A Miraculous Deliverance From Certain Death

The astonishing story of Master Sergeant Vasiliki Plexida’s miraculous escape from death in a military helicopter accident was widely reported on Greek television earlier this year.

The miracle occurred on 19th April 2017 when the twenty-six year old Vasiliki was travelling in a military helicopter over a mountainous area in Northern Greece. The helicopter, flying low in thick fog and near-zero visibility, hit high voltage power cables and crashed.

After the helicopter crashed, presumably with all lives aboard lost, a friend of Vasiliki called the convent of the Panagia Akroteriane in Serifos (left) at which Vasiliki was a regular worshipper.  On being informed of the accident, the Abbess reassured the caller that Vasiliki would miraculously survive.

And this came to pass. Due to the helicopter’s low altitude, the accident happened in a split-second. As the helicopter hit the ground Vasiliki made the Sign of the Cross and called on the Mother of God for help.

Icon of the Panagia 'Akroteriane'
Vasiliki then saw the Theotokos just as she is depicted on the Icon at the Convent of the Panagia Akroteriane. The Theotokos grasped Vasiliki firmly as she sat strapped in her seat, and, having detached the seat, removed her from the helicopter and placed her in a tree with her back to the wreckage, so that she would not be distressed by the sight of the collision.

The helicopter was completely destroyed on impact and sadly the four other passengers, Major-General Yiannis Tzanidakis, Colonel Thomas Adamou, Major Dimosthenis Goulas and First Lieutenant Constantinos Hatzis were killed instantly. Miraculously, Vasiliki’s seat was not torn from the wreckage but this part of the helicopter was neatly cut out – despite the 1200 rivets securing it.

The Theotokos remained at her side, holding her hand, until an engineer arrived to investigate the power failure caused by the damaged power cables. The engineer spotted Vasiliki still strapped in her seat, in a tree about twenty metres away from the wreckage of the helicopter; her helmet and mobile phone were still by her side.

Just then, Vasiliki’s phone began to ring; it was the army calling, trying to find out what had happened. The electricity engineer answered the call and as a result she was rescued just as the Mother of God had promised her: ‘the man now arriving is coming to help you’.

Vasiliki was flown to hospital with various fractures, which considering the force of the impact, were relatively minor; not only had the helicopter hit high voltage cables, the accident was so severe that the wreckage was almost unrecognizable.

Doctors thought that Vasiliki would have to remain in hospital for several months but the Mother of God appeared again to her and reassured her that she would soon be discharged from the hospital – which she was!

As a thanksgiving for this miracle, Metropolitan Photios of the Church of the Genuine Orthodox Christians celebrated the Divine Liturgy on the Feast of the Twelve Apostles at the Convent of the Panagia Akroteriane.

Vasiliki meeting the Greek Defence Minister
At the conclusion of the Divine Liturgy, the devout Vasiliki Plexida, standing in the middle of the Church, related the details of her miraculous survival. She donated the uniform she was wearing at the time of the crash to the convent, both as a testimony to the miracle and as a blessed object, since the Theotokos touched it when she saved her from certain death.

The miracle was widely reported and the simple Eldress Anthodoche, who lives the solitary life there, became known. In this way, the Theotokos teaches us that God takes pleasure where Orthodoxy goes hand in hand with humility and simplicity.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Animals in Orthodox Icons

Image
Animals are often depicted together with saints in Orthodox iconography. These animals are either mentioned in the saint's life or, as in the case of St. George, refer to miraculous appearances of the saint. Saint Gerasimus ( right ) is often painted together with his lion ‘Jordan’, and St. Seraphim of Sarov, more rarely, with his bear ‘Misha’.  Below, Metropolitan Peter of Krutitsk is depicted next to a bear illustrating an actual event in his life. St. Peter was imprisoned and then exiled by the atheistic Communists for his refusal to compromise the Orthodox faith by submitting to the new ‘Soviet’ Church. He died in December 1936 after ten years of  persecution.   In the case of martyred soldier saints, animals often illustrate rank rather than a particular incident in the saint’s life. Saints Sergius and Bacchus, for example, are often depicted on horseback as a representation of their status in the army. All these representations of animals occur in tra...
Read more

What is a woman?

Answering the simple question ‘what is a woman?’ has proved difficult for some senior politicians in the UK. The scientific answer is clear. A woman is an adult human female. This answer is also completely Orthodox. It’s impossible for anyone to change sex. Every diploid cell in the human body has either ‘male' or ‘female' genetically stamped on it. Males have the XY sex chromosomes whilst females have XX chromosomes. (Some children are born with an intersex condition in which the external genitals do not match up with the internal reproductive organs or the sex chromosomes. When treating these rare conditions by surgery, doctors are not changing the sex of the child; instead, they are trying to conform the outward genitalia to the internal reproductive system.) Senior politicians who cannot answer this basic biology question say that sex is a different concept from gender. In other words, children are assigned male and female at birth, but they can later choose to reject this ...
Read more

How to make a prostration

The approach of Great Lent is a good time to make sure that we know how to make a full prostration properly. On most Sundays we make the Sign of the Cross and touch the ground – this is known as a 'small prostration'. A full prostration involves lowering our whole body to the ground so that our head almost touches the floor as demonstrated in the video below: We make full prostrations (both in church and in our private prayers) when the Prayer of Saint Ephraim is read during Great Lent; we also make them on the Sunday of the Cross (the Third Sunday of Great Lent). Making a full prostration is not physically that hard, but often people make it more difficult than it needs to be. There is no need to 'take a knee' when making a prostration. Going down in two stages by kneeling on one knee followed by the other actually makes a prostration more difficult. Those of us who wear long garments in church need to push our bottom up quickly when rising from the pr...
Read more