During the long time the sickness of Prohor– the man who was to become Saint Seraphim of Sarov – lasted his spiritual father took care of him as a simple monk. With the same duty he was followed by father Isaiah who together with other monks took care of him with the same zeal full of love. IN what regards the abbot, father Pachomius, he was also present near the bed of the sick. In the end this one fearing for his life told him insistently that he intended to call a doctor.
But the saint rejected firmly the help pf science saying: `Holy father, I am given in the care of our Lord Jesus Christ and His Holy Mother. Be kind and give me the divine Holy Eucharist, the heavenly remedy. At this request of the young monk, father Joseph started to pray and this prayer lasted as a vigil for the entire night and ended in the morning with the Holy Liturgy. The monks gathered prayed without cease for this suffering soul. Lying in his bed, Prohor confessed and communed with the Purest Sacramental Mysteries of Christ.
After he received the holy communion the Most Holy Mother of God appeared in an indescribable light, followed by the saint apostles, Peter and John the Theologian. Then turning to the latter the Holy Mother of God pointed to Prohor and said: `This one is of our kin.`
Afterwards he pressed with her right hand the head of the suffering and in that moment the water which swelled his body started to come out in a flow through an open cut from his right hip. In a short time he was completely healed and he remained only with the cut from the wound from where the liquid went out – as a sign on his leg.
Not long after this miracle Prohor raised on the place of the apparition a two stores high church and in its vicinity where he had his cell, he built a place for treating the sick. Having as a duty from the abbot to raise funds for the building, he made with his own hands a cypress altar to adorn the background of the chapel. Saint Seraphim chose to commune only in this church as he wanted to remember forever the boundless proof of mercy which was shown to him.
Source: http://doxologia.ro
