Our venerable father among the saints, Amphilochios of Bochaevi, the God-bearer, is one of the hermit monks and spiritual warriors in the twentieth century. The Lord gave him the gift of granting healing. It is celebrated on April 29 or December 1.
He is Yakov Holovatyuk, born on November 27, 1894 to Varnava and Anna Holovatyuk in the Ukrainian village of Vlya Ilovitsa. He was one of ten children. His father worked whatever job he could, even making shoe molds and snowmobiles. Barnava was also an expert in orthopedics, and Yakov helped his father in this matter when he was young.
In 1912, Yakov performed compulsory military service as a field medic. In World War I, he contributed to saving wounded people on the battlefield. The Germans arrested him and took him to the Alps, where he spent three years as a prisoner working for a landlord. Then he was able to escape in 1919, and returned to his village of Ilovica, where he began his life again as a farmer and helper of the sick who sought refuge in him.
In 1925, Yakov entered the Pushkaev Lavra (monastery) as a novice monk. He carried out his duties in the monastery with diligence and humility. He was ordained a monk with the name Joseph on July 8, 1932 by Bishop Dionysius, Metropolitan of Warsaw and all of Poland. On September 21, 1933, he was ordained a deacon by Bishop Anthony. On September 27, he was ordained a monastic priest.
His talent in splinting broken bones became so famous that patients came to him from all provinces. In order to reduce the harassment caused by the people visiting Father Joseph to the brothers in the Lavra, and with the blessing of the abbot of the monastery, he moved to a small house in the monastery cemetery. There, he lived with the priest, Monk Irinarch, for twenty years. On some days, it received 500 people seeking physical and spiritual healing. He put all his talents into it in the service of believers
After World War II, a group of gangsters attacked him in his fryer looking for something to eat. After they finished their food,
They asked the sheikh to accompany them out of the hut. When they reached the gate, the gang leader told him that he would be killed. Faced with inevitable death with absolute humility, he asked to be given only ten minutes to pray. He was allowed to do so. He began to pray for the comfort of his soul and prayed the Lord’s Prayer, supplication to the Mother of God, and the Creed, and it was. As for his colleague, Father Erenash, he was worried about the absence of Father Joseph, so he went out to investigate the matter, and when he saw him at gunpoint, he begged the attackers to stop threatening them, but they responded to him and left without carrying out their threat.
During Khrushchev's persecution of the Church in the late 1950s and 1960s, monks were expelled from monasteries and were not allowed to return. In 1962, the sheikh, heading a number of monks, succeeded in defending the Holy Trinity Cathedral in the Lavra. However, because of this, Father Joseph was taken to a psychiatric hospital and placed in the ward for the most disturbed patients. He was injected with medications that caused swelling throughout his body. The calls of his spiritual children to release him as a dam were gone. Three months after his detention, the head doctor at the hospital asked him if he could heal others in the ward, and the father’s answer was affirmative. He asked that they bring him the Bible, a cross, and priestly clothing so that he could perform Paraklesi and pray the sanctification of water. His request was rejected and he was returned to the sick ward.
Finally, Father Joseph was released through the mediation of Svetlana Alliluyeva, the daughter of Joseph Stalin, whom Father Joseph once cured of a spiritual illness. He then returned to his village, where he lived with one of his relatives.
Once again, people began carrying their sick people to seek the healing that the Lord was granting through Father Joseph, which angered the local authorities there. Therefore, a plot was prepared against Father Joseph with the help of one of his close associates, so he was lured to a swampy area next to the village, where he was beaten and thrown into the frozen swampy waters and died. There were eight hours between life and death until one of his spiritual sons found him and was able to save him and transfer him to the Pochayev Lavra. There, Father Joseph put on his angelic mask, named after Saint Amphilochius of Issonium, who was commemorated on November 23.
Finally, Sheikh Amphilochios returned to his village, and his daily schedule was divided between performing the Paraclesi prayer and the water sanctification prayer daily, in addition to helping the sick and praying for them, while maintaining his ascetic life. Thus, the Sheikh found time for everyone.
The angelic monk Amphilochios fell asleep in the Lord on December 1, 1971. His sainthood was declared on April 23, 2002.
