Исцеление Лебедевой

“In our time of revaluation of values, the collapse of divine and human ideals, may the generous reader allow me to tell about one remarkable case of grace-filled healing through the prayers of the great ascetic of faith and piety, Fr. John of Kronstadt. In 1891 I was assigned as a priest to the village of Adamovskoye, Medynsky district. The church house was small, and the three of us lived: me, my wife and my mother, an old woman of 63 years old. We settled down well, only one circumstance happened that disrupted the entire structure of our prosperous life. My mother fell ill with a terrible stomach disorder. The diarrhea was constant and lasted for at least a month. Then the patient developed swelling on her face, arms and legs. The invited doctors from Medyn unanimously identified the disease as dropsy, which usually ends in death in people over 60 years of age. To top off our grief, my mother fell ill and a few days later her arms, legs and tongue were lost. She lay in such a serious condition for 2 or 3 weeks. It is difficult to imagine the severity of our grief from the knowledge of the impossibility of helping a suffering patient. But where human help is powerless, there the omnipotent help of God appears with your own eyes, either directly or through the prayers of His elect. It was the same this time. When medicine was useless, I was struck by the happy idea of ​​contacting Father John of Kronstadt by telegraph with a request to pray for my sick mother. I remember now, it was on Friday. I arrive at Troitskaya station and send a telegram to Kronstadt. And since the time was late, the telegraph explained to me that the telegram would undoubtedly be delayed on the way and would be delivered to Kronstadt no earlier than 10 o’clock in the morning. Therefore, I think: the priest will pray for the sick woman only on Sunday; therefore, on Sunday evening or Monday morning one should expect relief from the illness. It's Monday. My wife and I sat down to have morning tea. Mother, as usual, lay without any movement. We bring tea to the sick woman, and she suddenly gets up and says loudly: “Mityushka, give me a crutch, I’ll come to you for tea myself. They brought the stick and we couldn’t believe our eyes: the mother came up to the table alone, sat down to drink tea and started talking. How many tears of tenderness we shed here - only God knows. Glory to Thee, merciful God, wondrous in His Saints. I thank you too, oh. John, our warm prayer book before God. From then on, my mother quickly recovered from her loss of strength and lived for two more years. No matter how the people of this century explain the present case, we believe that only the Almighty power of the Lord, the weak healer, can instantly raise the paralytic. In this case, this power manifested its effect after the prayer of a sad man of the Russian land, who at one time suffered a lot of slander, but in fact, a true servant of God and His great saint, Fr. John of Kronstadt. I affirm the fidelity of everything written, as under oath, by the priest of the city of Likhvin, Kaluga province, Dimitri Lebedev. (Written based on an original letter kept in the monastery).