In Truskavets Over 15 Thousand Faithful Prayed Before Hlyniany’s Miraculous Icon
On February 24, in the town of Truskavets of Lviv Region, with the support of the charitable fund Truskavchany, the miraculous icon of the Crucifixion of Jesus Christ arrived from Hlyniany. Thousands of faithful from nearby cities and villages came to Truskavets in order to touch the sacred icon and to ask for the Lord’s generous graces. As reported Fr. Vasyl Nester, the head of the Eparchial Commission on Family Matters of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, the icon will stay in Truskavets till March 2. During seven days the icon visited the three churches of Truskavets: the Veil of the Holy Mother of God, Saint Mykolai, and Saint Prophet Elijah. According to the preliminary estimates of the clergy in the Church of Saint Mykolay the Wonderworker alone came over 10 thousand faithful to the icon to pray.
The miraculous icon will visit also the villages of Monastyrok Lishnyanskyi, Lishnia, following which it will be transported to Drohobych to the Church of Blessed Vitalii, Yakym, and Severyn, martyrs of Drohobych. From here the icon will be carried to the Cathedral of the Holy Trinity.
Background information:
On January 6, 1936, on Christmas Eve, three seven-year-old girls – Isabella Novak, Yaroslava Pankiv, and Bohdana Markevych – who were playing in a church yard noticed a strange illumination that radiated through the windows of the church. The children thought that a fire broke out in the old church, and quickly ran to the church’s ministrant Ivan Tsiisletsinskyi, who had the keys to the church. With trembling hands the man opened the church, and when he glanced on the icon behind the altar, he began to cry and pray. The black background of the Crucifixion was changing into a rainbow, light moved on it up and down.
The self-restoration of the image was witnessed by two spiritual commissions that arrived in Glynyany after the appeal of the pastor of the church Fr. Volodymyr Levytskyi. One commission was from Krakow; the second was from Lviv. The texts of the protocols of questioning the witnesses and the inspection of the icon of the Crucifixion from June 11, 1936, have remained. Both commissions witnessed that the restoration of the icon of the Crucifixion was not done by human hands, but by God’s force. Information about the restored icon was passed to Rome. The Holy Father Pope Pius XI crowned the icon of the “Crucifixion” and gave the church the right to conduct of five remittance prayers per year.
During 1936-1939, 3,000 healings near the Hlyniany’s miraculous icon of the Crucifixion of Christ were documented.
