My Ukraine Daughter: Apparitions of Mary

Apparitions of Mary in Ukraine

Kiev (Ukraine). In 1073, the icon of Kievo-Pecherskaya was transported to a church in Kiev. According to the narratives, it was painted by artists to whom the Virgin appeared in the church of Blachernes in Constantinople. Mary is said to have provided them with the gold needed to decorate the church where she wished to be placed.

Pochaiev (Ukraine). On April 17, 1198, a presumed apparition of the Virgin to a shepherdess and a monk. Several miracles and healings are reported. A convent of the order of Saint Basil is built in honor of the Virgin. Later, in the same city, around 1240, the Virgin appears in a pillar of fire on Pochaiev Mountain, 360 km west of Kiev, before monks from the Dormition Monastery who were fleeing the invaded city of Kiev. The imprint of the Virgin’s right foot, filled with curative water, is said to have been found at the site.In the centuries that followed, on July 23, 1675, the Dormition Monastery was surrounded by Tatar troops. The monks sang the hymn of the *Akathistos* to the Virgin. Suddenly, they *saw the Mother of God* above their church, accompanied by some angels, in *a great light*, holding a long veil. The invaders fled.In Hrushiv, in the year 1840, a cholera epidemic broke out in the locality, causing many victims. A woman had a dream in which the Virgin asked her to clean a poisoned well: *Celebrate a mass, and the death will cease to affect the village*. And that is what happened: the epidemic ceased, and near the spring, in 1855, a small sanctuary dedicated to the *Holy Trinity* was erected. In 1901, the Holy See granted pilgrims an indulgence on certain feast days.On May 12, 1914, a supposed apparition of the Virgin occurred to twenty-two people. A message prophesied *the imminent outbreak of the First World War*, punishments for the world, and the loss of Ukrainian sovereignty *for eight years*, after which faith would triumph and the country would be free again.In 1958, during the communist period, the sanctuary was closed, abandoned, and desecrated, but pilgrims continued to visit it.In Kiev, in the early decades of the 20th century, a young woman questioned her vocation and received these words: *Endure, endure, from the beginning to the end. You will not live in a monastery. You will not have money with you. You will live from what you receive. You will not have a roof!* This story reached us through an Orthodox student in the Soviet Union, who recalls in his diary a meeting with this *wandering nun* in front of Saint Andrew’s Church in Kiev in 1958.In Seredne, on December 20, 1953, a girl named Hamsya was praying in the parish church when she had a vision: *I saw the Holy Virgin standing, dressed in a white dress with a wide cloth belt of blue. Twelve stars formed a circle around her head that shone in the sky. It was impossible to fix the brilliance of her beauty*. The seer adds that she saw *small wells of clear water* and heard: *My daughter, my daughter, my daughter, see how much abundance of grace I possess. But I have no one to give them to, for there are many girls and boys who turn away from me, and no one asks me anything in this jubilee year*. We recall that Pope Pius XII, with the Encyclical *Fulgens Corona*, proclaims in the Church the first Marian Year in its history.

I desired to obtain great forgiveness for sinners. The disaster is upon you as in the days of Noah. The destruction will not come upon you with water, but with fire. A vast tongue of fire will destroy the sinful nations before God. Since the creation of the world, there has never been such a great fall as there is today. It is the kingdom of Satan. I will dwell on this mountain from which I see all the universe and all the sinners, and from here I will distribute my graces. Whoever comes repentant of their sins and receives this water with faith will be healed by me in soul and body.

On December 22, 1954, the Virgin announced: “My daughter, my daughter Ukraine, I have come to you, you are the most enslaved, you are the one who has suffered the most for the faith in Christ. I have come towards you!”

Again in 1987, in Hrushiv, on April 26, at 40 km from Lviv, in front of a chapel that had not been used for about thirty years, Maria Kizyne, 11 years old, had visions of the Virgin. According to the account of the seer: “I immediately saw, on one side of the octagonal tower above the chapel’s dome, a figure: a woman in black.”

