Metropolitan Athanasios of Limassol spoke the following in a recorded Livestream a few years ago:
I don't know if you met Mrs. Maroula in Limassol. Mrs. Maroula, that's what they called her - Sister Mariam later, when she became a nun - was a woman who lived a few houses from the Metropolis. I knew her long before I went to the Metropolis but she happened to be there near us.
She was a woman who had been paralyzed and bedridden since she was 18 years old.
For more than 35 years she was in bed all the time, locked in a room. As for her house, its a miracle that it didn't fall on her head! At one point, the floor of her house was so rotten that one day she sank with her bed into the floor.
She had nobody in the world. She was married and some ten years ago her husband died and she was left completely alone. She had no one in the world! There were some very distant relatives, but they had nothing to do with her. Her brother was in Australia, also old. This woman was completely alone, in the true sense of the word. Completely helpless, paralyzed in bed unable to do anything. She had not been out of her room for years. Her husband died and she couldn't go to his funeral because the condition she had was such that she couldn't even sit in a wheelchair. She was always in bed. A woman completely alone.
In fact, once she was a victim, of a girl who was mentally ill - she had psychiatric problems - who went to her and beat Mrs. Maroula very much, hitting her with an iron, ready to kill her and she could not defend herself. She entered her house and started beating her for lying about being paralyzed. And she was telling her, "Get up!"
"But I can't, I'm paralyzed."
"No, you're lying!"
And she beat her senseless, blackened her eyes, punched her, and then took an iron to kill her. So this woman who was completely alone - she had 18-20 operations, her blood sugar was at 800, she was in terrible pain all the time. Imagine a person in bed for 35 years immobile, what could they be carrying. Pains and sufferings and diseases while alone and abandoned and without anyone.
But really this person was so complete, so complete a person that it was impossible to go to her room and see her and find her alone. There was a parade around her bed. A multitude of people went daily and she comforted all people. how can I describe it to you, there were so many people. And she listened to everyone there, comforted them and whenever you went and said to her, "How are you Mrs. Maroula?" She said, "Glory to You O God!"
Her face was glowing, really. And I confess to you later when we took her to Melathron - when she was in her last days she was also affected by cancer and she was in terrible pain, she died in excruciating pain. The whole torture of her life was not enough for her. So one day when they were taking her to have some plates removed and she was being carried in a cart, her face really lit up! What can I say! This complete woman shined because she had absolutely nothing of all the good things in life, as we say, but she had the one and only!
People who have everything - houses, money, health, children, a good spouse, cars, they have all the good things in life - and yet they are not well, they do not rest, they think their clothes are to blame. They are missing something! And people, they can have many evils and many problems and be sick, poor, suffer, thrown away, abandoned, have all the evils on them and yet they have God in them and one sees these people being full of joy, full of happiness, full of fulfillment. These people are complete.
Source: Translated by John Sanidopoulos.
Part Two