Once upon a time there lived a poor priest and a poor shopkeeper. The church gave his priest as little income as his shopkeeper. shop, because only poor people lived around.
One day the priest thought about his need and went to the shopkeeper to talk about difficult times.
Shopkeeper says:
“You know, we need to do one thing, then things will go uphill for both of us, we’ll get rich in no time,” and he began to tell me what he came up with, where to start, without wasting any time. Let the priest go home and pretend to be completely ill. Then let him order the sexton to take out the icon of the Virgin Mary closer to night and put it in the spring near the priest’s garden.
As the shopkeeper came up with the idea, so everything was done. The next morning, the priest tells the maid that he saw in a dream that only water from a spring near the garden would bring him healing.
The maid went to get water and sat down in surprise.
The Virgin Mary left the church and climbed into the spring! The woman ran home to tell her priest about the miracle.
He drank some spring water, washed his face with it and said that he felt better, and that sleep was in his favor.
In the evening the priest is completely healthy and orders the church bell to be rung. The people don’t know why they are calling, they run to the church. In the church, the priest and the sexton pray and tell the parishioners about the miraculous healing and how the Virgin Mary was found in the spring.
So everyone set off with banners to serve a prayer service at the spring, where the Virgin Mary still lay. The priest recognized the spring as miraculous and ordered the icon to be taken back to the church. And the sexton took her secretly to the spring two more times, and no one doubted that this place was holy.
Then the priest ordered to collect money for the construction of a chapel over the spring. The parishioners gave something, and the shopkeeper also helped.
Soon the chapel was ready, the icon was placed under glass and the inscription was made: “Whoever wants to get rid of an illness, let him read a prayer and put 20 kopecks in silver before the face of the Virgin Mary.”
The shopkeeper and the priest also wrote in the newspaper about the miracle that had happened, about. healing water.
So sick people began to come from everywhere - both men and women - the priest and the sexton could not manage to collect money. And the shopkeeper is full of customers. There they eat and settle down for the night.
A year later, the priest, the sexton and the shopkeeper do not know what to do with the money. One day a sick man came to them from afar with his wife. They went into a shop to get some food from the road and started talking about the miraculous water.
Shopkeeper says:
– I don’t know about others, but this water helped three of them a lot – it couldn’t be better!
Translated from Russian · original on wisdomlib.ru