The seer, terrified, ran back inside, adds the account of the girl’s mother. In the following days, several witnesses saw above the chapel an image similar to the icon of the Virgin with the Child Jesus in her arms, glowing surrounded by light.

She ascended above the chapel and then even higher in the sky, reports a witness. The Virgin only spoke with the children and disappeared when adults appeared. She taught the little ones the fundamentals of faith and how to pray. She appeared one last time in a glow of light, with Christ in her arms, miraculously imprinting her Son on the chapel’s glass, explains another witness.> A message was delivered: “My daughter, my daughter Ukraine, I come to meet you. You are the smallest in slavery, the one who has suffered most for the faith in Christ.” During the following weeks, many people also saw her. From May 9 to 12, Josyp Terelya, born in Ukraine in the Carpathian region in October 1943, a political prisoner for twenty-three years, testifies to having had seven apparitions of Mary:In February 1972, I was in prison. The room was terribly cold. I was in pain to the tips of my hair. A suspended lamp illuminated the room. I took off the net and tried to warm my hands, but the guard saw me through the door. He turned off the light. I couldn’t move any limb. I lay down on the bed to die. At that moment, I felt the warm touch of a woman’s hand, sweet as milk. I was warming up. I felt a little heat in the room too. I thought it was an illusion or I was going to die. But then I heard the voice: “You called me and I came to you. You don’t believe it’s me.” At that moment, I saw a young woman in front of me. It was her, for the first time. In total, I saw the Mother of God seven times.While in prison, and six times in Hrushiv, I did not see her hair. Her head was covered with a veil. On that first occasion, she told me: You will not be freed from this prison. You have only made half the journey, but do not fear, I am with you.

I rose and began to walk. I was hot. I took off my shirt and was left in just a T-shirt. The guard watched me through the door, astonished. I saw her, in the darkness, as the reader sees her now. Others saw as I did. I thought I heard her voice. She asked us to pray, to teach the children the prayer and the rosary to convert those who do not believe.

On May 9, 1987, I left for Hrushiv. I went there thinking I would see nothing. But when I arrived, we saw an unusual light that I could not explain. There was a large crowd before dawn. I stayed until May 12. A team of Moscow filmmakers was there. I heard the message she had directed to Seredne in Ukraine, a century after Lourdes on December 22, 1954: Ukraine, my daughter, I have come to you.

Josyp Terelya, a militant of the clandestine Greek-Catholic Church, son of communist parents, was imprisoned four times for a total of twenty-three years and four months, with rare moments of freedom between 1962 and 1987. During this period, he married and became a father of three children. On May 13, 1987, some viewers in the region were watching a broadcast about these facts. Suddenly, many saw the Virgin Mary appear on their television screens, at a location being watched by the police. The Metropolitan of Lviv kept his distance from the subject and did not open any investigation.

The communist authorities proposed to release him from prison if he revealed what really happened. But his answer was always the same: I saw the Mother of God. This led to him remaining detained as he was considered a fanatic. Josyp Terelya went into exile in America, met Pope Saint John Paul II. These apparitions had an extraordinary echo in contrast with the modesty of the seer: an ordinary girl. The time was the threshold of perestroika, a discreet relaxation was beginning. The police were present, but did not intervene when the crowd stormed the place. If, in previous times in Russia, apparitions were immediately crushed by the pressure of the crowd instead of repression, these were the first ones in which the courage of the faithful, thirsty for seventy years of atheism, combined with the new and enigmatic moderation of the police, created a new situation with international repercussions.

The phenomenon of Marian apparitions and their discernment by the Church is addressed in the encyclical Redemptoris Mater.

Redemptoris Mater by John Paul II, which emphasizes Mary’s role as a maternal sign and presence in the history of peoples.Deepen your studies: explore Mariology, Marian theology, Marian apparitions, and Post-Graduate Studies in Mariology.