Cases of neglect and destruction of monuments of sacred architecture are, sadly, encountered quite often. Sometimes the buildings are restored by parishioners of a different religious denomination, while preserving the original appearance of the church. That is what happened in the historic locality of Kokhavyne, in the settlement of Hnizdychiv in the Lviv region.
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| Hnizdychiv. Kokhavyne. Church of the Intercession of the Most Holy Mother of God. The former Ascension kostel. 1894. |
The 18th-century Carmelite monastery of Saint Gerard and the Ascension kostel were born a second time.
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| Hnizdychiv. Kokhavyne. The Redemptorist monastery |
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| Church of the Intercession of the Most Holy Mother of God. The former Ascension kostel. 1894. |
The Zhydachiv Lourdes is regaining its former renown — one of the most famous interdenominational pilgrimage sites of Galicia in the 18th-20th centuries.
The glorious history of the Kokhavyne pearl has been carried down to our days by legends of deep antiquity.
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| Hnizdychiv. Kokhavyne. The entrance to the monastery |
In 1646, Hanna Voiankivska, the landowner of the village of Ruda, was travelling to Zhydachiv. The carriage suddenly stopped; two pairs of horses fell to their knees before an unusual light that poured from an old oak, among whose branches could be seen a holy image of the Mother of God with Jesus on her left arm. Hanna prayed and reported the miraculous event to a priest. The parishioners tried three times to move the icon to the village church, but all in vain — the holy image kept returning to its former place.
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| Hnizdychiv. Kokhavyne. Oaks near the monastery |
This went on for more than 30 years; everyone who passed by the holy place, on foot or driving, uttered a prayer to the Most Holy Virgin.
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| Hnizdychiv. Kokhavyne. The place where the holy image appeared |
Who painted the holy image, and how it ended up in the forest, remained unknown.
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| Hnizdychiv. Kokhavyne. The place where the holy image appeared |
In the 1680s, with donations from the new owners of the estate — Yevstafii, son of the hetman of Ukraine Ivan Vyhovsky, and his wife Tereza — a chapel was built on the site of the apparition of the holy image, where the icon of the Kokhavyne Mother of God was placed with all honours.
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| Hnizdychiv. Kokhavyne. The place where the holy image appeared |
The healing power of the miraculous image became known far beyond the bounds of the town, and thousands of pilgrims were drawn to it.
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| The icon was painted on an oak board measuring 56 by 82 cm. The inscription in Latin reads: "O Mother of God. You are our direct road (to the Lord)". |
The faithful kept arriving from all across the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, and the little chapel could not hold all the pilgrims. Many believers settled in the forest and became hermits, dedicating their lives to prayer to the Queen of Heaven. At the beginning of the 17th century, Ivan Vyhovsky's grandson Kostiantyn built the first wooden kostel and a house for the priest. Part of the lands this scion of the noble family granted to the Carmelite fathers for the monastery of Saint Gerard.
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| A pilgrimage to Kokhavyne. Author — Napoleon Orda |
In 1789, in the time of Austrian rule, the monastery was dissolved and awaited its reopening until 1855. In the second half of the 19th century, after the long neglect of the wooden abode, the need arose to build a stone kostel, but the erection of the church dragged on for many long years. The donations and the proceeds from the sale of the oak timber sufficed only up to the level of the windows, and the walls stood without a roof for several years. The Kokhavyne shrine fell into decline.
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| Kokhavyne. The Redemptorist monastery |
The young priest Jan Trzopinski was given a parish where drunkenness, rather than prayer, flourished. For the spiritual healing of the population he invited the Jesuit fathers and completed the building of the church, whose consecration took place in 1894.
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| Hnizdychiv. Kokhavyne. Church of the Intercession of the Most Holy Mother of God. 1894. |
An organ was brought from Silesia, and the liturgies resumed.
Publications in church literature testify that more than 3,000 believers of the Ukrainian, Polish and Armenian churches came to the consecration.
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| The clock on the bell tower |
For the arriving pilgrims to venerate the holy image, Jan Trzopinski built a house,
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| Kokhavyne. The cells and the house for pilgrims |
and, in place of the old chapel, a new one in the Gothic style.
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| The chapel was built in 1902. It replaced its wooden predecessor, built in 1680 on the site of the oak on which the image of the Virgin Mary appeared in 1646. |
The priest gathered testimonies of believers' healing and cases of the icon of the Kokhavyne Mother of God interceding. He sent the documentary confirmations of the miracle to the archbishop in Lviv. In 1912, on the day of the Assumption of the Mother of God, the image was crowned with golden papal crowns. An unheard-of number of believers came to the celebration — 180,000, not counting those who arrived on foot and by horse-drawn transport.
With the outbreak of the Second World War, the monks, to preserve the icon, hid it and took it to Poland, where it remains to this day in the town of Gliwice, in St. Bartholomew's kostel. The residents of the settlement recall that the Hitlerites fired on people from the roof of the kostel. With the coming of the Bolshevik authorities, the church was turned into a grain warehouse and a flax store.
The militant atheists tried to demolish the tower with tractors, but this proved beyond the power of the collective-farm machinery.
In the monastery cells they housed a boarding school for children with developmental disabilities.
The atheists closed the chapel and filled the well with stones. In the 1990s the monastery was handed over to the Redemptorist fathers.
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| Kokhavyne. Church of the Intercession of the Most Holy Mother of God. 1894. Sculptures of Saints Peter and Paul |
Here the monks of the Catholic order undergo their novitiate and prepare to enter the seminary.
With the emergence of the UGCC from the underground, the kostel was consecrated anew in honour of the Intercession of the Most Holy Mother of God.
The monks, together with the faithful, are restoring the shrine by their own efforts. On the walls of the church, the murals painted in 1928-1929 by the renowned Polish artist of Ukrainian origin Julian Krupski have survived.
The church holds two icons brought on 30 May 2000 by former residents of Kokhavyne from Poland: an exact copy of the icon of the Kokhavyne Mother of God and a copy of the icon of the Mother of God of Perpetual Help, painted in 1865.
The bell tower is open, and you can climb it to see the holy places from a bird's-eye view.
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| Kokhavyne. Church of the Intercession of the Most Holy Mother of God. 1894. The bell tower |
The monastery's inhabitants cleaned out the well and found unexploded grenades in it. The fighters against religion failed to destroy the holy spring, and its tasty water is available to the traveller. On the well frame stands the holy image of the Kokhavyne Mother of God.
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| Kokhavyne. The holy spring on the site of the apparition of the holy image |
Sadly, the presbytery building could not be saved and was dismantled for its bricks.
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| Kokhavyne. The ruined presbytery |
The historic name of Kokhavyne — a district of the settlement of Hnizdychiv — has been restored, and its spiritual and religious centre has once again become a place of pilgrimage.
You can get to the monastery from Zhydachiv or
Stryi by scheduled bus or by the Stryi-Khodoriv suburban train to Hnizdychiv station.
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| Hnizdychiv. The signpost |
Then, along Pryvokzalna Street, the road takes 10 minutes to the monastery gate. The entrance is always open.
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| Hnizdychiv. The Redemptorist monastery |
Address: Hnizdychiv settlement, Zhydachiv district, Lviv region, 4 Yaroslava Mudroho Street.
Coordinates: 49°19'2"N 24°6'8"E
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