The pain some people have to bear…

from Wounded by Love by Elder Porphyrios

You should see the pain that some people have to bear!

They are good people, but both their children, Costas and Maria, have become fanatical followers of Sai Baba of India. Costas was a medical student. He left home along with his sister just before Easter. As they were leaving the house, the father said to his daughter: ‘Joyous Resurrection, Maria!’

‘The Resurrection has come, father, but people haven’t recognized it,’ she replied.

In the meantime their parents continually gave them money, Now they have stopped this because they (their children) were using it for their ‘god’. Costas went to Thessalonica to spread his propaganda. Indeed, he was beaten up there. He tried to proselytize some young people up there and their parents got a hold of him and beat him up.

These good people brought me a periodical. On the cover there is a photograph of Sai Baba. He has created a new religion in which they believe that he is the new Christ who came into the world to save it and to lead it to truth. They say he is the ‘new God’. Sai Baba is alive now. He is married and has his wife and two children next to him. At the bottom of the photograph we see lots of young people who are his followers; may of them, indeed, are educated people. How did these educated young people end up there? On another page they are kissing his feet. ‘The days of that Christ’ – the true Christ, that is – ‘are over now,’ he tells them, ‘This is another age,’ he tells you. Everything now is changing. Its like a fairy tale. Perhaps Sai Baba is mad. They say he has collected a lot of money.

I’ll tell you about another related incident.

One day an officer in the Greek Navy took me down tot he waterfront at Oropos. We walked along the breakwater where a man was fishing. I said to the officer:

‘Go and get me one of the fish that man is catching.’

The fisherman, however, replied:

‘The basket is empty. I’ve been here since the morning and I’ve caught nothing. Go and leave me in peace…’

I said to him:

‘Throw your hook into the sea.’

‘Go away,’ he said to us in an aggravated tone of voice.

We turned to go, but at that moment, just as the fisherman threw his line into the sea he felt a bite on it. He drew in the line and a large fish was struggling on the hook. He shouted to us:

‘Don’t go! Come here! Don’t go away, I’ve caught a fish!’

The officer said:

‘I know why that happened Father. It happened so that I would believe in you, that you are of God, and so that the fisherman would believe. Up till now I believed in the new Christ, the Sai Baba of India. Now I believe in the true Christ.’

Christ in our midst!