find out what kind of wine it was but we decided not to drink it. Better safe than sorry.

I related this story to my spiritual father later. He sees occasions like these as normal. “It’s great that you made the sign of the cross on that bottle,” he said.

Recorded by the author


The Ceiling

This story happened before my own eyes. My friend asked me to be his son’s godfather. I agreed wholeheartedly. Beka was 10 months old. He was a happy and calm baby. His father used to say, “He doesn’t seem to feel cold or pain. He’s going to become a true warrior!”

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

I went to the baby’s 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’t. The baby was screaming loudly. The frightened father entered the room and took the boy into his lap. The baby didn’t want to stop crying.

He decided to take the child to the dining room. The baby stopped crying and smiled.

“Can you guess what he wants?” the mother was astonished.

The toastmaster joked, “He wants to feast with us!”

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’s 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.

Eldar Maisuradze
Published in Kviris Palitra Newspaper on May 14, 2007


Prepared by Maria Saradzhishvili
Translated by the Catalog of Good Deeds
  

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