Our Holy Father Theodosius of the Kiev Caves.

Commemorated May 3 in the Orthodox Christian Menaion

From the Prologue

From his earliest youth, he fled from laughter and merriment and gave himself to pondering on God and prayer. Because of this, he was often beatenby his mother, and especially when she saw one day an iron belt around his naked body, from which his shirt was stained with blood. Reading one day in the Gospel the words of the Lord: 'He who loves father or mother more than Me, is not worthy of Me', he left his parents' home and fled to Kiev, to the cave of our holy father Antony. Antony received him and quickly made him a monk. When his mother found him, and called him to return home, he spoke with her and she then became a nun in a women's monastery. By his asceticism, his meekness and his goodness, Theodosius quickly outstripped all the other monks and became very dear to Antony, who made him abbot of the monastery. In his time, the number of brethren in the monastery grew very rapidly, churches and cells were built and the Rule of the Studion introduced in its fullness. God endowed Theodosius with great grace in response to his virginal purity, labours in prayer and love for his neighbour, and so this man of God had great power over unclean spirits and healed sicknesses and had insight into the destinies of men. With St Antony, St Theodosius is regarded as the restorer and organiser of Russian monasticism. He entered peacefully into rest in 1074, and his healing relics rest beside those of St Antony.

From The Prologue From Ochrid by Bishop Nikolai Velimirovich
©1985 Lazarica Press, Birmingham UK