Healing Ministry
Agapitus practiced his healing within the Kiev Caves monastery, where Saint Anthony had received him into the monastic life. When any of the brethren fell ill, he came to attend to them himself, feeding the sick the boiled herbs he prepared for his own food; through these simple remedies and his prayers, the accounts relate, the sufferers recovered.
His reputation drew not only monks but many laypeople, who turned to him for the gift of healing. He charged nothing for his care, which earned him the title of unmercenary physician, and he consistently refused gifts even from those of high rank whom he had cured.
The Armenian Physician
The synaxarion relates that a skilled Armenian physician lived in Kiev at this time, celebrated for his ability to diagnose an illness and to determine the very day on which a patient would die. Envious of Agapitus's successes, he sought to poison the saint, but, the account holds, the Lord preserved him and the poison had no effect.
When Agapitus himself fell ill, the Armenian examined him and predicted he would die within three days, vowing to become an Orthodox monk if the prediction failed. Agapitus answered that the Lord had revealed he would be summoned only after three months. He reposed three months later, on June 1; the astonished physician kept his oath, received monastic tonsure at the Caves monastery, and confessed that Agapitus was truly a saint of God.
Relics & Shrines
The relics of Saint Agapitus rest in the Near Caves of the Kiev Pechersk Lavra, where he had lived and labored. Portions of his relics are kept elsewhere as well; a fragment is held at the Russian Orthodox Cathedral of Saint John the Baptist in Washington, D.C.
Beyond his principal feast on June 1, he is numbered among the saints of the Kiev Caves in their collective commemorations, including the synaxes of the venerable fathers of the Near Caves and of all the saints of the Kievan Caves monastery. Several churches in Ukraine and Russia bear his name.
