One of the Fathers said of Abba Xoius the Theban that one day he went to the mountain of Sinai and when he set out from there, a brother met him, groaning and saying, ‘Abba, we are in distress through lack of rain.’ The old man said to him, ‘Why do you not pray and ask God for some?’ The brother said to him: ‘We pray, we say litanies and it does not rain.’ The old man said to him, ‘It is because you do not pray with intensity. Do you want to see that this is so?’ Then he stretched his hands towards heaven in prayer and immediately it rained. Seeing this, the brother was filled with fear and threw himself face downwards on the ground, bending low before him, but the old man fled and the brother told everyone what had happened. When they heard this, they glorified God.
