A MIRACLE OF GOD THROUGH THE ELDER AIMILIANOS, ABBOT OF SIMONOS PETRAS MONASTERY, MOUNT ATHOS AS TOLD BY ITS EYEWITNESS,

NUN SYNKLETIKI

(MELANIE SARRA HANSON)

"Woe is me, for I am a man of unclean lips!" (Isaiah 6:5) Nevertheless, by the grace of his prayers who blessed me to speak, in obedience to the great Apostle who commands, "Always be ready to give account for the hope that is in you" (I Peter 3:15 ), I open this history.

I had gone to the Hyatt Regency Hotel in Kansas City on the night of Friday, 17 July, 1981 , at the suggestion of my sister Rachel and a friend of Dennis, who became her husband two years later. I was visiting, and we went particularly to hear the jazz music of the free, live big band, the kind of music we used to play sometimes. I was going to Kansas City anyway to meet my friend, Dan, and Rachael had been planning to do this for several weeks, so this was the first chance and seemed good.

We had been there about fifteen minutes, and Dan had not yet arrived, when Dennis went away briefly, and Rachael was standing beside me. We were standing up as near to the band as we could come and still see from the side. In front of the band was the dance floor, where a dancing competition was being held. We were listening to the band and watching the people who were there, a lot of older couples who were having such a good time. Rachael was on my right, and we were standing under two walkways, the west side of the building. We never saw the two walkways that collapsed --- we had been under them the whole time we were in the building. It was about 7:15 PM in Kansas City , and 3:15 AM , 18 July, in Greece , the Feast day of St. Aimilianos, when the skywalk fell, one on top of the other, both of them on us, and on many other people. They weighed about 60 tons.

I don't remember any time elapsing between knowing something was happening and being crushed. All I remember is an image, something about Rachael's face, that I might have looked at her and seen alarm on her face, and then I was crushed. My face was between my knees; my legs were straight out in front of me on the floor and I was crushed into them, bent double. The pain was terrible. I became aware of breathing and all the breaths were heavy, gasping moans when I exhaled. I don't remember losing consciousness or any time between being hit and waking up again --- nothing like that. Only, suddenly I was crushed. The terrible sound, then it was quiet. There was screaming and moaning and dust in the air, but I became aware of that only later. The lights had all gone out it seemed, and it was dark underneath where I was, except sunset light, "the Light of evening," ("O Gladsome Light, hymn of Vespers), was coming across the floor from the western windows behind us.

There was no room. My body tried to rise up or get out but I couldn't move. I knew that I was trapped and crushed. My consciousness was fragmented, flitting around from trying to comprehend my situation, to registering impressions, to praying. In part of my mind, it seemed, I was thinking, "What has happened; I think something has happened. I think something fell on us. Did this happen to us? Am I here? Did this happen just now or twenty minutes ago?" Another part of me was registering the impressions that I couldn't get out, that Rachael was under there, too. My head was bent back toward her, to my right. I could move my right hand back and forth, not up and down, and there was debris on the floor, glass and fragments. And then another part of me was praying, groaning to God. I don't remember any words at that point.

Sometime during this time I felt Rachael's hand grab my hand, pull on it, and then sort of drag away as though she were being pulled out and was trying to drag me with her. She pulled a little on my hand and wrist and then I knew that she was out. There was more light coming in where she had been. I don't know who long it was - not very long.

And then I remember calling out inside my heart to my Guardian Angel, and I said, "Where are You? I thought You were supposed to be around in these situations!" And then after that I felt my right hand clasped firmly, ("The right hand of the Lord is exalted; the right hand of the Lord doeth valiant things. I shall not die, but live, and declare the works of the Lord. Psalm 118:16, 17), as if in a firm handshake but with no movement, and then I was out. I was just out. It was as if I simply popped out backwards, but I experienced no movement or pain.

