If you come to saints with scalpels and tweezers – what word will they say?
Metropolitan Arseniy. Photo: Sviatohirsk Lavra website
Now, in a time of upheaval and terrible trials – a time when we should be falling to our knees and pleading with the saints of our land to intercede before God – the authorities are doing the opposite. They’re sending veterinarians and biologists into the sacred Caves of the Lavra, scalpel in hand, to experiment on the relics of the Venerable Fathers.
Metropolitan Arseniy, who has now spent a year behind bars on absurd charges, reminded us back in 2022 how the German and Soviet regimes once tried to battle the Venerable Saints of the Caves – and what came of it. In 1961, after Khrushchev ordered the Lavra’s closure, they attempted to remove and burn the relics. But the engines refused to start. The horses refused to pull. And the very next day, a deadly mudslide in the Kurenivka district of Kyiv killed thousands.
Fast forward to 1988 – the year the Lavra reopened. The once-dry relics of the saints began to stream with fragrant myrrh.
“Do you see the living bond,” said Metropolitan Arseniy, “between the holy ones of the Kyiv Caves and the fate of our Church – and our Homeland?”
He insists: the Venerable Fathers will speak again. But first, we must speak – in prayer, in faith, in reverence.
And yet... instead of prayer, they come with scalpels and tweezers.
Read also
On the seizure of a UGCC сhurch in Tokmak
Statements by the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church about “blasphemy” are not the cry of a persecuted Church. They are a textbook example of double standards.
On Budanov's statement regarding UOC
For Yelensky and his the State Service of Ukraine for Ethnic Affairs and Freedom of Conscience (DESS), Budanov's statement was very untimely.
Why does OCU still celebrate Easter “with Moskals”?
On social media, “patriots” are again asking in exasperation: why are we still celebrating Easter with Moscow? How much longer?
Did Patriarch Bartholomew really mourn Filaret’s death?
Constantinople has never recognized Filaret as a patriarch – not “His Holiness,” not “honorary,” not under any title whatsoever. That alone makes the line in the Ukrainian presidential press service’s report sound astonishingly implausible.
Why did Dumenko sit in Metropolitan Onufriy’s chair?
The head of the OCU has his own residence – and Filaret’s residence as well. But what he needs is the Lavra, Metropolitan Onufriy’s office and chair.
Dumenko came up with a way to fill the Lavra
In fact, the St. Theodosius Monastery has been liquidated, and now "female monasticism" will be developed there.