384
edits
Changes
→Gift of spiritual counsel and persuasion
Kostis Marmar, a lay person, was interested in spiritualism. He wanted to know whether it comes from the electric forces of from the spiritual forces. Then he found out that it was from the spirit and in his opinion, from the Holy Spirit. So Kostis practiced spiritualism for 30 years, speaking with "saints", "spirits of reposed people" etc. After that he found a book of elder Daniel against spiritualism and started to doubt about holiness of the participating spirit. He started to write letters to the elder asking about it. The elder succeeded in convincing Kostis that spiritualism was a delusion. But it took a very long time for Kostis to be healed completely and he managed to get out of the net of demonic visions and other tricks only with help of Divinely wise elder Daniel.
Fr. Callistratus in the end of his life fell into prelest. During the Divine service, he started trembling and was thinking that this is an action of grace. But he was not absolutely certain and decided to write to elder Daniel. The elder replied with an extensive letter "On noetic prayer. Letter of elder Daniel to Callistratus" (1916, In: "Angelic Living"). Elder Daniel analyses in detail the actions of grace and the trembling that comes from God and the one that comes from the evil side. He writes that no one of the Saints was trembling as Fr. Callistratus. He also tells about another similar case of trembling that was coming from the evil forces with monk Alipius who did not notice that was praying with unnoticeable vainglory. And the elder showed with convincing arguments that the trembling for Fr. Callistratus was coming from the same force. In a reply, Fr. Kalistratis Callistratus is amazed at the action of the elder Daniel's letter, the meekness of the elder and the way how he showed the delusion.
In a letter "Reply of monk Daniel to Markianus, a monk of Iveron skete, about rejection of dreams" (1918, In: "Angelic Living"), elder Daniel writes about a man of great learning who thought of himself that he had received a gift of unceasing heart prayer from the icon of the Mother of God and then started to see visions. He even asked God to receive the same visions as the Prophets of the Old Testament. Then the Devil offered him many other heretic superstitions, : an "angel" told him so "sacrifice" his hand to Christ and to burn it with candle, the man even took baptism for the second time from the protestantsbecause the demons told him that only protestants keep proper baptism from the times of Apostles. When elder Daniel asked whether this man confessed everything, he replied that "Christ" told him that it is not necessary and there are no true confessors now. After listening for 6 hours about different delusions, it took elder Daniel 2 hours to bring that person to reason based on many places in the Divine Scripturesand reasonable arguments. The man was convinced and started to resist the visions, though the traces of delusion were seen to the end of his life.
==Repose==
