St. Panteleimon's Monastery

The Panteleimon monastery near Khust began from a cave which its founder dug for himself in the rock of a forest tract¹. Hieromonk Meletii, in the world Mykhailo Fedorovych Rushchak, was born on 26 August 1902 in Khust, finished six classes of the folk school and at sixteen, under his sister's influence, came over to Orthodoxy¹. Having met Saint Alexis of Carpathian Rus (Kabaliuk), he made pilgrimages to Athos in 1924 and 1925 with that ascetic's blessing, and during the second of them he stayed on the Holy Mountain as a novice of the Panteleimon monastery, where in August 1926 he was tonsured with the name Meletii^{2, 1}. Illness brought him back to Khust in 1927, and when he had recovered he was given the office of steward of the courses for Orthodox priests^{2, 1}. On 29 April 1931 he was ordained hierodeacon, on 1 May hieromonk, and appointed to a parish^{2, 1}. In 1934 Father Meletii visited Athos again, received the great schema there with the name Luka, and walked back to Khust on foot; in all he was on the Holy Mountain three times¹.

With the permission of Bishop Damaskyn he settled on 18 June 1934 in the forest wilderness five kilometres west of Khust, in the tract of Kolesarovo, or Kamin, where he hollowed out a cave in the rock and began the life of a hermit^{1, 2}. Nobody in the town knew of it until people noticed that at night a light burned on the mountain at the same hour; going up to look, they saw the solitary at prayer in his cave¹. Learning of him, a townsman of Khust, Vasyl Rosokha, offered the hermit half a hectare of his land^{1, 2}. The eparchial administration blessed the building of a cell on it and nothing more, which Father Meletii did; later, having been granted a vision of the Cross of the Lord beside the cell, he also put up a chapel of the Holy Great Martyr Panteleimon^{2, 1}. So in 1934 the skete came into being¹. The rule introduced here was the Athonite one: the service began at midnight and lasted until morning, and on a feast all night; food was allowed twice a day, and no meat at all was eaten^{1, 2}.

The hermit's ascetic life drew young men who sought the monastic path, and they raised a new church and a cell block^{2, 1}. By 1950 six monks and one novice were living in the skete, two of them unfit for work through illness and age¹. The wooden church the monks put up measured 11 by 5 metres, and in the following year a belfry, two dwelling houses and a workshop appeared in the house¹. The household rested on two hectares of land: they grew potatoes and kept livestock in adobe sheds¹. Among the brethren was the monk Serafym (Shandra), a native of the village of Pryborzhavske in the Irshava district, who was tonsured in 1936, lived from 1939 to 1941 in the Bedevlia monastery, came to Kolesarovo in that same year of 1941, and from 1946 stood at the head of the skete¹.

The Soviet authorities pressed the eparchial administration, and the house was directed to call itself a parish and to take no new novices². In 1952 the skete was closed and turned into the third parish of Khust, and the monks were transferred elsewhere by a series of decrees¹. They nevertheless, led by Father Meletii, would not leave the house and held out here until 1956, when an order of 27 March sent them out to various parishes and monasteries¹. The wooden church was struck off the register of functioning churches on 1 June 1961, and on 8 August it was dismantled¹.

Father Meletii died in 1983; he was buried in the monastery cemetery, which is shared with the village one, and in 1985 grateful disciples set a marble slab on his cross¹. The property of the house survived thanks to three nuns who settled here in 1961, after the church was closed, and guarded it for thirty years¹.

At the beginning of the 1990s the monastery revived². On 9 August 1991 Bishop Yevfymii (Shutak) of Mukachevo and Uzhhorod consecrated the first stone of the patronal church of the Holy Great Martyr Panteleimon¹. Building began in 1992 on the very site where the old church had stood, and was carried on with the help of a Khust architect¹; the church was raised up to the year 2000². The monks repaired the surviving wooden cottages and outbuildings, and having gathered funds they bought three small bells and hung them on a wooden frame belfry¹.

To widen the ground under the church the monks cut back the slope and struck rock more than 13 metres high; they built a concrete retaining wall, and seeing how hard the stone was they decided to dig a cave church in it¹. The work began in 1993, and in 1995 the cave church of Saint Job of Pochaiv was ready; Bishop Mefodii consecrated it¹. The church lies at a depth of seven metres, measures 6 by 15 metres and serves the house as its winter church¹. Directly above it, in 2000, a summer chapel of the Iveron icon of the Mother of God was set up, with a carved wooden iconostasis and wall painting^{1, 2}; at the same time a small two-storey brick house with rooms for pilgrims was raised¹. In 2001 the house received as a gift a bell weighing 1,350 kilograms, which Bishop Ioann of Khust and Vynohradiv consecrated, and in the following year building began on a block with a refectory and a kitchen¹.

As of 2003 five brethren were living in the house¹. The monastery keeps to the Athonite order its founder introduced: on weekdays matins begins at one in the morning, the Liturgy at four, vespers at six in the evening, and on Sundays and feasts the Liturgy is served at ten³. The patronal feasts of the house are of the Iveron icon of the Mother of God, of the Great Martyr Panteleimon and of Saint Job of Pochaiv⁴. Beside the path that leads to the monastery there remains a spring which Father Meletii dug back in the 1930s¹. The ruling hierarch of the Hust diocese has led the services of the patronal feasts here: on 9 August 2019, when a member of the community was ordained deacon at the liturgy⁵, on 26 October of the same year, at the feast of the Iveron icon, when a member of the community was ordained priest⁶, and on 9 August 2023⁷.