Met. Hilarion (Alfeyev) believes St. Nicholas once saved him from death

Metropolitan Hilarion (Alfeyev), head of the Moscow Patriarchate’s Department for External Church Relations, has related a story of miraculous rescue from St. Nicholas, whose relics were delivered to Moscow, reports Interfax-Religion.

“It was in Lithuania,” he said, speaking on the “Church and the World” program on TV station Russia-24. “I was a young priest, with an inexperienced driver behind the wheel, and the car driving into a band of fog,” the metropolitan continued.

“I heard banging sounds (as it turns out, the car had fallen off a cliff edge). Arriving at the scene of the accident, the police stated that surviving such a fall was impossible,” making it clear that they had been saved by Divine intervention. “As we were falling, I distinctly felt that St. Nicholas was present there,” the prelate recalled. “It wasn’t a vision, but I clearly felt it,” he continued.

As the UOJ reported, from May 21 to July 28, for the first time in 930 years, fragments of the relics of St. Nicholas the Wonderworker, kept in the basilica of the city of Bari (Italy), will be staying in Moscow and St. Petersburg for veneration.