Athanasius the Recluse

Venerable Athanasius the Recluse was a monk of the Kyiv Caves Lavra, a recluse in the Near Caves, who died around the year 1176. He is honoured as a venerable one and remembered on 28 September, in the synaxis of the venerable fathers of the Near Caves, and on 2 December. The sources say he is also remembered as a wonderworker after death.

Life

According to the Caves Paterikon, Athanasius was a monk of strict life, who fell ill and died. His body was washed and prepared for burial, but, since he was very poor, the monks, out of negligence, did not bury him and left him lying in his cell. At night a vision appeared to the abbot and someone said to him: "This man of God lies a second day unburied, while you make merry". The abbot came to the cell with the brethren and they saw that Athanasius was sitting alive, weeping. To the questions about what had happened, he answered: that they should obey the abbot in everything, repent at all times, and pray to the Lord Jesus Christ, His Most Pure Mother and the Venerable Anthony and Theodosius, to end their life here and be made worthy of burial in the cave, with the holy fathers. These are the three most important things of all, if they are fulfilled in order, without pride. They were not to ask him anything more, and he begged them to forgive him. A Ukrainian source says he had fainted from exhaustion and lay breathless two days, and that he died at the age of fifty-⁠five to sixty.

After these words he went into the cave, became a recluse and, without speaking with anyone, lived in it twelve years: "he wept ceaselessly day and night, ate a little bread and drank a little water, and that every other day". He died around the year 1176 and was buried in the Near Caves (of Anthony) of the Kyiv Caves monastery. After death he became renowned as a wonderworker. The Paterikon tells of the healing of the foot disease of the monk Babylas, who, seeing Athanasius in a dream promising him healing, came and embraced his relics.

His image and relics

One of the first iconographic portraits of him was printed in the Caves Paterikon of 1661, made by the engraver of the Lavra, Ilya, and in the Paterikon of 1760 his image is also found. His relics rest in the Near Caves, beside those of Spyridon the Prosphora-⁠baker. Many healings have been received from his relics.