And I was lying then on my back, face up, in Someone's arms, and my body and legs were on the floor. His left arm was under my back and head and with his right hand he was wiping my face - as in the Song of Songs, "His left hand is under my head, and his right hand doth embrace me" (Song of Solomon 2:6). He was wiping my face and kissing it, and he said, "You're going to be all right." And immediately he said, "Can you put your arms around my neck?" And I did, clasping my hands and hanging from his neck. (Four weeks later, when I had to be moved again to be put into a body cast, the doctor did the same thing. He told me to put my arms around his neck and he held my back, and four or five other people took my head, legs, feet, etc., to lift me). And he called me "darling," and I think he said, "I love you." He was crouching, an older man crouching there, with his arm holding me up, repeating to me that I would be all right.

And the instant I was freed and in his arms, my consciousness unified completely. My contact lenses were in; I could see everything. I didn't even have dust in my eyes, though there was dust all around falling.

In my mind I thought that it had been he who had taken my hand and that somehow he had pulled my arm, my right hand, around so that my torso swiveled around and out. I thought this, even though I didn't experience any such movement; the reason I thought so at first, however, was that my legs felt crushed still. Therefore, I thought that they were still trapped and crushed while the other half of me had been swiveled out. So I said to the one holding me, "Do you think you can get my legs out?" And he said, "Well, they're out." So I looked down and saw that I was completely free of the rubble, and my legs were maybe a foot or more from the edge of it. I saw the beam and concrete that I had been under, and my purse lying there underneath, at the edge. I also saw my legs going down straight, except that my left leg down at the ankle, suddenly the left foot was lying on its side, turned inside. The rest of my leg was lying straight and the bones were sticking out of my ankle. I thought, "Well, my ankle is broken." The whole universe was pain, and God, at that time, especially my back. It was extremely painful and difficult to breathe.

Just then Dennis rushed up and said something like, "My God, you're alive!" I asked him where Rachael was, and he said that she was ten feet behind me in a chair and that she was going to be all right. So then he ran back to tell her that I was out. Later on I found out that he had tried a few times to pull me out, and knew that he couldn't, but Rachael kept sending him back to try again. So the last time he turned back to try, he saw me, freed, in the Man's arms, and was amazed.

I said to the one holding me that if he got around behind me and put his legs on either side of me and held me up with his chest, it might be easier for him, but he did not move or change. He only kept on crouching there and holding me, stroking my face and loving me.

So we were there like that with his hand on my face, and after a while a man came along and said, "I'm a doctor. Can I help?" He asked me where everything hurt, and somehow it was decided that I should not be moved at all until a stretcher would come from the ambulance. And then the doctor went on and the one holding me remained on my right side. My feet were pointed in toward the debris, and the back of my head was toward the window, so I was facing East as I had to be, as one dead and buried.

There was a man further on who had been caught with his head out, so that the beam and concrete had fallen on his waist and legs, trapping him with his back out on the floor, and he was face up, screaming and screaming. The one holding me tried to hold my face also from looking around to the left at the screams, but I rolled just my eyes and looked anyway. I saw other people who were still crushed under the skywalks, bent double like I had been; they had to be dead, I knew it. And I saw that the beam was slanting downward from right to left. So that Rachael had been on my right and was alive; and these other people were on my left and dead. I was in the middle, and both, through Him the God of the living and the dead. (Romans 14:9).

So I lay there in his arms and prayed again the Jesus Prayer (Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner) for all of us and for Christ God to have mercy on us. It seemed that nothing needed to be done or moved. I felt free and simple. I remember thinking, "It doesn't matter if my lips move and he hears me praying." And I couldn't remember afterwards a whole image of this person's face that was holding me. It was incredible to me afterwards when I couldn't bring back the image of His face (I have learned since that this is often the case), when, as I mean to show by his record, I was so conscious all that time. But Dennis told me later what he remembered of his profile, though at the time he was not paying much attention to him, but to Rachael and me who were injured: he was middle-aged and medium build. He seemed to have a kind of southern voice, some accent, and deep. He was drawing nothing to himself. Everything was coming out from him to me.

