“Every day in the Church is a holiday,” they joke at the Orthodox. And it is true: the abundance of names in the church calendar is such that we no longer even particularly strive to find out what the saint was famous for, why he was canonized. It is all the more unexpected to suddenly find out … Why there are such holidays as the acquisition and transfer of relics, why so much attention is paid to the dead bodies of saints and how the monks become martyrs even after their death, Bishop Jonah (Cherepanov) explained using the example of the fulfilled prophecy of St. Jonah of Kiev.
You, father, a martyr …
Three times a year, the memory of the Monk Jonah of Kiev is celebrated: on January 22, his repose is celebrated, on the Week after the Exaltation - the transfer of relics, on November 4 - glorification in the face of saints. These are holidays for our Kiev Trinity Ioninsky Monastery, but although they are joyful, they still carry a tinge of bitterness - because of everything that happened in Soviet times, at the height of the Khrushchev era.
Creating his monastery, the Monk Jonah experienced many sorrows. “You, father, are a martyr,” they said to him. And he answered: "No, after death I will be a martyr." Indeed, his prediction came true.
In 1966, the leadership of the Academy of Sciences, which was in charge of the Trinity Church, decided to equip a botany museum in the church. They drew up a project (it was preserved in the archives of the monastery), according to which the temple after a major restructuring was supposed to resemble one of the pavilions of VDNKh - with sickles, hammers and other attributes of the Soviet regime. It was planned to erect a monument to Michurin under the dome.
In this regard, the burials of the Monk Jonah and Bishop Vitaly, his spiritual child, who lived in retirement in the Iona Monastery and was also buried under the floor of the Trinity Church, were opened. The burial place of Bishop Vitaly was plundered and burned, only charred bones remained from the body.
The state of the crypt of St. Jonah after the return of the church to the monastery, early 1990s
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But they mocked the Monk Jonah with special cruelty. After opening his crypt, it was found that the relics are completely incorruptible. Employees of the botanical garden, who worked at that time, say that they have never seen a person after so many years in the earth look like he had just died. Body, face, beard, hands - everything is completely preserved.
But this obvious miracle did not stop the atheists. While the coffin with the body stood in the unguarded temple, the head was torn off from the relics. According to the stories of local residents, they even played football around the church with it, and then sold it to artists who, having boiled it and removed the skin, made a skull out of it for sketches.
In our time we tried to find the head of the monk, we looked for witnesses. We even managed to find one of those two artists, but it turned out that the skull of the monk even in those days “left” for Kazakhstan, and there traces are lost.
Yielded to the monk his place in the cemetery
In such a desecrated form, the coffin with the body of the elder was in the church when the believers found out about it. One of the clergy, hegumen Igor, wrote to the leadership of the botanical garden a statement that he was the monk's nephew and asked to give him the body for burial. Naturally, he was not refused, because all the same it was necessary to put the coffin somewhere. So the relics were buried at the city Zverinetsky cemetery. It was in October 1966.
Transfer of the relics of St. Jonah of Kiev, October 1993
It is interesting that at that time Fr. Igor had an oncological diagnosis and prepared a place in the cemetery for himself, but gave it up to the monk, and through the prayers of our holy elder, a miracle happened: Fr. Igor then completely healed, lived for a very long time and died just a few years ago.
The grave of Elder Jonah at the Zverinetsky cemetery was always revered by the people of Kiev: people came, served panikhidas, asked for the blessed help from the monk and received what they asked for. Indeed, as we read in the Psalms, “in eternal memory there will be a righteous man” (Psalm 111: 6). Indeed, the memory of the righteous man, despite all the persecution, has survived. Although at that time many believers were plunged into despondency and even despair, when, after a short thaw, severe persecution of faith began, and Secretary General Khrushchev promised to show the last priest on TV in 1980.
But there were also those who firmly believed in the power of God, remembering the words of the wise Solomon - "this too will pass." They understood that this godless time, like many other periods of persecution in the history of our Church, would end.
New hands from the reverend
And indeed, it happened. In the early 1990s, when the Iona Monastery was revived, His Beatitude Metropolitan Volodymyr, who had only been at the Kiev See for a year, blessed our first abbot, Archimandrite Agapit, to acquire the relics of Saint Jonah and transfer them to his native monastery.
And in the fall of 1993, the brethren gathered at the Zverinetsky cemetery, served a panikhida for the elder and began to dig. And the place there is quite humid, therefore, when they found the lid of the coffin, it turned out that from time and damp it had decayed and fell through. I had to extract it in parts. And only after that the relics of the Monk Jonah were revealed.
Everyone was convinced that this was the elder's coffin when a bag with burnt bones was found in the place of the head (the old monks told that the remains of Bishop Vitaly were also placed in the coffin of the monk).
It was impossible to remove the lower part of the coffin, as it literally merged with the ground. The relics were transferred to a white linen and transported to the Iona Monastery. And the coffin was already removed in parts, after which it was also transferred to the monastery, collected, washed, dried, put there the vestments found during its acquisition, and put it under glass at the entrance to the temple.
The saint's relics were washed, put on new clothes, and on the feast of the Intercession of the Mother of God in 1993, they were solemnly transferred to the place of their original resting place, where they are now.
By the way, during the acquisition, another miracle happened. At the cemetery we were helped by an employee of the Kiev-Pechersk Lavra. When he came home, he told his wife where he was, what he was doing and what shrine they had found that night. After that he went to bed, and towards morning his wife dreamed of the Monk Jonah, who asked her to come to his grave and clean everything up there. The day before, a woman received a severe burn on her hands at a chemical plant, but did not dare to disobey, she came to the cemetery and saw that, since the relics were acquired at night, there were indeed quite a lot of chips from the coffin and parts of the vestment left on the grave. With her bandaged hands, the woman collected all this in a jar and brought it to the monastery. I took from her a vessel with particles of the coffin and vestments, and we said goodbye.
