By Vasilis Frangos
Lately I have often been talking with D. who is in his first year of High School. He tells me that he likes History very much and is looking for the lives of various heroes in Byzantium. We were talking a lot about them yesterday. Yesterday, however, he told me that he was reading the lives of Saints, such as Saint Nicholas Planas, who was celebrating, and a Neomartyr, unknown to me. We used to say that the Saints are always by our side, when we talk about them and read their lives.
At that moment he spontaneously tells me that he especially loves Saint Panteleimon. To my question why him in particular, he replied that the Saint was a doctor and he would like to become a doctor himself. But the most shocking thing I heard at the end: he told me that he once saw Saint Panteleimon himself in his dream saying to him:
"Go ahead and I will be by your side...."
How wonderful to hear this from a modest pure soul and to know that you have in front of you a child who is under the protection of Saint Panteleimon. It is one of the rare times that I feel greatly blessed to be a teacher of such little angels. Of course, in this case there is also a father behind the scenes, who prays every night with his two boys and imbues them with reverence and love for God. Such invisible nurseries of Faith are saving Greece from annihilation, I thought.
Source: Translated by John Sanidopoulos.