After a while they came with a stretcher, and when they put me on the stretcher, it was terrible. Dennis helped to carry me out of the building, and he doesn't remember seeing the one who held me again. They set me down on the ground beside the ambulance. Each movement was awful; months later I realized how painful the slightest motion was then, yet I had felt nothing in the instantaneous transition out from under the collapsed skywalks.

I was hot, but I was cold. I remember people staring from behind a rope as they carried me out. While I was lying on the stretcher beside the ambulance, someone came and took my pulse and blood pressure and started intravenous fluid and oxygen. One woman was memorizing my name, and she asked me if I had anyone else with me, and I told her about Rachael and where she was supposed to be; the woman went and found her, and came back and told me that she had found her.

Finally I was loaded into an ambulance, and they brought another woman, too, who was older and crying out with pain. My parents visited her many times in the hospital where we both were; her husband was killed. And then I heard the driver say, "Where are we going?" The ride was awful and then we got somewhere and they unloaded me. Again and again there were people asking questions: What's your name, where do you live, how old are you, where are your relatives?" I would answer, and they would roll their eyes and look away, because my family was scattered at the time, traveling. There were doctors looking at me. I didn't know it then, but the miracles were multiple - because in the whole city there existed only two surgeons who were capable of doing the surgery I needed on my back, and the best one of these "happened" to be affiliated with the hospital where I was taken (although the victims were purposely scattered out to about twenty area hospitals), and had rushed on duty with the first news of the disaster. And he found me and examined me immediately and sent me to the better x-ray.

When they cut off my clothes in x-ray, they took off my silver cross from Jerusalem , gift of a dear friend, and showed me that they were putting it in an envelope with my name on it. I hated to let it go. I could not be given anything for pain, because they had to know what I could feel. I was lifted again, onto the x-ray table, which was terrible agony; the table was cold and hard, and I was trying hard not to shake, because they told me they would have to check each picture and take more if it was not clear. And they did that several times. That time was so bad, I remember thinking that perhaps it would have been better if I had been killed.

It was in x-ray that someone came and told me that Rachael had also been brought to the same hospital! It was a Lutheran hospital named Trinity Lutheran. I learned later that she was the same person who had come around memorizing names before people would lose consciousness or die. Her name was Jean, and she was a Lutheran nurse who was employed at that hospital, who had been dancing at the hotel when the accident happened. It turns out that, for some hours, I was the only person of my family who knew where I was or that Rachael and I were at the same hospital. I was in x-ray, first being x-rayed, and then waiting for the Foster frame to be found (because the doctor had ordered that I was not to be lifted or moved again except straight onto the Foster frame), so that my name was not listed on any of the official lists of the Red Cross that were broadcast. So no one knew where I was, no one could find me. But I knew that I was there where my sister was, because of this compassionate nurse. She came to visit me some weeks later in my room; only then was I able to connect at the site with the contact in x-ray, disassociated in my mind, and attribute them to this same person. Though most survivors had run out immediately, she, and Dennis, stayed and immediately started to help people.

It was in x-ray; too, they touched my toes and asked in fear if I could feel anything. When they touched my feet, I could feel very sharp burning prickles, like hot needles. And they were rejoicing in front of me when they would try it, and would tell them which foot they were touching. By that time they had seen the x-rays of my spine. Because from these, it appeared that my spinal cord had to be severed completely. But this meant it wasn't.

Finally I went through being lifted for the third and last time until weeks later, and they rolled me to the elevator on the way to the intensive care unit. As we were coming out of the elevator, I saw Dennis and called his name. He was so surprised, rushing over to me, at that moment he was phoning every possible number, all the hospitals, trying to find out where I had been taken. Later he told me that, if I had not called to him, he would not have recognized me because my face was swollen. But I recognized him; though that day I had met him again for the first time since I was about ten years old. I still had my contact lenses in and could see everything perfectly that is possible to see when lying absolutely horizontal. Dennis said that Rachael was inside the ICU where they were taking me. He was very grateful to have found me, as it was then bout 11 p.m. , four hours after the accident, and he had reached my brother and other sister by phone, but without being able to tell them where I was.

