Arsenius the Lover-of-Labour of the Kiev Caves
Our Venerable Father Arsenius the Lover-of-Labour, of the Far Caves of Kiev
Venerable · Wonderworker · d. 14th century
Commemorated 8 May — Principal commemoration, 28 August — Synaxis of the Venerable Fathers of the Far Caves
Arsenius the Lover-of-Labour (fourteenth century) was a monk of the Kiev Caves Lavra whose whole memory is contained in his surname: he was known for a love of toil so unremitting that the brethren never saw him idle, and he joined to it a rule of fasting by which he took no food while the sun was up. The tradition holds that for his humility and his labour the Lord gave him the gift of wonderworking. His relics rest in the Far (Theodosius's) Caves, and he is commemorated on May 8 and with the fathers of the Far Caves on August 28.
Arsenius belonged to the community of the Kiev Caves — the Kyiv Pechersk Lavra founded by Saints Anthony and Theodosius — in the fourteenth century, that is, in the generations after the Mongol devastation of Kiev, when the monastery's life continued in reduced circumstances and its chronicle-keeping had largely ceased. That silence of the records is why nothing of his origins, his family, or the particulars of his years is transmitted: what the Lavra remembered of him, and handed on in the notices of its saints, is the shape of his ascetic labour.
He was called Trudolyubivy, "the lover of labour," because he never allowed himself to be found unoccupied. The notices say that he passed his days in manual work and unceasing prayer together, and that he ate nothing until after sunset — keeping the strict monastic rule of the single evening meal not for a season but as the ordinary form of his life. To this obedience of the body he joined a deep humility, and the tradition understands the one as the ground of the other: it was for his humility and his toil, and not for any visible austerity of his own choosing, that he received from God the grace of working wonders, so that he is numbered among the wonderworkers of the caves.
He reposed in the monastery and was buried in the Far Caves, where his incorrupt relics have been venerated since, among the more than a hundred fathers whose bodies rest in the two cave-systems of the Lavra.
Feast and commemoration
Arsenius is kept on May 8 (church date; Old Calendar civil May 21) in the Russian calendar and by the Orthodox Church in America — the same day as Arsenius the Great, whose name he bears, and as the second feast of John the Theologian, which governs the service of the day. He is also commemorated in the Synaxis of the Venerable Fathers of the Far Caves on August 28, and in the general synaxis of all the venerable fathers of the Kiev Caves kept on the second Sunday of Great Lent. The Greek calendars do not know him.
Iconography
Arsenius is shown as a monk of the caves in the dark habit and mantle, of middle years or elderly, holding a scroll or with his hands crossed on his breast; where his surname is expressed, he is given a tool of manual work. His usual place is in the ranked companies of the composite icons of the Venerable Fathers of the Far Caves and of "All the Saints of the Kiev Caves," where each figure is identified by inscription rather than by attribute. No pre-1900 image identified with certainty as this Arsenius, distinct from his namesakes, was located for storage; the entry is noted as wanting an icon.
Disputed questions
- Nothing is dated. The fourteenth century is the traditional bracket, given by the Lavra's own lists and repeated by the modern calendars; no year of birth, tonsure, or repose is transmitted, and no early vita exists. The entry says only what the sources say.
- Not to be confused with Arsenius the Great, the fifth-century desert father of Scetis with whom he shares the feast of May 8; nor with Arsenius of Tver (March 2), Arsenius of Corfu (January 19), or Arsenios of Paros (January 31).