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| Metropolitan Chrysostomos I of Chalkis standing over the sacred relic of St. John the Russian |
1) “... Last winter, a Greek ship in the North Sea, heavily loaded with cargo, was sailing toward a port in the Low Countries. In the middle of the sea they were struck by a terrible cyclone. The radar stopped functioning. At any moment the ship was about to sink. The captain, an experienced sailor, saw clearly that there was truly no hope of salvation.
Someone had once told him that there exists an incorrupt saint, Saint John the Russian is his name, who grants whatever one asks of him with faith. The captain remembered this, and amid the storm of destruction he prayed to the Saint John unknown to him and said to him:
‘Great Saint of God, whom I have never known, tonight I pray to you, not to save myself, though I am the captain, not for the ship that costs millions, but I pray for these suffering sailors who left their homeland in order to support their poor families and who at this moment are drowning. Come, Saint of God, and hold the ship fast so that it may not be lost in the depths of the sea.’
Daybreak began to come. With the first light of day the ship was found inside the harbor to which it had intended to go, tied alongside the quay, as though some skilled pilot had guided it there with precision. The captain, who knew that even under the best conditions the ship could never have reached that place, was seized with awe.
He telephoned the shipping company in Piraeus, saying that he was unable to remain in his position. Transformed by the divine experience, he flew by airplane to Greece, and as a humble pilgrim knelt before the all-venerable vessel of the Holy Spirit, the sacred relic of the Saint. He experienced the truth of God, which no words can express to us. Opening his heart, he offered to Saint John material gifts worth two hundred thousand drachmas: a tabernacle, a holy chalice, a Gospel book, a blessing cross, and a censer, so that they might stand as witnesses to this divine participation which he had experienced.”
2) “On 14-10-1978, the young woman Mrs. Frideriki Georgiou, resident of Agia Varvara in Aigaleo, 24 Rodou Street, who had been paralyzed for two years and suffering terrible pains in her head, together with the despairing diagnosis of the professors that her illness was incurable — after learning that the Saint had also healed the woman from Cyprus who for fifteen years had been bent over — prayed fervently to Saint John.
And on that Saturday (14-10-1978), at five in the morning, an incomparable manifestation of the saint sealed her life. Before her there appeared, as if in a vision, the figure of Saint John, who, opening his holy hands to her, said:
‘Come, let me make you well.’
The terrible pains in her head vanished. The paralysis left her body. Weeping and filled with joy, she rose up, embraced her parents, called for her relatives, and after three hours they all arrived here as humble pilgrims before Saint John.”
Source: Translated by John Sanidopoulos.
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