Parents’ prayer, but especially the prayers of a mother, since it comes from the heart, is fulfilled quicker.

When I was in the hermitage of Ivir, a young man came to me. He had left his parents and he wandered through Halkidiki. He came with a group of pilgrims who were visiting the Holy Mountain. He was pagan and very insolent. He would curse everybody, young and old. I spoke to him and brought him to the right path. I even gave him a haircut because he had a long hair.

“Listen, I tell him, you have a blessed mother. Her prayers brought you here.”

“’Yes, father’, he says, I was wandering through Halkidiki and not even I know how I came here.”

“If your mother finds out that you came here at the Holy Mountain and she would see you with your hair cut she would be very glad.”

“How do you know, father? Indeed she will be very glad to see me this changed.”

God pushed him to the left and right till He brought him to “the master”. How much his mother must have prayed!

(Cuviosul Paisie Aghioritul, Cuvinte duhovniceşti. Volumul IV. Viața de familie, Editura Evanghelismos, București, 2003, pp. 113-114)