What is happening with the relics of the Venerable Fathers of the Caves?

Relics of the Venerable Fathers of the Caves. Photo: Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra website

Lately there has been much talk surrounding the relics of the Venerable Fathers. After the scandal with footage showing a museum employee poking around in a reliquary, several loud statements appeared in the media. For instance, MP Dubinsky claimed that the authorities were planning to send part of the relics to England. More recently, a screenshot circulated online, allegedly from the Facebook page of “Metropolitan” Dmytro Rudiuk of the OCU, claiming the relics would be transferred to the St. George’s Cathedral of the UGCC in Lviv. Yet the fact that no such post exists on Rudiuk’s page, along with obvious mistakes in the text (“… незалежно від того, який обряд вони дотримуються”), clearly shows this to be a fake.

So what remains once the noise is stripped away?

Here is what is known for certain at this moment:

1. Reserve staff were indeed carrying out manipulations with the relics of the Venerable Fathers. This was confirmed by Director S. Kotliarevska. According to her, “the Reserve worked with the reliquaries (coffins) and the cloths.” On August 28, “the set of measures for the preservation of the reliquaries with the holy relics of the Venerable Fathers was completed.”

2. In these manipulations with the relics, the Reserve cooperated with representatives of the OCU, who “in constant prayer and in accordance with all canons carried out the full range of necessary actions precisely with the holy relics.” What this “full range of necessary actions” consisted of, we can only guess.

One curious detail: all members of the OCU in the Lavra are at the same time employees of the Reserve (on this basis they are allowed to reside in the Lavra). Yet even so, the authorities did not entrust them with “working with the reliquaries and cloths.”

3. Back in March, the Ministry of Culture established a commission to study the relics of the Venerable Fathers, the results of which have been classified. It is known that specialists in biology and veterinary science “worked” with the reliquaries. In response to an inquiry from the Lavra’s lawyers, the Ministry stated that the relics had been subjected to “tests” by the microbiological laboratory of Sumy State University “Ekomedkhim.” What kind of “tests” these were, the Ministry refused to answer, citing a secrecy clause.

Conclusions: We do not know for certain whether all the relics of the Venerable Fathers still remain in the Lavra, for the state still bars us from access to the shrines. But what is beyond doubt is that the authorities’ actions toward the relics are an act of sacrilege. “Tests” by microbiologists and veterinarians, “reclothing” performed by laypeople, reliquaries stored in warehouses alongside random boxes – all this is a carbon copy of the practices of the godless Soviet authorities.

Why is this happening?

In a comment to the UOJ, one of the Lavra’s clergymen admitted that God has allowed the effective seizure of the Lavra and its relics because of our own unrighteousness.

“If we truly struggled with our passions instead of excusing them, no museum worker would have dared to touch the relics. But because our prayer is weak, our fasting nonexistent, and a whole bouquet of passions flourishes, the Lord has once again allowed the relics of His saints to be subjected to desecration,” said the archimandrite.

And he was speaking only of the brotherhood. Yet the Lavra and the relics of the Venerable Fathers of the Caves are the heritage of our whole Church. Therefore we all bear responsibility for what is happening now. It is we who did not struggle with our passions. It is our prayer that is weak. It is our fasting that is “nonexistent.”

And the situation in the Lavra will change only when we ourselves change.

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