A Miraculous Theophany in Our Family

Photo: multiurok.ru   

This happened in January 2011. My Moscow aunt was returning home from church after the evening service for the Let’s Make the Paths to the Lord StraightDear brothers and sisters, let us hear St. John the Baptist’s call for repentance today, let us mend our ways, make our paths to the Lord straight, and come to the Lord without any shadow of sin, trusting in His mercy and love for us.

“>Eve of Theophany with full bottles of About Holy WaterOn Theophany, that is, the Day of the Lord’s Baptism, every year a great miracle is performed. The Holy Spirit, coming down upon the water, changes its natural properties. It becomes incorrupt, that is it does not spoil, remains transparent and fresh for many years, receives the grace to heal illnesses, to drive away demons and every evil power, to preserve people and their dwellings from every danger, to sanctify various objects whether for church or home use. “>Theophany water. She was in an uplifted, festive spirit. It was a wonderful snowy evening. She then slipped and fell on the ice, and broke her arm.

The fracture turned out to be complex, with slipped bone. She managed to drag herself home from the hospital and called her husband. My uncle was visiting their daughter in Germany. Without delay he returned his ticket for the end of January and flew to Moscow on the next flight. While my aunt was waiting for him, she was committing the sin of murmuring: the pain was wearing her out, all the worse for her absolutely helpless state. She was unable to dress or undress herself, couldn’t take a shower or even fix a meal. And she was tormented by perplexity: Why did it happen? On such a great Feast! After all, she wasn’t coming home from a night out, she was returning from church, pure as the driven snow! She had received Communion the day before. Hadn’t argued with anyone. She’d lived a whole two months in reclusion. And Batiushka sprinkled her with holy water after the moleben!

Something akin to resentment was clawing at her soul.

As she sat with her husband at tea, they went over what she might have done wrong. They bounced around from hospital to hospital—right up to January 24. That was the day that my uncle was supposed to have flown home according to the original ticket, and she was supposed to have met him at Domodedovo airport. What was their amazement when they saw the news on television about the terrorist act in Domodedovo airport! There was an explosion in the arrivals waiting area. Many people died that day.

That is precisely where my aunt would have been at the moment of the explosion, waiting for the very flight that would have delivered my uncle, arriving from Dusseldorf. He would have been descending the steps from the airplane.

If she hadn’t broken her arm…

Not a miracle, you say? It certainly was a miracle. An ordinary Theophany

“>Theophany miracle.

After that, my dear relatives had a moleben of thanksgiving served and celebrated my aunt’s second birthday.

And for me, this was an important lesson. It’s so much easier to live when you know that no matter what happens, even the worst things, it’s only because the Lord saved you from something worse.