A pilgrimage to the caves

The importance of Orthodox Christianity is evident everywhere in Kiev, with golden domes of churches dotting the sky in all directions. But there is no more important religious site here than Kiev Pechersk Lavra, or the Kiev Caves Monastery, and this weekend Theresa and I decided to pay it a visit.

Fixtures of the Kiev skyline. This is St. Mikhayil's.

                “Lavra” means monastery, and there is indeed an active monastery still at this riverfront site, which dates to the 11^th century when a monk named Anthony came here from Mount Athos, in Greece, making himself a home in caves (some of which had once been used by Vikings, so it is said) and planting the seed of the Orthodox church in this region.

                But if Anthony’s life was monastic and simple, what you are first struck by today at Lavra is opulence and grandeur. It is a sprawling, walled complex with grandly decorated churches and monuments in every direction, each dome seemingly larger and more brilliantly burnished than the last. And it is filled with people: visitors like us, of

The prayer table was always full.

course, but more than that, devout churchgoers filling their bottles with water from the holy spring or scribbling prayers on little pieces of paper to take into the cathedral and offer up.

                Then there are the caves. Two sets of them – one older and with just one level, one a bit newer and with three levels. We hired a guide, Aleksander (who turned out to be an English teacher at a local university) to take us through the Near Caves, where Anthony moved soon after his arrival, and which were used by monks for several hundred years after that.

                This may be a major tourist destination, but it is also one of the holiest sites for the Eastern Orthodox church, and it is treated that way. Photography is not allowed; women must have their heads and legs covered; everyone holds a tall thin prayer candle while walking through a maze of tunnels no more than six feet tall and not really wide enough for two people to pass, though somehow we did. (We Americans were a little freaked out at the proximity of candles, fringed scarves, bundled-up squareish grannies pushing and shoving to get to the “holy relics.”) The candlelight

Inside the church of All Saints. Stern faces on the ceiling!

reflects off white walls; there is the sound of chanting, praying.

                Semicircular indentations, like the openings to small ovens, are everywhere along the sides of the passageways. Aleksander explains: When a monk died, his body was put in tombs in the walls. Three years later, they pulled the body out. If it was intact, “uncorrupted,” it was a miracle, and the monk was canonized. If not, well, he was removed. All through the tunnels, glass-topped coffins lie in recesses in the walls – 73 of them in these Near Caves, all of them saints wrapped in religious vestments, sometimes a pair of mummified hands visible. People stop and cross themselves, kissing the coffin top, before moving on.

                We visited the tiny cell of the founding monk who lived here – never leaving these caves, and eating the regular fare of bread and water – for 16 years. His small church is adjacent, and the prayers of the pilgrims echoed off the cave walls.

                Back above ground, we wandered some more and gave up trying to get into the large cathedral

Priests come here as tourists, too! We saw these three hop into a big black
car and leave a few minutes later.

where there was a line two or three hundred yards long; finally, with tired feet and empty stomachs (we need more than those monks), we went to a nearby restaurant.

But after eating and before returning home we stopped one more time at Lavra, now with its churches brightly lighted and gleaming white and gold in the night. Incredibly, the line for the cathedral was still just as long. But we saw people going in a side door and followed; the stairs took us to a balcony above the church floor.

Choirs were singing from our level on both sides of the altar, behind which was an absolute wall of gold ornamentation. Illuminated only by the flames of hundreds of prayer candles and the distant lights in the choir lofts, this wall looked like nothing so much as a river of molten gold that had poured down  from above, cooling and solidifying into large nuggets and masses. Below us people stood (there are no pews in these churches) and chanted or sang,

crossing themselves and bowing. The voices of the choir reverberated off the walls in the half-darkness; it was a solemn, gorgeous scene.

We went back down the stairs and walked through the courtyard, where the music, broadcast outside on loudspeakers, followed us into the night.