And how does so much kindness fit into one man?
… It is hard to say when Vasyl Kutsyn gave himself over to what was by no means a romantic enthusiasm for monasticism. But when, in the autumn of 2001, he came to the Pochaiv Lavra, he already had eight years of hard work behind him — first in his native Transcarpathia, and then in the Czech Republic and Russia. Without going into the details of that difficult period of wanderings abroad, let us note only how steadily the adolescent Vasyl continued to attend church and to take part in the church life he had known since childhood. His plans even included entering the Moscow seminary, which never came to anything (his knowledge of Russian let him down) …
Nor did things work out with Pochaiv for long. Here Vasyl laboured both in the prosphora bakery and at the drawing of water from the spring of the venerable Job, when literally a year later the elder Dymytrii (Shyvkenyk) advised the young novice to move to the Kyiv Caves Lavra. This looked somewhat strange. The thing is that the Pochaiv monks have long looked a little down on the monks of the capital. Perhaps this is bound up with the fact that in the years of Soviet power the Pochaiv Lavra was not closed, and for a long time served as a refuge for the brethren of the Caves. Perhaps it is something else… But be that as it may, uncomplimentary assessments of us still for some reason go about the hills of Pochaiv. And the novice Vasyl was not the first whom the elder Dymytrii recommended to move to the Caves monastery… Meanwhile here there was an acute shortage of singers. Vasyl was given a hearing, and since he had sung since childhood in the village church where his own grandfather was precentor, he was at once assigned to the right kliros. And, of course — how could it be otherwise — his additional obedience became work in the garden. In the Lavra this is by now practically an established tradition — most of the gardeners are servers of the right kliros. Why this is so is not hard to guess. The senior gardener, Father Pavlo (Bondarenko), combines his post with the obedience of weekday precentor of the right kliros. In a word, few of those who join the right kliros manage to slip out of the nets of his "flowering" obedience. Vasyl was no exception.
In these labours all twenty years in the monastery passed unchangingly. Only his appearance changed. In old photographs it is hard to recognise our "Kyrylych" (as the brethren often called the father among themselves) in the lean novice Vasyl. Tending the vines in his beloved straw hat, Father Kyryl brought forth fruit as large and as full of sunlight as he was himself.
He came to the garden straight after the Liturgy in the caves. And this, incidentally, was also a distinctive thing — together with Fathers Antonii and Nykyfor, Father Kyryl belonged to the famous caves trio of archimandrites… And so, at 7.20 one could hear his bear-like steps — he walked with halts, having to throw his leg over the fence of the vineyard (in his youth, working in the Czech Republic as a concrete worker, he ruined his health — his legs suffered particularly). And in the garden "store-room" the father was already awaited. They awaited his good mood, his jokes… Behind that ever-jesting tone he hid from importunate novices' questions of the sort of "Father, what is monasticism?" — "Monasticism is drinking tea…", Father Kyryl would answer, as if hinting that monasticism consists not of words and instructions but of a state of heavenly absorption, in which each has his own unrepeatable story…
For his holiday, by which was meant helping his elderly mother, Kyrylych usually left after the feast of the Apostles Peter and Paul. But this time he was not even planning to. "What help can I be? I have no health. And I do not want to be a burden to them."
In general, of late he had begun to speak more of death, but this was taken as one more joke…
As a rule Father Kyryl came to vespers before everyone else and always met the kliros brethren with his high spirits. But on the feast of the Nativity of John the Forerunner the kliros became somehow unaccustomedly empty. Although a whole day had already passed since his death, no one yet knew of it. In the evening they did look in on the father, but, thinking that he was simply asleep, they decided not to disturb him.
A detached blood clot in the heart was the cause of the loss of our Good father. Many of the brethren, especially those who knew Kyrylych closely, wept unrestrainedly, which one rarely sees among monastics. And in the Lavra itself it grew perceptibly "colder"…
And how did so much kindness fit into him?Photo gallery
