February 10, 2016

The Healing of Elder Iakovos Tsalikes by St. Haralambos


Elder Iakovos Tsalikes (+ 1991) related the following:

When I was a small child, I suffered such a severe cold, that I was bound in bed with great shortness of breath and terrible pain on the left side of my chest.

There was no doctor in the village, and our only refuge was God and His Saints. We had in our home a small silver icon of St. Haralambos, it was wonderworking, over 600 years old, and we had brought it from Asia Minor as a paternal family heirloom.

My mother therefore, offered many prayers and prostrations, entreating the Saint. Then I saw the hand of a Priest, from the wrist down, pass over my head, and descend to my chest where I was having pain, and made the sign of the cross and patted my head. Immediately the pain passed, along with the shortness of breath, and I became well. I then told me mother:

"Mother, I saw the hand of a Priest cross me and pat me on the head, and now I'm fine. It all passed." I even told her about the hair on the wrist, with such detail did I see it.

"My child," my mother said to me, "it was St. Haralambos who came to heal you. You should honor this day forever (it was the feast of the Holy Apostle Thomas when this miracle took place), because you were dead, and now have risen."