The Canonization and Relics of St. Gabriel

The afterlife of St. Gabriel’s cult: how his grave in the courtyard of Samtavro drew pilgrims from the day of his burial — a veneration that grew “from below,” before any act of the Church — and how, only seventeen years after his death, the Holy Synod of the Georgian Orthodox Church glorified him on 20 December 2012 as “Holy Father Saint Gabriel, Confessor and Fool-for-Christ,” with feasts on 2 November (his repose) and 22 February (the uncovering of his relics). His relics were uncovered at Samtavro on 22 February 2014 and translated in procession to Svetitskhoveli and the Holy Trinity (Sameba) Cathedral before being returned and reburied at the convent. The veneration here is densely documented by contemporaneous reportage; the devotional amplifications — a tour of “four cathedrals,” an “incorrupt body” — are named where that reportage does not bear them.

Tradition: Georgian Orthodox (canonized 2012)

The Cult Before the Canonization

St. Gabriel’s glorification followed his veneration; it did not create it. From the moment of his burial in 1995, the coffinless grave in the Samtavro courtyard (see Repose (1995)) became a place of pilgrimage, and the stream of visitors who had come to his cell in life began to come to his tomb in death. The accounts describe the grave drawing pilgrims in great numbers — on the order of a hundred or more a day — long before the Church acted (Larisa Khrustalyeva, Elder Gabriel [Urgebadze]: His Life, Miracles, and Service after his Death, OrthoChristian.com, art. 65883).

This is the cult-before-canon pattern that runs through Orthodox hagiography: the people venerate first, and the Church’s act of glorification ratifies a devotion already alive rather than commanding a new one. In St. Gabriel’s case the pattern is unusually visible, because the whole sequence falls within living memory and within reach of documentation — the queues at the grave, the reported answers to prayer, the spread of his image and sayings through Georgia and into Russia, all of it gathering in the seventeen years between his death and his canonization. The grew-from-below character of the cult is treated more fully in A Beloved Modern Saint; what matters here is that by 2012 the Church was responding to a fact on the ground.

The Glorification of 20 December 2012

On 20 December 2012, the Holy Synod of the Georgian Orthodox Church numbered St. Gabriel among the saints (John Sanidopoulos, “Saint Gabriel, Confessor and Fool for Christ,” Mystagogy Resource Center, johnsanidopoulos.com, 21 December 2012; the Georgian Orthodox Church canonization announcement, georgianorthodoxchurch.wordpress.com). He was glorified under the title “Holy Father Saint Gabriel, Confessor and Fool-for-Christ” — in Georgian joining aghmsarebeli (confessor) and salosi (fool-for-Christ), the two strands of his witness: the confessor of the 1965 protest and interrogation (see The Cost of Witness) and the fool-for-Christ of his whole manner of life.

The glorification was remarkably swift — only seventeen years after his death. By the ordinary rhythm of Orthodox canonization, in which veneration is often allowed to settle for generations or centuries before the Church acts, seventeen years is very short, and it is a measure both of the intensity of the popular cult and of the Georgian Church’s confidence in him.

[Disputed: the canonization is universally attributed to the Holy Synod of the Georgian Orthodox Church, over which Catholicos-Patriarch Ilia II presides ex officio, and it is reasonable to understand the act as taken under his presidency. But no accessible English-language source reproduces a signed synodal decree naming Ilia II as the celebrant of the glorification; the act is reported as that of “the Holy Synod” as a body (Sanidopoulos, Mystagogy; the Georgian Orthodox Church announcement). This guide therefore attributes the canonization to the Synod, and notes Ilia II’s presidency of that Synod, without asserting a personal celebrant beyond what the sources document.]

The Two Feast Days

St. Gabriel is commemorated on two days, a pattern common to saints whose relics have been solemnly uncovered.

The principal feast is 2 November (O.S. 20 October), the day of his repose — the dies natalis by which a saint is chiefly commemorated. At the canonization this was fixed as his feast: Sanidopoulos reports plainly that “his feastday will be celebrated on November 2nd, the day of his repose” (Mystagogy, 21 December 2012).

The second commemoration is 22 February, marking the uncovering of his relics in 2014 (below). The festal service for this day is kept at Samtavro on the anniversary of the uncovering (OrthoChristian.com, art. 90956). A saint thus gathers two days into the calendar — the day he entered eternal life, and the day his body was raised from the earth to the altar.

The Uncovering of the Relics, 22 February 2014

On 22 February 2014, at Samtavro Convent in Mtskheta, the relics of St. Gabriel were uncovered — his body raised from the courtyard grave in which it had lain since 1995. The fullest contemporaneous account is the eyewitness report of Tamari Manelashvili (OrthoChristian.com / Pravoslavie.ru, art. 68711, 24 February 2014), written within days of the event.

On the same day, the relics were translated in a cross-procession the short distance to Svetitskhoveli Cathedral — the patriarchal cathedral of Mtskheta, the holiest church in Georgia, raised over the tomb of the Robe of Christ — for the veneration of the faithful (Manelashvili, art. 68711). From there the relics were carried to the capital: to the Holy Trinity (Sameba) Cathedral in Tbilisi, the great modern cathedral of the Georgian Church, from about 24 February, where the stay was extended to accommodate the crowds that came to venerate them (OrthoChristian.com, art. 69675). After this translation the relics were returned to Samtavro and reburied, now in a crypt at the convent prepared to receive them, around 1 April 2014 (OrthoChristian.com, art. 69675). The body that had been buried without a coffin in the open courtyard was thus, nineteen years later, raised, carried through the two greatest churches of Georgia, and laid to rest again at the home of his eldership — no longer underfoot, but enshrined.

