 |
| Church of Saint George in Langoura, Patras, Greece |
By John Sanidopoulos
My grandmother Anastasia had a special devotion to St. George. Often in her prayers I would hear her chant his Dismissal Hymn from memory. I'm not sure where her devotion originated, but it was the only hymn to a Saint I ever heard her chant.
My grandmother eventually married my grandfather John (who was originally from Nicomedia, the place where St. George was martyred in the fourth century) and they bore eight children, five of whom survived beyond infancy, and they settled in the city of Patras in a small one-bedroom apartment. My father, Panagioti, was the second youngest, and as a young child developed a bed wetting problem that stuck with him until he was around ten years old. This caused him and my grandmother especially great distress as there was no medical explanation for it at the time.
One day my grandmother stood before her icons and made a supplication before St. George to heal my father of his bed wetting. In her prayer she made a vow on his behalf that if the Great Martyr healed her son, she in turn would send him to the nearby church dedicated to St. George in Langoura to clean the entire thing. She never told my father this, yet still that night her prayers were answered, his bed was dry and he never had the problem again.
The next day my grandmother contacted the priest and told him of her vow. He allowed my father to come and fulfill the vow his mother made on his behalf. My father did it gratefully.
When my father got a little bit older he took on his fathers trade as an Electrician. When the church dedicated to St. George, which years before he had cleaned, requested to be wired for electricity, my father went and did the entire job for free, still showing gratitude to the Great Martyr George who healed him years earlier.