As they wheeled me into Intensive Care, I thought I saw Rachael and I thought I heard her voice. She was moaning because there was someone doing something to her. And I saw that she had her knees up, and I thought, "She's not paralyzed!" I can't remember when I had realized that I was paralyzed, perhaps when I first saw my legs. I couldn't respond or move my legs at all; only I could feel burning prickles when touched. The doctors had come after a while, and a group of them were standing down by my feet, happy because I could not feel my ankle, only my back. I remember one of them saying that they had to set my ankle that night that the ankle could not wait, while my back could wait. I remember thinking, "Do the back!" because I could not feel my ankle, only my back. I wished that I could get into surgery in order to be unconscious and stop the pain a little.

After that, they let me have a shot for pain, and got me ready for the surgery on my left ankle. Months later I found out from the doctor that, of course, my back needed surgery as soon as possible, but they had not thought I could survive the long operation at first.

A Lutheran chaplain of the hospital came and prayed for me. He had seen Rachael already and she had told him that I was Orthodox. I asked him to call an Orthodox priest and ask him to bring the Holy Unction, the Healing Oil, to anoint me. I did not have any feeling that I was going to die then, afterwards - no fear during all this time. I think it was because my heart had heard, "You're going to be all right" - though I did not realize who had told me.

At 12:30 or 1:00 a.m. , they started to roll me out to surgery. The nurse had told me that Rachael was a few berths down, where I had thought, so when they rolled me past her room I waved to her and she said, "I love you," and I said, "I love you; pray for me." Then when I was just outside surgery, I saw Pastor Geishen, a bishop of the Lutheran Church . I grabbed his hand and asked him to pray for me. They stopped rolling the cart and he held my right hand there and prayed for me and for the doctors and nurses who would do the surgery. Later, I realized that he did not recognize me at the time - nor is there any reason why he should, since we had met only twice, briefly, before that. But I laughed when, some weeks later, he came to visit me and was introducing himself. I thought if I could recognize him when I did, flattened out on the table in terrible pain and going into surgery, after all of that and when I wasn't expecting to see him, I could recognize him in my room in the hospital.

The next thing I remember I was awake in ICU and there was morning sunlight. Everything hurt. They had told me that I would have my back surgery at 9:00 a.m. , but when I asked, it was after that. The nurse told me that my parents were on the way, but they would not arrive before the next surgery, which had been rescheduled for 11:00 a.m.; they said that the surgeon had been up all night working on my ankle, putting in a rod, pins, and a nail, and he had to go home and sleep a little before the back operation. I respected him when I heard this, and was happy.

During the delay, another friend named Dennis somehow appeared by my Foster frame, very upset but glad. He was comforting me and asking what he could do. So I told him all the phone numbers from memory, to try to contact the rest of my family. Dan had been there all the night before until the surgery was over, phoning my brother and sister on the East Coast to keep them informed. My asking then was the first I learned where Dan was. When Dennis asked if there was anything else he could do, I told him to go to Rachael and tell her that I loved her and that I was all right, and so then he went away.

And the delay meant that I was still there, ready, when Fr. Nicholas came. He was from the Greek Orthodox Church and he was very kind. He had a deep voice and prayed for me and anointed me with the Healing Oil. But I had a tube that goes in the nose and down to the stomach to drain it, which hurt very much, and I could have nothing at all by mouth. But the Unction was everything to me, then, the one thought that I had had. And Fr. Nicholas asked who my priest at home was, to call him, and I told him Fr. David, no Fr. Sergius, and his phone number. He phoned him immediately after seeing me. And in later weeks, the parish worker Stella from the Greek Orthodox Church always came to see me.

Then they took me to my back surgery. It took seven and a half hours to bend the Harrington rods to fit my back - because normally these are used higher in the spine, and they are straight - and to put them in, thereby straightening my crushed and twisted spinal cord. Also the doctors took pieces of the vertebra which had exploded, and some bone from my hip, and made a fusion out of this with the vertebrae above and below.

The next thing I remember, it was dark and my parents were there. And they were glad to see me, and I was glad to see them. They told me that they loved me. Later my friends said that my parents were a rock fore everyone who came, the friends and relatives, to keep vigil with them that first weekend and in later days.

