At this point, I would like to emphasize something familiar. There was a specific recommendation that the Elder gave me, the weak one. Once a friend of mine urged me to go to a Church where a priest was exorcizing demon possessed people. Their relatives had taken them there. During the course of the Liturgy, the demon-possessed swear at the priest. It is something fearful. My friend told me that you see the existence of Satan visibly before you. I hesitated to go because I had a painful experience about that during my childhood years when I went with my parents to Saint Gerasimos on the Island of Cephalonia. But my friend was pressuring me. I asked the Elder. Before finishing my question he answered me. “Why do you now want to go there? Some other person went there and she could not sleep. It is not necessary for you to be convinced about the existence of Satan. You have already been convinced. Everyone who comes into contact with evil does not bring about anything good. You should avoid going there. I have never desired to come close to him. I always avoided it.”
“But at the shrine of Saint Gerasimos many people go there and they bring many demon-possessed people.” “It is something else there. There the Saint protects the people and banishes the demons. The Saint is there.”
I did not have another question. I did as he said without any further discussion. Later the nuns at the Hermitage told me that when a demon-possessed person went there, and that wasn’t infrequently, the Elder would tell all the nuns to leave and asked only one to stay with him. But the Elder healed many demon-possessed people. He made them well through his prayer.
From the book “Miraculous Occurences and Counsels of Elder Porphyrios“