The right hand of Agios Ioannis of Rossos, Saint John the Russian, was reunited with his indestructible body in a special ceremony held on the day to honor him in the monastery dedicated to him in Neo Prokopi, northern Evia on Sunday.
The event has been described as a great moment for Christians everywhere in the world.
The hand was carried to the Church of the Monastery in the presence of the Archbishop of Athens, Ieronymos, the Metropolitan of Halkidos. Chrysostomos, as well as the clergy of the Holy Metropolis, and hundreds of faithful, many of them who had come on foot from Psachna and Halkida, ekklisiaonline.gr reported.
Video:
The body of St John the Russian who died in 1730 remains indestructible in Neo Prokopi of Evia.
He is considered a miracle worker, with many testimonies speaking of his help in healing the sick.
St John’s hands
The return of the missing hand was announced by Metropolitan Chrysostomos on May 15, at the 100th anniversary of the Saint in Evia.
The missing hand – part of the palm and fingers – was in possession of a family that kept for decades.
On the occasion of this year’s anniversary, the family decided to hand it over to the monastery so it can be reunited with the rest of the tabernacle.
Another part of the Saint’s right hand was donated to the Panteleimon Monastery of Mount Athos in 1881, for its assistance in the construction of the church of Saint John the Russian, in Cappadocia, Turkey, and is still there.
Saint John the Russian (Cossack Hetmanate, Russian Tsardom 1690 – Urgyp, Turkey 1730) is one of the most renowned saints in the Eastern Orthodox Church.
Being a prisoner of during the Russo-Turkish war he was sold as slave to a Turkish Ağa. He became famous and respected even by his Muslim master for his humility, steadiness in faith and benevolence. His holy relics are claimed to be undecayed and wonder-working; there are traditions that this saint particularly helps sick children and those who suffer from cancer.
They handed it over – sorry pardon the pun.
But seriously a private family had possession of this human hand for decades? Doesn’t that seem a bit morbid?
no for he was a Saint
It seems to be a Greek Orthodox horror (maybe all of the Eastern Orthodox church) that dealing physically with the bones and skeletons of your deceased relatives is a perfectly normal thing to do! I encountered in the older literature an explanation of how this emerged in Eastern Europe and Greece. Apparently, as recently as 100 years ago, priests believed that some dead bodies could come back to life as vampires, and merely appeared to be dead! So, they dug up the graves a year and two years after burial, to check that the body had started to decompose. If it had not, after the second year they would hammer a wooden stake through the “heart” to kill the vampire.
The Christian Orthodox church: anti-science and believing in magic, evil and of course the “sainthood” of certain persons that the Church approved of.