I was in the Foster frame from this time, for four weeks. The Foster frame is a metal frame that has wide strips of canvas stretched across it, and that's what I was lying on; it is so narrow that extra shelves had to be attached for my arms, when I was face down. The genius of the foster frame is that it has tow sides, a top and a bottom, that are just the same. For people like me who must not be moved - in my case, to keep the rods from slipping - they just clamp - I'm lying there on my back and then they clamp the top down onto me, over me, and fasten it all around. Then after tying three belts around it to make sure, they flip it over quickly. Then I'm faced down, and they unclamp it and take the back off and then I am turned. It was four hours on the back, then two on my tummy, and then flip over again, eight turns every twenty-four hours. The turns were especially harrowing.

Also, I found lying facedown even more painful and intolerable than lying on my back, even though I had a fresh incision in my back. I had a lung tube sticking into my chest through a hole between my ribs, because my left lung had collapsed in surgery. They left the tube in bacause they feared it might collapse again. I had five broken ribs, and they were all on the side of the lung that collapsed, of course, and where the lung tube was, too, so when I was face down, I was bearing my weight on all of that. It was very difficult to breathe. For the first week, I had seven tubes in various places, and all of these tubes were sticking out of the Foster frame and had to be arranged for the turns.

All through the first week, in and out of consciousness, I kept wishing to find the one who had gotten me out: "By night on my bed I sought him whom my soul loveth..." (Song of Songs 3:1) I told my parents---we even thought about calling for him in the newspaper, I wished so much that I could find him. All of the other strangers who had been especially compassionate followed me and identified themselves. And in a way, finally, He did, too.

All my family and many friends had arrived by Sunday night. My brother Louis, who is a doctor, was able to learn and to explain to us far more than what the surgeon and nurses would say spontaneously --- and in a tender way that made the news more bearable. And four days after the accident, Fr. Sergius arrived from Boston , sent by the whole parish. When he walked into the Intensive Care Unit, I laughed: the disaster was also a Holy Week, a Bright Week, an "intensive care," an outpouring of pain, joy, communion, prayer, death, life. From that time, people came from every corner of America to the hospital.

In the worst pain, when I was faced down, in those times especially in the night, members of my family and Fr. Sergius would lie under the Foster frame where I could see them, praying with me, reading the Psalms and the Book of Job to me. And they spoke to me the Word of God, saving my life and sanity many times also in the months to come. Louis said, "Be grateful for every bit of the pain---it is sensation, it is the sign and possibility that you can get well." Fr. Sergius told me that my relationship with all those killed and injured would develop, becoming very precious to me--- that I would live for them, and my life would take on all their lives and deaths, bearing them with me in my body.

On the seventh day, I got the tube out of my stomach, and on the next day, the eighth day, Friday morning, I was able to receive the Body and Blood of Christ. Fr. Sergius and Fr. Joseph came fully vested to the Intensive Care ward, bringing Holy Communion and anointing me again with the Holy Unction, and with some oil from St. Katherine's Monastery on Mt. Sinai . That afternoon, I moved my whole left foot for the first time, shocking the doctors and everyone. And I knew that I was going to fill up with the love of God and become well, and rise up out of the Foster frame as did Christ from the tomb, and by the same power.

Because the night before I had also learned for the first time what Dennis had seen and how he had tried to get me out, I learned that it was completely impossible, physically, that I had been saved as I had. Dennis had been able to see only part of my dress, under the rubble, where I was bent double at the hips. And if I had been swiveled out by being pulled by my right hand, which was also impossible, it would have killed me from the stress. Nor did I feel any such thing. The way my hand was clasped when I was saved was like a handclasp or a blessing, not like when Rachael pulled on my wrist, trying from the side and the back.

And so I realized Who it was, He, to whom I had spoken. More than a year afterwards I saw, for the first time, the icon of the Guardian Angel, on which is written,” Take me by my wretched and outstretched hand." This is a phrase from the prayers to the Guardian Angel at Compline. But I continued to wonder, "Why can't I remember His face, His eyes?"

