St. Amfilokhy of Pochaev

April 29th / May 12th
Troparion (Tone 4)
O all-glorious ascetic of Volyn, worthy inhabitant of the Pochaev Lavra and great healer of the Orthodox people, thus has Christ our God shone you to His Church, O righteous Father Amfilokhy, zealously pray to Him, that He will free us from the attacks of our enemies and save our souls.

St. Amfilokhy was born December 10, 1984, to Ana & Varnava Golovatiuk in Malaya Ilovitsa, Ukraine, and was named Jakov. He was one of ten children. His dad was a sleigh maker and known as a skilled etter of broken bones. Jakov was strong and steady and would help restrain the patients while his dad set the bones. In 1912, he was conscripted into the Royal Army as a field medic. He was captured and taken as a prisoner, by the Germans, to the Alps. In 1919, he escaped and returned home. In 1925, he was sent by the bishop to become a monk at the Pochaev Lavra. He was tonsured a monk, then hierodeacon, then hieromonk in 1936, taking the name Joseph. In addition to his regular chores and prayers, Father Joseph healed the sick and set many broken bones. There was a steady stream of visitors who came to be healed, so he asked permission to move to a small house at the cemetery with Hieromonk Irinarch, so as not to disturb the life of the monastery. After World War II, Soviet soldiers came to his house and demanded food. He humbly served them dinner. They ate and took him outside to shoot him. He asked for ten minutes to pray. Irinarch went out to see what was happening and threw himself on the man with the gun aimed at Fr. Joseph, knocking him to the ground. He told them they should not kill him, because he was saving the world. The soldiers relented and went on their way. Under Khrushchev, persecution of the church became more systematic. In 1962, Fr. Joseph led the monks and the parishioners to stand down the army when they came to destroy Holy Trinity Cathedral. A few nights later, they arrested the hieromonk and took him to a psychiatric hospital. After three months in a ward with agitated, psychotic patients, and injected with medicine that caused massive edema over his whole body, he was taken to the head doctor's office. The doctor asked the priest if he could heal those in his ward. He said it would take two weeks; bring him his vestments, a Cross and the Holy Gospels, so that he could perform a blessing of water. The doctor told him to heal them without any services. The saint replied, "No, that is impossible.  When a soldier goes into battle, he is given weapons… Our weapons against the invisible foe are the Cross, the Holy Gospels, and Holy Water." Fr. Joseph was returned to the ward. He was finally released when Stalin's daughter, Svetlana Alleluiev, went to the hospital. She had been healed of a mental/spiritual illness years before by Fr. Joseph. He returned to his family's home village. Soon people from all over the Soviet Union were flocking to the village for healing. The authorities managed to turn a jealous nephew against the hieromonk. He took the saint for a ride on his tractor. He then beat him unconscious and left him to die in a swamp. The monks went looking for him and found him after he lay there for eight hours on a cold December night. They took him back to the lavra. They did not expect him to recover from this. That night they tonsured him a Schema monk giving him the name Amfilokhy after St. Amphilochius of Iconium. He recovered. It was dangerous for him to stay at the lavra without a government residency permit, so he returned to his village. There he served a moleben for water everyday in his yard and continued to heal many of the faithful. He reposed on January 1, 1971. His healing ministry did not end with his earthly life. For decades visitors to his grave found that they were healed.

This icon is by the hand of Paul Drozdowski.

Order # drz-48

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