That Easter (Paschal) Vigil Father Dionysios chanted “Christ is Risen!” only once. His next words were “My child, my child!” (1) The explosion of light which followed after at midnight the church went dark and the bells rang out to proclaim the resurrection was literally an explosion. When people started cheering and letting off firework crackers, one flare rebounded on a tree and exploded on his 6 years old son’s eye. K. his neighbour, 25 years old, had shot a flare with a sailor’s gun. It was Christos’ first time to hold the Paschal banner on the platform. They took the boy immediately to the nearest hospital, to the intensive care unit. For 5 days, Father Dionysios was holding his little boy’s hand praying for a miracle to save his life. His friends were screaming “Kill the murderer! He killed your son!” Father Dionysios told them to stop. “Do not lay charges on this man! Let us punish him with our love. What would Christ have done in our place? This is what you need to ask yourselves.”  For 4 days and nights, Father Dionysios pleaded on his knees. We did not know what happened on that 4th night but we saw him the following day in church exhausted but serene. Then, at 11 am, the news from the hospital came.  “We did all we could …” Father Dionysios looked up to the sky, and a tear trickled down his cheek to the ground.

The following day, Bright, Resurrection Day, but for their village was Good Friday. The little coffin was white. Father Dionysios, pale, was holding his little son’s hand, just as he had done all his life and the last four days in intensive care. He was his only son.

After the funeral, they kept pressing him to lay charges against his neighbour. He refused again. The following day he went to visit him in jail. The man everybody called a murderer. When he saw him, he wept and held his hand. Both were weeping. “Don’t say anything”, he told him. “He Who gives life, He knows ..” And he forgave him.

The Tear in the Chalice

One Sunday in June was the Memorial Service. At “Thine Own of Thine Own”, Father Dionysios looked at the Cross in the altar, and saw Christakis, not Christ, on the Cross, looking at him. Tears welled up in his eyes. Then he looked up again at the Cross, and he saw his son’s “murderer” face on Christ’s. His neighbour was still in jail. More tears welled up in his eyes. When he raised his eyes again for a third time, he saw Christ’s face on the Cross, Christ weeping and a tear falling in the Chalice.

(1) This story is real, and the event took place in Drosia, Evia, in 2011. Christos Soutzios, 6 years old, the priest’s only son, got killed by a flare. That memorial service took place on June 5, 2011. 

Source: https://www.egnomi.gr/article/14902/to_megaleio_tis_psyxis_toy_papa_dionysi.html

https://www.newsit.gr/topikes-eidhseis/xalkida-sygklonizei-o-pateras-pou-eide-na-skotonetai-to-paidi-tou-apo-naytiki-fotovolida-video/2769945/

*Sent by Hieromonk Synesios, St. Arsenios Monastery