The next morning the temple had not yet opened, and the woman was already standing in front of the door with tears in her eyes and showing her fully healed hands. And the skin on the hands was like that of a newborn - pink, smooth and clean. That night, the monk healed this woman, and she joyfully came to thank the Lord and His prayer book - our Kiev miracle worker - for this miracle.
Death is like a holiday
Many, even believers, church people are surprised: why so much attention to the dead bodies of saints? Why do we even celebrate the repose, the acquisition, the transfer of relics?
In the Church, in principle, there are many paradoxical things, and for a person who does not live by the yardstick of eternal life, they are hard to understand. For example, it is customary in society to celebrate birthdays. However, in the case of the saints, we almost never celebrate them - only the days of death, the departure to the Lord. After all, we are all created for eternity, and death is nothing but a birth into Eternal Life. And for the righteous man, death is the acquisition of what he strove for with such labors: complete communion with God, not limited by any earthly standards, diseases, bodily infirmities. It is difficult for us to imagine how everything will be there, but, according to the words of the Apostle, “I did not see that eye, did not hear the ear, and that did not come to the heart of man that God had prepared for those who loved Him” (1 Cor. 2: 9).
There is a wonderful saying: "The end is the crown of the work."
Death is always the crown of life. As they say, the Lord takes a person either as ready as possible when he is fully ripe for the Kingdom of God, or as unprepared as possible, when no matter how much he has lived, it will not change and will not get better.
How did tyrants and murderers die? Before death, they did not know rest, tormented and left as the psalmist had warned, saying: "The death of sinners is fierce" (Ps. 33:22). And how the righteous died: from the lives of the first Christian martyrs we learn what amazing miracles are associated even with their death - when the torturers themselves often left paganism and became Christians.
Already from later sources it is known how the earthly life of the great elders ended - in a cell, surrounded by spiritual children, somprayers. The death of the righteous was such that we ask at every service: "painless, shameless, peaceful." It was a real success - when a person simply fell asleep to wake up already in the Kingdom of his Lord, Whom he loved with all his heart and to Whom he strove with all his life.
These are the days we celebrate.
Prayer service at the shrine of St. Jonah of Kiev. Trinity Ioninsky monastery
Although the word "holiday" in this case does not quite reflect the meaning of what is happening. The Ukrainian word "holy" is much closer in meaning. Because when we remember this or that event of sacred history, we honor the memory of this or that righteous person, we touch the shrine, become at least a little bit, but partakers of great and mysterious events.
Some of the festive liturgical texts directly call: “Let us ascend to Golgotha together with Christ”, “together with His disciples we will ascend to Mount Tabor” … The Church invites all of us to touch the shrine at the service. This, in fact, is the meaning of the holidays - to approach, to be close to the Lord in His earthly life, in His passions, in His resurrection, to become close to the saints whom we venerate, to touch their holiness.
Let your heart not be confused
The bodies of many saints during their lifetime were enlightened by divine light, changed by divine grace. Often they acquired some extraordinary properties: the ascetic fasting people were for many years in conditions in which even animals could not survive; the torture to which the martyrs were subjected could not be endured by a person in an ordinary state.
And literally from the first centuries, Christians treated the bodies of the martyrs with special trepidation, as evidence of their exploit, life in Christ.
Moreover, the relics of many saints were hidden until the time - for example, the head of St. John the Baptist. There are as many as three celebrations of her acquisition in the church calendar. This shrine has a dramatic history: each time the discovery of the head became such a great event that the Church recorded it in its liturgical circle.
Although the powers were not always available. For example, the coffin with the body of St. Theodosius of Chernigov was originally located in the crypt under the Borisoglebsky Cathedral in the city of Chernigov. A great many people came to the saint, many cases of grace-filled help and healings were recorded, and when the canonization took place, the coffin was solemnly transferred to the Trinity Cathedral, in which Saint Theodosius served as the Chernigov archpastor. Therefore, there is no holiday of acquiring his relics - only glorification in the face of saints.
But such things also happened, as in the case of our Venerable Jonah. When, after all the abuse and wanderings, the shrine was acquired and transferred to the monastery, it became a real triumph not only for the brethren of our monastery, but also for all Orthodox Kievites, all people who had the opportunity to pray to our holy elder at his relics, to ask for his gracious intercession before the Lord.
Cancer with the relics of St. Jonah of Kiev. Trinity Ioninsky monastery
Maybe someone is confused by the excessive, in their opinion, the attention of believers to the bodies of saints. But, I think, if you split Orthodoxy into its component parts, a lot of things individually can be confusing. Still, Church Tradition must be accepted in its entirety, in its entirety. If Tradition left a testimony about the veneration of the saints, if the Church has done this since ancient times, I accept this and "nothing against the verb." Just like fasting on Wednesdays and Fridays, fasting for many days. And if you begin to split up, analyze: I like this, but this is not - and nothing will remain of the Church.
Finally I'm home
… I remember how immediately after the discovery and transfer of the relics of the Monk Jonah to our monastery I had a dream. As if the elder walks around the monastery, with a master's air he walks around the temple, looks everywhere. He looks where what has collapsed, where what is missing (and our temple was then in complete ruin). Here he was like that, and then he says: "Finally, I'm home!"
I remember this so vividly that it still stands before my eyes … Indeed, now the monk is at home. He is the abbot here, he runs his monastery and, I hope, prays for us - all those who live here and who come to our monastery to pray.
Yulia Kominko