On Sunday night, Jesse, Michael, Courtney and I were invited to dinner at the Metropolitan of the OCA‘s condo in Dallas. This is the same man who was ordained to be a Bishop at our church in November. The dinner was a very special event, for we were surrounded by famous monks and nuns from around the world, some of whom were here to found 2 new monasteries in the US.
One was Sister Aemilane, a woman with an incredible story. To get the full impact, you would have to read her interview here, but I will give you the summary which I heard from both her and Brother Gregory. Sister Aemilane, before she became a nun, was a PhD student at Harvard University. She was an outspoken feminist, until one day she was involved in the Bridge that collapsed at the Hyatt in Kansas City, 1981.
She was crushed- her knees went through her rib cage and various bits of bone severed her spinal column. She remembers hearing the firemen give up on saving her, as they were unable to lift the rubble from her body. Then, she was pulled from the wreckage by a man she did not recognize and was carried and set down near the ambulance. The doctors at the hospital said that this act alone should have killed her, but it didn’t. They said that she wouldn’t live, but she did. They said that she would always be paralyzed from the waist down (as her spinal chord was severed) but after taking the Eucharist one Sunday, her foot tingled and the next day she was able to use it. 3 months later, she was walking. I can attest to the fact that on Sunday night, 28 years later, she was walking just like anyone else.
The most amazing part of the story, however, was that she could never find the man who pulled her from the wreckage. She spent months searching for him, to thank him for saving her life, but the fire department had no description of such a man.
Many months later at Holy Cross Theological Seminary in Boston (where Jesse’s uncle went to school), she met a man named Elder Dionysius, a man who we all met at Metropolitan Jonah’s house on Sunday night. He showed her a picture of his spiritual father, Archimandrite Aemilianos, who is the abbot of the monastery on Mt. Athos. Sister Aemilane (who you can now guess, has this name because she took on the same saint’s name as the Archimandrite) immediately said, “That was the man who saved me.” Turns out that the day the bridge collapsed was Archimandrite Aemilianos’ namesday, the namesday of Martyr Aemilane. This part can only be said in Sister Aemilane’s words:
Some months later, he (Elder Dionysius) sent me a picture of his Elder, Archimandrite Aemilianos, Abbot of Simonos Petras Monastery, Mt. Athos. I was totally shocked. I recognized his likeness as the one who pulled me out from under the tons of debris after the accident. Then I knew. What saved me was the prayer of the Elder Aemilianos – someone who was on the other side of the world in his monastery without ever having set foot in America, in the flesh. There was no reason why he should or could know me. I had heard of him and his spiritual son, my Elder, Dionysios, but had no idea I could ever meet them. After that, I found out that the day of the accident was his namesday – 17 July, the feast day of St. Aemilianos the martyr. So it became clear to me in my very blood and broken bones, without this being at all, ever, an analytical thought, that the prayer of a pure – purified! – heart is the most powerful thing in the cosmos.
By the old Orthodox calendar, this was also the namesday of St. Athanasios the Athonite, who was killed when a building collapsed on him.
After this, Sister Aemilane joined the Monastery of Onilia in Greece. Wouldn’t you?
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