I remember no particular anxiety, then, about whether I would be able to walk again eventually or not, if my spinal cord would heal, before the muscles died. It was enough, the work of just living through each moment, finding Christ through the pain and overcoming the fear. But this was a big question for the ones on whom I depended, my family and friends. I remember thinking, “Well, what is the purpose of life? To unite with God. One way to do this is by being paralyzed, another is walking. So it doesn't matter very much." But looking back, I think that his was because my heart had heard my Angel say, "You're going to be all right."

Also, many others of the survivors were troubled long afterwards, and now, by terrible nightmares. But nothing that happened to me in my sleep was terrible as the events of being awake. Perhaps for this, and because of my salvation, I had no nightmares: my heart had to hear, even when my mind wandered and was lost in fear sometimes later.

I don't know if I was awake or asleep, however, when I saw Monks---or, as I thought at the time, Bishops---marching through the Intensive Care Unit, chanting and, it seems to me, incensing. I thought that they were Bishops, since the only Orthodox Monks I had seen at that time were Bishops. Only when I saw Fr. Dionysios in his skoufaki did I realize they were monks. This happened in Lent, 1982, when I returned to Boston after the last surgery. They weren't wearing vestments, these whom I saw---they were all completely in black, and I don't remember whether any others had staffs except the first one. And they were chanting beautifully.

The doctors had to keep changing their prognosis continually. First, they had said that I might not live. Then they said that I would probably live, if I didn't get a blood clot from the paralysis and die of a heart attack or stroke---which was a constant concern. For this, I had shots in the stomach every twelve hours, to thin my blood. But I might not walk ever again. Then when I moved my left foot so soon, they said I would perhaps walk, with braces and canes, after a year in the hospital.

Even when my rods did slip inside me, and I had to have the whole seven-hour back operation over again, just before Transfiguration, the unexpected result, about which the surgeon admits to being mystified, was that after that, my right leg started to revive also, beginning with the toes.

If the rods slipped again, the doctors said, I would have to stay in the Foster frame three months. But they didn't, and I got out of the frame by being put into a body cast just before Dormition, August13. The body cast was fourteen pounds of plaster, encasing me from neck to legs, with a hole cut out in the front so I could breathe and take my shots. I was at my low point medically when I got it, and had fallen below a hundred pounds, four-fifths of what I should weigh. But it meant that I could be in a normal bed and gradually, have my head raised and be lifted into a wheelchair, because the cast would hold the rods in place. This also meant that I could begin to read and to feed myself and start more intensive physical therapy for me legs.

The surgeon told me at first that I would have the body cast for six months, but I got it off and got the brace after only six weeks. Without warning, on the Feast of Dionysios, the Areopagite, Oct 3, they came and cut off the cast, fitting me with the much lighter brace. This meant that I could go to the bathroom alone, and also take showers, sitting, with help. Yet even before this, although the weight of the cast made it more difficult, I stood up for the first time and walked, with a brace on my right leg, which was still too weak to hold, and with a lot of help, on the first Friday in September, just before the Nativity of the Theotokos.

So when I was released from the hospital, exactly three months after the accident, able to walk short distances with two canes, and wearing a body brace twenty-four hours a day, I still had before me another major surgery to remove the metal rods and a long rehabilitation process. I was one of the most badly hurt of the survivors; there were many people hurt less that I was who died simply because they could not be rescued out of the rubble in time. Some kept alive for some hours, as I could not have done with my injuries, but they remained trapped and eventually they died. So when I was released, there were only three or four other people, out of nearly 300 the first night, who were still hospitalized.