[Disputed: Wikipedia states that the body was toured around “four major Orthodox cathedrals.” The contemporaneous 2014 eyewitness reports name only two — Svetitskhoveli at Mtskheta and the Holy Trinity (Sameba) Cathedral at Tbilisi (Manelashvili, art. 68711; OrthoChristian art. 69675). The figure of “four” is uncorroborated by the reportage closest to the event and should be treated with caution.]

The Question of Incorruption

The relics of St. Gabriel are sometimes described in devotional literature as incorrupt — preserved from decay, a sign the Church reads as a token of sanctity. The contemporaneous record does not support this in the form it is usually given, and the distinction matters.

[Disputed: Wikipedia and some devotional sources call the relics “incorrupt,” but the contemporaneous 2014 reportage does not describe an incorrupt body. Sanidopoulos, reporting after the uncovering, notes only that the relic rests in a sealed wooden shrine (Mystagogy), and the eyewitness uncovering reports (Manelashvili, art. 68711; OrthoChristian art. 69675) do not assert bodily incorruption. The specific, recurring devotional claim is narrower: that his blood — not his body — remained incorrupt, an account given by Dr. Zurab Varazi (via Archpriest David) and reported in Khrustalyeva’s life (OrthoChristian art. 65883). The blood-claim is a second-hand devotional report, treated fully in Accounts of Insight; it should be distinguished from any claim of bodily incorruption, which the 2014 reports do not bear out.]

The discipline here is the discipline of the whole collection: this guide reports what the named witnesses attest and what the contemporaneous record documents, and it does not smooth the narrower, second-hand blood-claim into the broader, unsupported claim of an incorrupt body. The veneration is the documented fact; the precise physical claim is reported as exactly what its sources say and no more, per the repository Methodology §3.5.

The Image on the Floor

A further wonder attached itself to the place where the relics had rested. After the uncovering, an image of St. Gabriel was reported to have appeared on the floor of the grave or crypt where his body had lain, and Patriarch Ilia II is reported to have declared this image “officially a miracle” (“The Georgian Saint Revered for Fighting Soviet Communism,” Religion Unplugged, 2019).

This guide attributes the declaration; it does not certify the miracle. The report is that the Patriarch pronounced the image miraculous; what the Patriarch is reported to have said is a documentable fact, while the supernatural status of the image is a claim the guide relays to its source rather than affirms in its own voice, per METHODOLOGY §3.5. The pattern is the one that governs every wonder in this collection: the witness is named, the claim is reported, and the certification is left to the Church and to the reader.

The Shape of the Glorification

The glorification of St. Gabriel is, like his death, of a piece with his life. The cult grew from the grave he had asked to make humble; the Church followed the people with unusual speed; the relics he had ordered buried without a coffin were raised and carried through the holiest churches of Georgia; and the wonders reported around them are held, in this account, to the measure of their witnesses. He is now kept twice in the Georgian calendar — on the day he died and on the day his body was raised — a confessor and fool-for-Christ glorified within the memory of those who had known him, and venerated, far beyond Georgia, as one of the great elders of the twentieth century (see A Beloved Modern Saint).

See Also

References

  • Sanidopoulos, John. “Saint Gabriel, Confessor and Fool for Christ.” Mystagogy Resource Center (johnsanidopoulos.com), 21 December 2012. The canonization of 20 December 2012 by the Holy Synod; the title “Confessor and Fool for Christ”; the feast on 2 November, “the day of his repose”; the relic in a “sealed wooden shrine.”
  • Georgian Orthodox Church canonization announcement (georgianorthodoxchurch.wordpress.com). The act of the Holy Synod glorifying St. Gabriel.
  • Manelashvili, Tamari. [Eyewitness report of the uncovering of the relics of St. Gabriel.] OrthoChristian.com / Pravoslavie.ru, art. 68711, 24 February 2014. The uncovering at Samtavro on 22 February 2014 and the same-day cross-procession to Svetitskhoveli.
  • [Report on the translation and reburial of the relics of St. Gabriel.] OrthoChristian.com, art. 69675. The translation to the Holy Trinity (Sameba) Cathedral in Tbilisi, the extension of the stay for the crowds, and the return and reburial in a crypt at Samtavro (c. 1 April 2014).
  • [Festal service for the uncovering of the relics of St. Gabriel.] OrthoChristian.com, art. 90956. The 22 February commemoration kept at Samtavro on the anniversary of the uncovering.
  • Khrustalyeva, Larisa. Elder Gabriel (Urgebadze): His Life, Miracles, and Service after his Death. Trans. Dimitra Dwelley. OrthoChristian.com, art. 65883, 19 November 2013. The hundred-plus daily pilgrims to the grave; the Dr. Zurab Varazi (via Archpriest David) account of the incorrupt blood.
  • “Gabriel Urgebadze.” Wikipedia (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gabriel_Urgebadze). The disputed “four major Orthodox cathedrals” and the “incorrupt” characterization of the relics.
  • “The Georgian Saint Revered for Fighting Soviet Communism.” Religion Unplugged, 2019 (religionunplugged.com). Patriarch Ilia II reportedly declaring the floor-image “officially a miracle.”