Pimen the Much-⁠Ailing

Venerable Pimen the Much-⁠Ailing was a monk of the Kiev Caves Lavra and died in the year 1110. He was born and raised sickly, and for a long time begged his parents to carry him to the Caves Monastery. When they brought him, they asked in prayer for his healing; he himself, knowing the value of suffering, asked the Lord that his illness continue and that he be tonsured a monk. Angels in the form of monks performed over him the rite of tonsure. Some of the brethren heard singing and found him dressed in the monastic habit, with a lit candle in his hand, while the hair of his tonsure was found in the shrine of Venerable Theodosius.

He spent twenty years in grievous suffering, so grievous that those who served him grew weary and sometimes left him without bread and water, but he bore it all with joy. Out of pity for the brethren, he healed a brother who was equally helpless, taking his word that he would serve the sick until death; when the brother grew lazy, the sickness returned, and Pimen healed him again, teaching that the sick man and the one who serves him receive the same reward. Three days before his death, as an angel had foretold, Pimen became well. He took leave of the brethren in church, received Communion, bowed at the tomb of Venerable Anthony, and pointed out his burial place, where he himself carried the coffin prepared beforehand. He foretold that the brethren would find one buried in the schema without it, since he had been unworthy of it, and the other, buried without the schema, clothed in it, which proved true. On the day of his repose three pillars of fire were seen over the monastery.

His relics are in the Near Caves. He is commemorated on 7 August (new style), on 28 September in the Synaxis of the Fathers of the Near Caves, and on the second Sunday of Great Lent.