03 — The Wonderworker

The gift for which St. Arsenios was most renowned: healing prayer sought by Orthodox Christians and Muslims alike, discernment (clairvoyance), and the systematic use of the Psalter for every human need. This section applies the repository’s §3.5 attestation-pinning: the wonders are reported as St. Paisios’ Life and the Farasiot tradition attest them, not certified as fact, and handled soberly without confessional polemic.

Tradition: Greek Orthodox (Cappadocian)

This is the section where the collection’s source-critical discipline is most load-bearing. Almost everything here rests on the oral memory of the Farasiot refugees, recorded a half-century later by St. Arsenios’ devoted godson. The collection reports the pattern — a vividly and widely remembered ministry of healing prayer, discernment, and Psalm-reading, extending across the Christian–Muslim divide — as firmly attested by that tradition, while flagging every individual miracle-story as transmitted at a devotional remove (§3.5). The cross-confessional dimension is reported without triumphalism or anti-Muslim framing (§4).

Contents

  • healings-among-christians-and-muslims.md — the renown as a healer through prayer and the sacraments; Muslims as well as Christians bringing their sick; the refusal of payment; the cross-confessional veneration read soberly.
  • clairvoyance-and-the-gift-of-prayer.md — his reported discernment and foreknowledge; answered prayer as the ground of the wonders; the distinctive lifelong use of the Psalter, with an appointed Psalm for every need.

See Also