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.

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