By Monk Moses the Athonite
When Saint George Karslides was a young child, he met in a wondrous vision the Three Hierarchs - Basil the Great, Gregory the Theologian and John Chrysostom. This is how he described it to his spiritual children many years later:
I was home alone, in my brother's house, after my parents died.
A beggar came that day, I took a plate, I went to the barn, I took some flour and I gave it to him.
Then, the next day, my brother had to go and get some flour and he started arguing with me, telling me: "You overturned the whole barn and gave it to the beggar." He held it against me, it was a mess, it was horrible, and that caused me to get up and leave the house.
I found myself taken in by a Turk and he made me a shepherd of his animals. I would take the animals up to a ravine and guard them there. One day, while guarding the animals, I saw three priests, who began chanting so beautifully that I abandoned the animals and followed them.
But suddenly I lost them. The chanting was so beautiful, that because they became invisible, I cried. I came home crying and when the Turk saw me like that, he asked me: “What happened to you? What's going on?" But I could not speak.
After some time I gathered myself together and explained to him what I was suffering from. Then he said to me:
"If you see them, will you recognize them?"
"I don't know," I answered.
He took me by the hand and brought me from one room to another and somewhere he raised up a trapdoor and we went down a ladder. Then an entire church opened in front of us. The Turk was a Cryptochristian! I immediately ran to the icon of the Three Hierarchs:
"It was them!"
Then he said to me: "Come, my child, you are not for this place. You are for a monastery."
Source: From the book Ο όσιος Γεώργιος της Δράμας, (1901-1959). Translation by John Sanidopoulos.
I was home alone, in my brother's house, after my parents died.
A beggar came that day, I took a plate, I went to the barn, I took some flour and I gave it to him.
Then, the next day, my brother had to go and get some flour and he started arguing with me, telling me: "You overturned the whole barn and gave it to the beggar." He held it against me, it was a mess, it was horrible, and that caused me to get up and leave the house.
I found myself taken in by a Turk and he made me a shepherd of his animals. I would take the animals up to a ravine and guard them there. One day, while guarding the animals, I saw three priests, who began chanting so beautifully that I abandoned the animals and followed them.
But suddenly I lost them. The chanting was so beautiful, that because they became invisible, I cried. I came home crying and when the Turk saw me like that, he asked me: “What happened to you? What's going on?" But I could not speak.
After some time I gathered myself together and explained to him what I was suffering from. Then he said to me:
"If you see them, will you recognize them?"
"I don't know," I answered.
He took me by the hand and brought me from one room to another and somewhere he raised up a trapdoor and we went down a ladder. Then an entire church opened in front of us. The Turk was a Cryptochristian! I immediately ran to the icon of the Three Hierarchs:
"It was them!"
Then he said to me: "Come, my child, you are not for this place. You are for a monastery."
Source: From the book Ο όσιος Γεώργιος της Δράμας, (1901-1959). Translation by John Sanidopoulos.
