I remembered a mir­acle-work­ing icon of Saint George, before which pray­ers find a hear­ing. In unbe­liev­ably stark con­trast, a casino has been built right on top of the cen­tur­ies-old little church. A giant neon sign advert­ises the cathed­ral of mater­i­al good for­tune, while the little chapel has, over the ages, quite lit­er­ally sunk below street level. As I go down the nar­row steps, I am struck by the heavy smell of candles, the scent of incense soaked into everything, the true air of a church. The main attrac­tion is not the icono­stas­is, which shows the usual sym­bols – Christ the Redeem­er, the assembly of saints, Mary, the Moth­er of God, at the very top the Cru­ci­fied One, at the foot of the cross a skull, which thus calls to mind the con­quest of death and tran­si­ence, the resur­rec­tion. Not the flames set on the ground for the dead and burn­ing high in the candle-stands for the liv­ing, not the small bank­notes tucked into the frames of the end­lessly kissed, sil­ver-moun­ted icons, not the bunch of tender sprigs, echo­ing ancient, almost pagan rites, with which water is sprinkled on the faith­ful – no, no, no, this is not the real attrac­tion.

The main sight lies deep­er still than the floor of the deep-set church. A tiny shrine-chapel opens off to the side, only one step lower, and yet it is as if miles, worlds, sep­ar­ated the two levels. There, ‘down below’, even the isol­ated, silent world of the church ceases to be, to say noth­ing of the noise of the world out­side. No voice of the croupi­er car­ries down here from the casino, nor the rattle of the roul­ette chips.

The little hol­low is vaul­ted, semi­cir­cu­lar, as though it were an apse open­ing to one side. Who knows when and how it came to be here? Was this little space dug out from the church, or was this the epi­centre where pray­ers found a hear­ing, and only later was the church built around it – and now the casino, dangling the prom­ise of quick riches, has come to pound the whole into the ground, over­rid­ing the treas­ures of the past for good?

The pic­ture is, one might say, a con­ven­tion­al one. The frame, the horse, the lance that binds war­ri­or and dragon togeth­er in a deadly thrust. For a long time the dragon looked set to win, but in the end the hero­ic saint tri­umphs. If the dragon is the world, the cor­rupt world, with all its tempta­tions and wicked­ness, then Saint George is the etern­al, right­eous man, the hero who restores order and pre­vails over wrong. And this can be told in myth­ic­al terms, or else in a reli­gious way, or even in the lan­guage of our own age: the one who does good is not over­come by evil. The airy, unreal power of icons vibrates in the pic­ture, mak­ing what we see at once famil­i­ar and unfathom­able. Cloths drape the weary frame, flowers wilt at the saint's feet, bank­notes lie on the little table – local and for­eign money alike, so it seems the saint hears every­one's pray­er. Mira­cu­lous heal­ings, the bless­ing of chil­dren and wishes ful­filled bear wit­ness to the slow mir­acle.

Why, after all, would you expect a quick mir­acle? A mir­acle exists only for someone who believes in mir­acles. If you do not believe, you expect quick res­ults. If you believe, and still more if you know that the things of nature work slowly and that the mills of God grind slowly, then you have no need of speed. A slow mir­acle will do just as well. For the old­est tree has the slow­est growth. And per­haps the greatest mir­acle has the slow­est unfold­ing? Of course, the mir­acle's res­ult comes in the twink­ling of an eye, but the way there may con­sume whole life­times.

Back then, still inno­cent, with the assur­ance of my ignor­ance, I too asked for a bless­ing, that I might come truly close to one of the most import­ant people in my life and be faith­ful to them. And how pray­ers are heard, I came to under­stand only years, years later. But there, pray­ers are heard…