Orthodox Parables and Stories: "The blind Elder Fr. Simon Arvanitis left his locked cell!"

One day a lady in her sixties came to the house and as I was talking to her in the kitchen, she told me that last night she referred to Fr. Simon [Fr. Simon Arvanitis (1901-1988)] and came to her alive. "I told him," she says "my problem and, after he gave me the answer, he disappeared from my face like smoke."

"That is not possible, madam," I told her. "I lock his cell and keep the key in my pocket and I always wait for his order to open it for him, if he wants, and we always go out together. Did you see Fr. Simon in your dream?"

"No, Father Zosima," the woman was protesting. "I saw him awake."

I insisted in my opinion that she was wrong, because the Elder does not go out without my help. Besides, among other things, he does not see.

"Didn't you notice," I added, "that I take him by the hand and take him back to church and bring him back to his cell in the same way?"

The Elder, who was lying in his cell, was listening to our conversation. At one point he yells to come to him. I went, and the Elder said to me then:

"Zosima, you say what you want. I leave here at night!"

This is what the Elder told me and it was not long before he proved it to me. At night I fell asleep. The night must have been very late when I heard a "thump" from something that apparently fell on the tiles. I get up, turn on the light and see a stone on the floor. I took it and did not speak at all. I thought it might have fallen off my pants because I had worked outside. I put it on my nightstand and fell asleep again. I hear the same noise again. I turn on the light and see a second stone. I took this too without speaking and put it on the nightstand.

I turned off the light again and this is the third time. Then I asked the Elder what that meant. Who throws the stones, while the doors are closed and locked and the windows are closed as well. The Elder told me to keep them because I would need them later. I keep these stones until today. But I understood the message. The Elder left his cell and the way he left testified that he could do it only because he was a saint, but never an ordinary person.

From the book of the monk Zosimas, "Hieromonk Simon Arvanitis, 1901-1988), His life and work".