Memorial Day of St. Job, Abbot of Pochaev

In the Orthodox calendar, several dates at once: May 19, November 10 and September 10 (Discovery of Relics) mark the days of memory of the Monk Job of Pochaev, the abbot of the Pochaev monastery, hermit and miracle worker. Job Pochaevsky, a native of Galicia, the territory of modern Ukraine, was born in the mid-16th century into a family of middle-class nobles. At the age of 10, the boy independently went to a small monastery near the village of Ugorniki and asked to become a novice. Two years later he took monastic vows. In itself, the tonsure of a 12-year-old child was considered very early; besides, Job was wise beyond his years, and a line of lay people lined up for advice from the young monk. All this could not go unnoticed - the future saint came under the patronage of Prince Konstantin of Ostrog. In difficult times for the Orthodox Church in Ukraine, which was part of the Polish state, where Catholicism was the dominant religion, the local aristocracy valued and tried to take the learned ministers of the church under their wing. So Konstantin Ostrozhsky managed to persuade the abbot of the monastery in which Job served to send the scribe to the secluded Dubensky monastery, which belonged to the prince, where the already 30-year-old novice was chosen as abbot. The period at the Dubensky Monastery is marked by extensive educational activities. The monastic printing house produces printed works of the holy fathers, Orthodox treatises and even the Bible in Slavic, the so-called “Ostrozh Bible”. However, after 20 years as abbot, Job Pochaevsky decides to leave the monastery and go to the secluded Pochaev monastery, famous for its icon of the Mother of God working miracles. The manifestation of a persistent spiritual core leads to Job becoming the abbot of this monastery. For 50 years he headed the Pochaev Holy Dormition Monastery. The location of the monastery among the mountains allowed the abbot to conduct prayers in complete solitude. During his tenure as abbess, Job was able to expand the number of churches, open a printing house, and continuously resist attacks on the Orthodox Church not only from Catholics, but also from the highest Polish nobility. Job died at the age of 100, having renounced his abbess two years earlier. After the burial, miracles of the saint’s relics located in the Pochaev Lavra were witnessed, including the protection of the monastery from attacks by infidels. His body was found incorrupt. They pray to the monk for a cure for illnesses, for family well-being and for maintaining steadfastness in the faith, to which the saint’s entire life was dedicated.