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by doctors and healers, nothing helped. He had even been specially
This
paralytic, who was barely thirty years old, had been ill for the
past six years, but before that he had been in perfect
health and had
even done military service. He had fallen ill after his
return home from
service, just before his wedding, and had lost all use of
the left side of
his body. In spite of various treatments
by doctors and healers, nothing helped. He had even been specially
taken for treatment to Mineralne Vodi in the Caucasus,
and now his
relatives were bringing him here, to Amena-Pretz, hoping
against hope
that the saint would help him and alleviate his
sufferings.
On the way to this holy place we made a special stop, as
all pilgrims
usually do, at the village of Diskiant to pray at the
miraculous icon of
Our Saviour, which was in the house of a certain Armenian
family. As
the invalid also wished to pray, he was taken into the
house, I myself
helping to carry the poor man in.
Soon afterwards we came to the foot of Mount Djadjur, on
the slopes
of which the little church with the miraculous tomb of
the saint is
situated. We halted at the place where the pilgrims
usually leave their
carts, wagons and vans, at the end of the carriage road.
From there the
further ascent of a quarter of a mile must be made on
foot, and many
walk barefoot, according to the custom there, while
others even do this
distance on their knees or in some other special way.
When the paralytic was lifted from the cart to be carried
to the top,
he suddenly resisted, wishing to try to crawl up by
himself as best he
could. He was put on the ground "and he started
dragging himself along
on his healthy side. He did this with such difficulty
that it was pitiable
to watch him; but he still refused all help. Resting
often on the way, he
finally, after three hours, reached the top, crawled to
the tomb of the
saint, which was in the centre of the church, and having
kissed the
tombstone, immediately lost consciousness.
His relatives, with the help of the priests and myself,
tried to revive
him. We poured water into his mouth and bathed his head.
And it was
just as he came to himself that a miracle occurred. His
paralysis was
gone.
At first the man was stupefied; but when he realized that he
could move
all his limbs, he sprang up and almost began to dance;
then, all of a sudden recollecting himself, with a loud
cry he flung
himself prone and began to pray.
All the people there, with the priest at their head,
immediately
amidst the kneeling worshippers, held a service of
thanksgiving to the
saint.
Another incident, which puzzled me no less, took place in
Kars. That
year there was terrible heat and drought in the whole
province of Kars;
almost all the crops had been scorched; a famine
threatened, and the
people were becoming agitated.
That same summer there arrived in Russia from the
patriarchate of
Antioch an archimandrite with a miraculous icon—I do not
remember
whether of St. Nicholas the Miracle-worker or of the
Virgin—to collect
money for the relief of the Greeks who suffered in the
Cretan War. He
travelled with this icon chiefly to places in Russia with
a Greek
population, and he also came to Kars.
I do not know whether politics or religion was at the
bottom of it all,
but the Russian authorities in Kars, as elsewhere, took
part in
organizing an impressive welcome and in according him all
kinds of
honours.
When the archimandrite arrived in any town, the icon was
carried
from church to church, and the clergy, coming to meet it
with banners,
welcomed it with great solemnity.
The day after the archimandrite arrived in Kars, the
rumour spread
that a special service for rain would be held before this
icon, by all the
clergy, at a place outside the town. And indeed, just
after twelve o'clock
on that same day, processions set out from all the
churches, with
banners and icons, to join in the ceremony at the
appointed place.
In this ceremony there took part the clergy of the old
Greek church,
of the recently rebuilt Greek cathedral, the military
cathedral, the church
of the Kuban regiment, and also of the Armenian church.
It was a day of particularly intense heat. In the
presence of almost the
entire population, the clergy, with the archimandrite at
their head, held a
solemn service, after which the whole procession marched
back towards
the town. nd then something occurred to which the
explanations of
contemporary people are absolutely inapplicable. Suddenly
the sky
became covered with clouds, and before the people had
time to reach
the town there was such a downpour that everyone was drenched
to the
skin.
In explanation of this phenomenon, as of others similar
to it, one
might of course use the stereotyped word 'coincidence',
which is such a
favourite word among our so-called thinking people; but
it cannot be
denied that this coincidence was almost too remarkable.
The third incident occurred in Alexandropol, when my
family had
returned there for a short period and we were living
again in our old
house. Next door to us was my aunt's house. One of the
lodgings in her
house had been let to a Tartar who worked for the local
district
government either as a clerk or a secretary. He lived
with his old mother
and his little sister and had recently married a handsome
girl, a Tartar
from the neighbouring village of Karadagh.
Everything went well at first. Forty days after her
marriage the young
wife, according to the Tartar custom, went to visit her
parents. But
there, either she caught cold or something else happened
to her, for
when she returned she did not feel well, had to go to bed,
and gradually
became very ill.
They gave her the best of care, but in spite of being
treated by several
doctors, among whom, I remember, were the town doctor,
Resnik, and
the former army doctor Keeltchevsky, the condition of the
sick woman
went from bad to worse. An acquaintance of mine, a
doctor's assistant,
went every morning, by order of Dr. Resnik, to give her
an injection.
This doctor's assistant, whose name I do not remember—I
only
remember that he was unbelievably tall—often dropped in to
see us
when I was at home.
One morning he came in while my mother and I were
drinking tea.
We invited him to join us at the table and in the course
of the
conversation I asked him, among other things, how our
neighbour was
getting on.
'She is very sick,' he replied. 'It is a case of
galloping consumption
and doubtless it will soon be "all over" with
her.'
While he was still sitting there, an old woman, the
mother-in-law of
the sick woman, came in and asked my mother's permission
to gather
some rose-hips in our little garden. In tears she told us
how Mariam
Ana—as the Tartars call the Virgin—had appeared that
night to the sick
woman in a dream and bade her gather rosehips, boil them
in milk, and
drink; and in order to calm her the old woman wished to
do this.
Hearing this, the doctor's assistant could not help
laughing.
My mother of course gave her permission and even went to
help her.
When I had seen the assistant off I also went to help.
What was my astonishment when, the next morning on my way
to
the market, I met the invalid with the old woman coming
out of the
Armenian church of Sev-Jiam, where there is a miraculous
icon of the
Virgin; and a week later I saw her washing the windows
other house.
Dr. Resnik, by the way, explained that her recovery,
which seemed a
miracle, was a matter of chance.
These indubitable facts, which I had seen with my own
eyes, as well
as many others I had heard about during my searchings—
all of them
pointing to the presence of something supernatural— could
not in any
way be reconciled with what common sense told me or with
what was
clearly proved by my already extensive knowledge of the
exact
sciences, which excluded the very idea of supernatural
phenomena.
This contradiction in my consciousness gave me no peace,
and was
all the more irreconcilable because the facts and proofs
on both sides
were equally convincing. I continued my searchings,
however, in the
hope that sometime, somewhere, I would at last find the
real answer to
the questions constantly tormenting me. (From Metting with remarkable man Gurdjeiff)
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