Venerable Pimen the Much-Ailing of the Kyiv Caves (†1110) — August 7 / August 20 (Julian Calendar)

On this day, August 7 according to the Julian Calendar (August 20 civil calendar), the Georgian Orthodox Church commemorates Venerable Pimen the Much-Ailing of the Kyiv Caves.

The Venerable Pimen the Much-Ailing was born sick, and he fervently entreated his parents to take him to the Kyiv Caves Monastery. When his infirmity grew still more grievous, his parents fulfilled his desire. They asked the monks of the community to pray for the young man’s recovery; but the invalid himself besought the Lord to prolong his sickness and to make him worthy also of the monastic life.

The prayer of the blessed one was heard. While all were sleeping, angels appeared in the chamber where Pimen lay, in the likeness of the abbot and the brethren, and tonsured him a monk, declaring to him that he would be sick his whole life long and would be healed only three days before his death. When the brethren heard the sound of chanting, they hastened to the Venerable Pimen and beheld him in the monastic habit, with a lighted candle in his hand; and the hair shorn from his head was found in the reliquary of Theodosius of the Caves.

The saint was grievously ill for many years. For his uncomplaining endurance of sufferings, the saint was granted the gift of healing the infirmities of others. He healed a paralytic like himself, on the condition that he would care for the sick until his death. Once this brother grew weary of serving the infirm, and his sickness returned upon him. The Venerable Pimen healed him once again, instructing him that the sick man and the servant of the sick receive an equal reward.

For twenty years the blessed father passed his life in dreadful suffering and, according to the prophecy of the angel, was healed three days before his death. On the day of the departure of Saint Pimen the Much-Ailing from this world, three shining pillars rose above the altar table, extending even above the dome of the church. A like vision described in the chronicle is dated to the eleventh of February, 1110; and on this basis it is supposed that the Venerable Pimen reposed on the eleventh of February, 1110. The incorrupt relics of the holy father are buried in the Caves of Anthony.