The doctors had said that the fusion of my backbone would be ready to support me---which the rods and braces were doing---after nine or twelve months. But I had the last surgery to remove the rods on February 16, only six months after the accident in Kansas. Even after the rods were removed, I was not allowed to start weaning from the brace---a gradual process of building back the torso muscles to support me---until the middle of May. At the beginning, though it was supposed to require one week to build up to two hours without the brace, I took it off just before the Divine Liturgy on the Sunday of the Paralytic after Easter, and sang the whole Liturgy and received Holy Communion without it. I never again wore the brace for any Liturgy, and finished with it entirely, just before Dormition, August 15, 1982. But there was no Orthodox Church nearby in Kansas, and I was trying to get back to Boston for as much of Lent as possible, to be able to go to the services, even before I learned that the Elder Dionysios was sent there by the Elder Aimilianos, invited by Archbishop Iakovos to the Holy Cross Greek Orthodox School of Theology. The first time my thoughts turned to going to Church was for the Vigil of the Feast of the Meeting of the Lord on February 2, 1982. I was still using one cane then, and I thought especially I would need it, to stand in Church. But I put it down upon entering to kiss the icons and never needed it again.

And this became the fulfillment of all the other miracles, because, still I was wondering, "Why can't I remember His face? And what will I do when I no longer have the brace, when the pain lessens---who will be my spiritual guide and master when I lose these?" And, although I was not from the Greek School, and so Fr. Dionysios would not see me until the very end, he accepted me for Confession at last, after finishing with all the others who came to him. And in him I believed and from him unfolded the answers to all my questions and I put my life in his care. "I will rise now, and go about the city in the streets, and in the broad ways I will seek him whom my soul loveth: I sought him, but I found him not...It was but a little that I passed from them, but I found him whom my soul loveth..." (Song of Songs 3:2-4).

And so it came about that I received a photograph of the Geronta (Elder) Aimilianos, sent to me by the Elder Dionysios and given to me by one of his spiritual children. At first I could not bear to look at it. I didn't know why, and it bothered me continually, with the persistent impression that I knew him from somewhere, or he looked like someone I had always known from childhood.

Then one night, the former question since the accident, "Why can't I remember his face, his eyes?", and the question from the photo, "where have I seen you before?", met and answered each other forever. And I knew him by his eyes, "as the eyes of doves by the rivers of waters, washed with milk, and fitly set." (Song of Songs 5:12).

Thus in accordance with the words of St. John Climacus, "For we need a director who is indeed an equal to angels...a skilled person and a physician," through this way, these events, these persons, God gave me mine, the beginning of my healing, my life, and breath Himself.

Now to Him, Who made Himself "a little lower than the angels" (Psalm 8:4,5) that He might lead us to divinity in perfected union with Him, be all glory in His Saints and Angels, now and forever, and unto the ages of ages. Amen. "God became man, that we might become gods by grace" (St. Athanasius); that they all may be one; as Thou, Father, art in Me, and I in Thee, that they also may be one in Us; that the world may believe that Thou hast sent Me. And the glory which Thou gavest Me I have given them; that they may be one, even as We are one: I in them, and Thou in Me, that they may be made perfect in one..." (John 17:21-23).

Editor's Note: It should be noted at this point that Melanie Sarra Hanson (she has now taken the name Aimiliani) knew immediately upon seeing the photograph of the Elder Aimilianos that it was he who came to her in her hour of need to save her from the rubble of the fallen skywalks. I visited Mt. Athos in the fall of 1987 specifically to thank the Holy Mother for Her intercessions in healing me from deep depression. I stayed at Simonos Petras Monastery for seven days. The Abbot, the Elder Aimilianos, invited me to celebrate the Divine Liturgy with him on Sunday morning. Serving the Liturgy with us were two monastic deacons. During the course of that service, I found myself enveloped in a Presence that filled me with a sense of joy, peace and tranquility. It was a Presense that embraced me and gave me a sense of transcendent freedom that lifted me beyond space and time. The sense of time escaped me and I did not want the service to ever end. When I received the account of Melanie Hanson's miracle in 1995, my mind immediately went back to that experience at the Divine Liturgy with the Elder Aimilianos at the Church of Simonos Petras. I now realize that I was serving the Divine Liturgy with a truly holy man.

Fr. Constantine J. Simones, St Sophia Hellenic

Orthodox Church, New London, CT

THOSE WHO DIED IN THE HYATT DISASTER

JULY 17, 1981