photo #1204343

"Once, someone brought him a cassette containing the revelations of a demon-possessed woman. The demon was saying, through the woman's mouth, 'And you tell Paisios to quit his moving about and sit still, because otherwise he will get a good whipping - we will attack him just like the other time.' The Elder listened without saying a word, smiled, and unexpectedly said, 'Which other time?' This remark makes it obvious that he had many times received demon-inflicted wounds on a body worn out from asceticism. The Elder understood the comment about his 'moving about' to refer to the prostrations he would make. But it would not be wrong to include as well the Elder's manifold charismatic activity by which he snatched souls from the devil's webs. This was something that the devil could not bear. That is why, as Asimakis Katsoulas, an infamous Greek Satanist, has stated, on three occassions between 1989 and 1992, that satanists sent followers to the Holy Mountain to kill the Elder. The first one returned from having suffered a heart attack, the second died from a snake-bite, and the third traveled Athos several days unable to find the Elder's hermitage. Katsoulas has also said that, each time he would hear Elder Paisios' name, it would burn him - he would jerk about, become wild, and start screaming."-- Saint Paisios of Mt Athos, pg. 547