UOC Chancellor: Venerable Anthony founded a monastery, not a reserve

Metropolitan Anthony (Pakanich). Photo: fragment from YouTube video

On the eve of the second week of Great Lent, Metropolitan Anthony, Chancellor of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, addressed the faithful with a reflection on the meaning of the struggle for the Kyiv Caves Lavra. According to the hierarch, there is now an effort to recast the shrine as a museum exhibit, pushing living prayer out of the present and into the realm of history.

“Has the Kyiv Caves Lavra really ceased to be a living spiritual monastery? Has the place where prayer resounded for centuries, where saints labored in ascetic feat, where millions of people found their way to God, now become nothing more than a tourist attraction?” the metropolitan asked. He recalled that Venerable Anthony came to the Kyiv hills not to create an architectural monument or a site for sightseers.

He further stressed: “The change in how the Kyiv Caves Lavra is perceived is not merely a formal or technical change of name. It is far more than that. It is a fundamental approach to how one of the chief holy places of our land is now being proposed to be viewed.”

The Chancellor explained the difference between the two concepts. A monastery is a living organism, a place where a person truly encounters God and changes his life. A preserve, by contrast, is a place where Church history is displayed behind glass. In the metropolitan’s view, when a holy place is called a reserve, what lies behind this is an attempt to “carefully lock up” Orthodoxy and show it to visitors as though it were “an outdated exhibit.”

The hierarch also spoke with particular pain about the plight of the current brotherhood. “As for the monks themselves, they are cynically being driven out of their own home – the monastery. And today, in order to pray before the relics of the venerable fathers in the caves, the monks must ask permission from the Reserve administration, whose representatives may be unbelievers altogether.”

The bishop asked why the prayer of monks – which for centuries transformed the hearts of millions – has suddenly become unwelcome in a modern society consumed by division and hatred. He recalled that it was here that people learned honesty, chastity, and responsibility before God, and suggested that this substitution of concepts may stem from the fact that the ideals of the Caves saints now seem “inconvenient” to some.

Metropolitan Anthony also commented on attacks from UGCC spokesmen who allow themselves to claim that Orthodoxy is supposedly “outdated.” “If Orthodoxy has truly become ‘outdated,’ then how did it come to pass that it shaped the spiritual world of our people for centuries? How is it that from it grew our culture, our moral tradition, and our understanding of good and evil?”

The Chancellor also recalled the works of Venerable Nestor the Chronicler, who described Kyiv’s passage from the darkness of idols to the light of Christ’s churches. “At times, one gets the impression that today this historical vector is being turned backward. Because we are seeing strange things. Churches that for centuries were places of prayer are now being taken away from the true Church that genuinely lived in them and served in them... And at the same time, idols of Perun are once again being erected on the Kyiv hills, and pagan altars are being built,” Metropolitan Anthony stressed.

He called on believers not merely to speak about the history of the Kyiv Caves Lavra, but to remember that this history is not simply a set of pages from the past, but a vital spiritual foundation on which the life of the people was built for centuries.

Earlier, the UOJ reported on Metropolitan Anthony’s view of the Kyiv Regional Council’s decision regarding the UOC: blatant lawlessness.

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