Saint Warrior- Saint Demetrios of Thessaloniki
The noon in Thessaloniki is like noon in all major port cities. This is the moment when the bustle subsides. Autumn in September paints trees, rare passers lures the smell of fish from taverns. From the distance one can hear the sirens of ships saluting the city, making long journeys. Sometimes a seagull shouts, hinting at the south. People’s steps on the stone sidewalks are getting smaller and quieter. And the sea and the sky mixed colors.
There is a dim light in St. Dimitri’s church. Several women do work around the church, silently walking, as if not touching the marble floor. Nothing disturbs the sacred peace of the temple. In front of the altar, two women in black whisper prayers, occasionally raising their teary eyes to the Icon of the Saints.
Devotional to their jobs and prayers, they did not see when or how an unusually dressed man entered the church, but all, at the same time, became aware of his presence. They stopped their prayers and work and met him.
He, exhausted, in bloodied uniform, walked toward the altar. They gathered around him, asking if he needed anything, who he was and where he came from.
He asked for water and said: “I am here, and I come from Bosnia, there is a battle for Orthodoxy!”
The women were stunned. One of them went for the water and the other to call the priest. The woman in black, the younger, looked feverishly at the soldier, recognized him, and like a bird stricken in flight, shouting softly and fainted. The elder was trying to bring her back to consciousness. The other women stood petrified, without voice or movement, and a soldier in the garb of a Byzantine warrior walked slowly toward the tomb of St. Demetrios and disappeared into it.
The silence thickened, there was only a slight scent of basil or an incense, they were not sure what it was, but to smell it, they could clearly smell it.
A woman bringing water came in at the same time as the priest. The younger woman, coming to herself, knelt before the icon of St. Demetrios and prayed through tears, forehead touching the floor.
The priest asked the women what had happened. They told him all about the arrival of the unknown man, his answer to the question of who he was and where he came from. He then asked them how he was dressed, and they, again, until one said: “Same as St. Demetrios on this Icon.
The priest made a full prostration before the Icon of St. Demetrios. They all knelt and prayed warmly, earnestly and for a long, long time in heavenly silence.
Later, much later, the priest recounted that St. Demetrios made his last appearance in 1804. It was the year of the First Serbian Uprising.
The event took place in Thessaloniki one day before the day of St. Demetrios,
November 8, 1991.