OUR LADY OF GRUSHEW

Day 348: April 26

Our Lady of Grushew, Ukraine

The Blessed Virgin appeared in 1806, warding off a cholera epidemic and gushing healthy waters at the foot of a willow tree. In memory of this apparition and the miracle, a chapel was built. But the Virgin had already appeared in this village in the sixteenth century at the time of the war of the Cossacks against the King of Poland and pilgrims went there three times a year to ask for forgiveness or healing.

On May 12, 1914, on the eve of the outbreak of World War, the Virgin appeared to 22 peasants. The vision lasted until the next day. The visionaries received a prophetic message, which foretold painful times for the world and for Ukraine in particular. She predicted to them the loss of Ukraine's sovereignty for 80 years: for eight decades there would be suffering and persecution, at the end of which Christendom would triumph and Ukraine would be free again. In addition, she told them that the outbreak of world war was imminent and that Russia would become a country without God.

On April 26, 1987, Our Lady appeared to Maria Kyzyn, a girl of just 12 years old (1976). Maria, as she was leaving home to go to school, noticed a strange light on the deconsecrated chapel (closed to worship by the regime in 1947) that bordered the garden of her house. She paused to observe it, when, suddenly, on one of the faces of the octagonal tower that covers the dome of the chapel, she saw a figure: it was a Woman dressed in black with a Child in her arms.

Our Lady appeared in all respects similar to that of the so-called "Virgin of Tenderness", an icon given around the year 1000 to Vladimir the Great, Prince of Kiev, by his wife Anna, after the conversion of that people to Christianity, culminating with a "mass baptism" in the waters of the Dnieper River. It is the oldest and most venerated sacred image in Ukraine.

The little girl ran back to her mother Miroslava and informed her. The mother came out and, recognizing Our Lady, invited her daughter to kneel and pray. The image of the Virgin remained visible to everyone for a month, sometimes in a window of the bell tower, sometimes on the top of the dome, sometimes in the sky above the church. Direct witnesses of the miraculous event were at least half a million people.

On May 13, the anniversary of the apparition of Fatima, a disparaging report on the phenomenon of Grushew was broadcast on the screens of local television, precisely to discourage pilgrims: but during this program, the image of Our Lady appeared on the video, which all viewers in the region were able to observe.

It should be remembered that the apparition of April 26 occurred on the same day and at the same time as the Chernobyl disaster took place a year earlier. Which might seem a curious coincidence if the Virgin, in one of her warnings, had not made explicit reference to it.

Our Lady gave Maria, in the course of the numerous apparitions that the young visionary had, several messages: sometimes crying she asked for penance for the remission of the sins of humanity; on other occasions she invited prayer and forgiveness for the conversion of Russia; to the recitation of the Holy Rosary, a powerful weapon against Satan. She invited them not to forget those who died in the Chernobyl disaster, which was a warning and a sign for the whole world.

The communist regime did everything to prevent the visionaries from staying on the spot and to discourage pilgrimage: it raised barricades, dug ditches along all the access roads to the village and widened the perimeter of the area forbidden to pilgrims. But all this did not stop the influx of the faithful: a government source spoke of the presence of 45,000 people a day, who came from far away. The church of Hrushiv is Uniate, that is, belonging to the Catholic community of the Greek rite faithful to the Church of Rome and much persecuted by the Soviet regime. As soon as the news of the apparition spread, however, the Orthodox also rushed to the site of the miracle.

The primate of the Ukrainian Church, Cardinal Lubachivsky, although he did not express a definitive judgment on the events in Grushew, appreciated the fact that following the apparitions the faith of the people was strengthened.

It is not the first time that Our Lady has appeared in Ukraine in this post-war period. She appeared 11 times in Seredne, also in western Ukraine, in 1954-55, to a young visionary named Anna, giving her a message that does not differ substantially from those of Fatima and Medjugorje. And last year there was also talk of apparitions in another location near Gruscevo.

It is necessary to reflect on the story of faith and martyrdom lived among Ukrainian Catholics during this terrible "eighty-year period" that is about to end: they have truly deserved the predilection of the Virgin and can celebrate, albeit in silence but with renewed hope, the millennium of Russia's conversion to the Gospel.

St Justin Russolillo Writes...

"You cannot retain only in yourself, O Mary, the divine life of the Incarnate Word that lives in you, but you are prompted by the Spirit to transplant it in all souls."

(Justin Russolillo, Devotional, Vocationist Editions, Pianura, 2009, p. 196)