Today is the feast of St. John Maximovitch the wonderworker.  Many, many miraculous healings have been attributed to his intercessions and, in fact, we consider him one of our family patrons.  I was healed from incapacitating abdominal pain when pregnant with our oldest.  It struck suddenly one night when I was preparing dinner.  I was reluctant to go to the hospital because I knew that it was much, much too early to have the baby (and I didn’t want to hear the worst) and in any event, they wouldn’t be able to give me anything decent for pain.  An hour later I begged Father to get the oil from the lamp over St. John’s tomb.  He anointed me on the abdomen and the pain was gone in a matter of seconds. 

One evening a few years ago Father developed an ear infection.  After only a few hours it was so painful that I was considering waking the children and taking him to the emergency room.  I fetched the oil from our icon corner and Father anointed himself on the ear with it.  In a few minutes the pain was gone and he was asleep.  In the morning it was all too obvious that his eardrum had ruptured in the night, but he had felt nothing.  It healed just fine.

pray now that this sacred flame may also rise from our hearts.