Once the divine Gregory was praying for himself and his companions. His
prayer was addressed to the Virgin and Theotokos, the ordinary guide and agent
of salvation, that she might make their journey and ascent to God free from
obstacles and make the provision of what was necessary to satisfy their bodily
needs easy and free from anxiety, so that they should not be constrained for
the lack of such things to spend time seeing to them and leave off spiritual
and more necessary tasks. That was what the prayer was about. Now the Mistress
of all things, anticipating , so to speak, the prayer itself out of the
abundance of her providential case, quickly appeared before him—he was fully
awake—dressed in a sober and virginal fashion just as she is represented by us
in our carefully executed icons. And turning to those who followed her, most of
whom seemed to be distinguished personages, she said: ‘Henceforth you are to be
the administrators and distributors for Greogry and his companions of
everything appropriate to their needs.’ And having thus in a few words answered
the holy prayer and granted her gift, she returned to herself. ‘From that
time,’ the holy Gregory used to tell us, ‘all our physical needs were
satisfied without effort, wherever we happened to be living.’ (Philotheos
Kokkinos, “The Life of Gregory Palamas” (1368), in Gregory Palamas: The
Hesychast Controversy and the Debate with Islam Documents Relating to Gregory
Palamas [trans. Normal Russell; Translated Texts for Byzantinists 8;
Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2022], 90)
