ST. NICHOLAS ONCE SAVED MET. HILARION FROM DEATH, THE HIERARCH BELIEVES

Metropolitan Hilarion (Alfeyev), head of the Moscow Patriarchate’s Department for External Church Relations, has related a story of miraculous help from St. Nicholas in his life, reports Interfax-Religion.

“It was in Lithuania,” he said, speaking on the “Church and the World” program on TV station Russia-24. “I was a young priest, with an inexperienced driver behind the wheel, and the car drove into a band of fog,” the metropolitan continued.

“I heard banging sounds (as it turns out, the car had fallen off a cliff edge). Arriving at the scene of the accident, the police stated that surviving such a fall was impossible,” making it clear that they had been saved by Divine intervention. “As we were falling, I distinctly felt that St. Nicholas was present there,” the Volokolamsk prelate recalled. “It wasn’t a vision, but I clearly felt it,” he continued.

A piece of the relics of St. Nicholas the Wonderworker were ceremoniously greeted in Moscow yesterday by the ringing of church bells throughout the capital, and by His Holiness Patriarch Kirill and thousands of other clergy and faithful at Christ the Savior Cathedral. The relic will remain in Christ the Savior from May 21 to July 12, and will then be taken to the St. Alexander Nevsy Lavra in St. Petersburg from July 13 to 28.