A story about Saint Vlassios

A little story on this particular Saint.

I spoke with my Grandmother, or Yia Yia as the Greeks call grandmothers, who lives in Montreal(my home town) today. I call her every Sunday. She often reminds me of the major Feasts of the Church, and today she told me it was the day we commemorate Saint Haralambos and that Monday is the Day of Saint Vlassios.

She is a native of Greece, specifically in the Peloponeese in Corinth but even moreso her village is Panariti, set in the mountains in this beautiful place.

Somewhere not far from her village is a monastery founded in the following manner. I can not give exact details as to the date, where exactly in Corinth this happened but I do know some of the story as she told me today in our phone conversation.

In some deep gorge an icon of Saint Vlassios was discovered and the desire of the finders of this icon was to found a monastery named after the Saint.

They set off to find the appropriate locale for the monastery traveling with the icon. They discovered the icon missing and when searching for it they found it where it was before, in the seemingly remote and relatively inaccessible spot it was found originally.

They once again took it with them and it disappeared again, only to be discovered once again in the exact spot it had been discovered in the first time.

They began to understand that the Saint desired the monastery to be built on this spot rather than elsewhere so today a monastery does indeed exist, dedicated to the Saint on this very spot.

I do apologize, I do not recall all the details but I can always ask Yia Yia.