By St. Paisios the Athonite
Once, there was a monk from the Monastery of Saint Paul who had gone to the Monastery of Saint Gerasimos on the island of Kefallonia. During the Divine Liturgy, he stood in the Altar and was praying with his prayer rope - he would noetically say the prayer Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy upon us - while outside they were chanting. They had also brought a possessed person into the church to be cured by Saint Gerasimos. While the monk was saying the prayer in the Altar, the demon was being seared outside and was shouting:
"Hey monk, stop pulling that string, because it burns me!"
The priest heard it, too, and said to the monk:
"Keep doing the prayer rope as much as you can, my brother, so that God's creature can be freed of the demon."
The demon then shouted in great anger:
"Hey, you rotten priest, what are you telling him to pull that string for? It is burning me!"
The monk then prayed with his prayer rope with even greater effort and the possessed man was delivered from the demon.
From the book Athonite Fathers and Athonite Matters.
