The Archbishop and Mr Liu

St John Maximovitch (1896-1966) is a recently canonized Saint of our Church, who served as Archbishop of the Russian Orthodox Church variously in Shanghai, Paris and San Francisco.

A remarkable incident which occurred during St John’s time in San Francisco testifies to several aspects of his holiness: his spiritual boldness based on absolute faith, his ability to overcome the bounds of space and time by spiritual sight, and the power of his prayer which beyond all doubt worked miracles.

A certain Mr Liu was involved in a car accident in San Francisco in 1963 and was in a critical condition. His wife knew of the power of St John’s prayer, but was afraid to phone him because she knew he was very busy at the time. However after two days, when the state of Mr Liu’s health was at its most serious point, St John arrived at the hospital unexpectedly! He spent five minutes with Mr Liu and then left with the man who had driven him there. Following this visit, Mr Liu made a miraculous recovery to the amazement of the doctors!

Several weeks later, Mrs Liu met the man who had driven St John to the hospital at a church gathering. She asked him how they happened to visit them at that moment. He told Mrs Liu that he had been driving the Archbishop to the airport when suddenly he said to him: “Let’s go now to the Liu’s”. The driver objected that they would be late for the plane, since the Liu’s lived in the opposite direction. Then St John replied: “Can you take the life of a man upon yourself?” Hearing this, the driver trusted him and turned back as the Archbishop had instructed. As it turned out, St John also managed to catch his plane on time!

Source: Bishop Alexander (Mileant), http://www.pravoslavie.ru/english/54575.htm

Source: June-July 2014 Lychnos Edition