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Sofia Andrukhovych
In the Basilian Fathers’
monastery of the Exaltation
of the Holy Cross in Buchach,
on Mt. Fedir, it was like
this. The novice Benedict
was walking at three in the
morning from his cell located
in the building adjacent to the
church on the right—he was
on his way to feed the horses
in the stables—and he heard
through the walls decorated
with pilasters with gilded
Corynthian capitals the wings
of angels rustling beyond the
eighteenth-century tempera
religious paintings. He did
not doubt the nature of those
sounds for a moment. It was
like the pigeons in the belfry,
Benedict said, only the size of
the birds had to equal human.
In
the
morning
they
discovered that a lock of
hair from the severed head
of John the Baptist vanished
without a trace, as did the
relics of St. Munditia, a
needle from the Crown of
Thorns, and a piece of the
sponge with which they gave
Jesus the vinegar to drink. All
these priceless divine objects
vanished together with a
golden chest encrusted with
precious stones.
Rabbi David Moshe, founder
of the Society for the Study
of the Torah in Chortkiv,
reported the disappearance,
from the secret hiding place
in the Old Synagogue, of a
silver sugar bowl on curved
feet, decorated with vegetal
patterns, which was used
for storing the etrog for
Sukkot. True, something
else was inside it at the
time, but this, according to
the Rabbi, was a secret that
could not be divulged at any
circumstances.
When from the synagogue in
Brody, the famed city of open
doors and of the great Baal