UKRAINIAN MOTHER TERESA OF CALCUTA

 

Now that we start a new month (where did January go?) it is time to get back to our saints, the real purpose of this Blog.

BL. JOSOPHATA (MICHAELINA) HORDASHEVSKA, another new Ukrainian saint, was born 20 November 1869 in Lviv ( then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire now Ukraine), into a family who were members of the Ukrainian Catholic Church. At the age of 18, she considered consecrating her life to God in a contemplative monastery of the Basilian nuns, then the only Eastern-rite women's religious congregation.

She attended a spiritual retreat which was preached by a Basilian monk, Jeremiah Lomnytskyj, whose spiritual guidance she sought. With his permission, she took a private vow of chastity for one year. She was to renew this vow twice.

Ethnic Ukrainians, living under the Austro-Hungarian Empire, were very poor, both materially and spiritually. Women and children were especially neglected. Immorality, illiteracy, superstition, and drunkenness were rampant in the villages.

Father Lomnytsky and co-founder Father Kyrylo Seletsky, pastor of Zhuzheliany, seeing that there was a need for active religious sisters to meet the social needs of the poor and needy faithful of the church, had decided to establish a women's congregation which would follow an active life of service and felt that Michaelina would be an appropriate candidate to found such a congregation.

When she agreed, she was sent in June 1892 to the Polish Roman Catholic Felician Sisters to experience the life of community which followed an active consecrated life.

She returned to Lviv two months later and, on 24 August 1892, took the religious habit of the new congregation, receiving the name Josaphata, in honor of the Ukrainian Catholic martyr Josaphat Kuntsevych (see Blog 10/30/24).

Sister Josaphat then went to Zhuzhelyany, and at the age of 22 became the first Superior of the seven young women who had been recruited for the new institute, training them in the spirit and charism of the Sisters Servants: "Serve your people where the need is greatest".

For the rest of her life, she led the new congregation, through its growth and development. She and her new congregation established daycare centers for children, supplied basic medicines, taught children to read and write, taught the bible and lives of the saints to adults and children, sewed vestments for the clergy, encouraged upkeep of churches, and cared for the sick during cholera and typhus epidemics.

She even sent sisters abroad. In 1902, four sisters were sent to Canada to serve the Ukrainian immigrants. By 1906, the Sisters Servants were in Croatia, and by 1911, they were in Brazil.

By 1902, the congregation numbered 128 sisters, in 26 convents across the country. They were able to hold their first General Chapter in August of that year, at which Bl. Jpsophata was elected the first superior general of the congregation, 

Bl. Josaphata’s life was filled with hardships and sufferings: trials that failed to neither discourage her energetic spirit nor her inner joy and peace. 

Internal divisions led the blessed to tender her resignation to the Metropolitan Archbishop of Lviv. Under the new superior general appointed by the Metropolitan Archbishop, she and her natural sister, Arsenia, were denied permission to take permanent vows. 

Due to her canonical status of still being in temporary vows, Bl. Josophata was ineligible to participate in the next General Chapter of the congregation. Nonetheless, she was elected vicaress general of the congregation in absentia, with the delegates of the chapter petitioning the metropolitan that she be allowed to make her permanent vows. This request was granted, and she did so the following day, 11 May 1909, and assumed the office to which she had been voted.

Bl. Josaphata suffered stoically as her body was ravaged by painful tuberculosis of the bone and she died at the age of 49 on April 7, 1919. Her  remains were transferred in 1982 from the closed and abandoned cemetery in Chervonohrad (formerly Krystynopil), Ukraine to the Generalate of the Sisters Servants of Mary Immaculate in Rome. There, hundreds of people come to pray for the intercession of Blessed Josaphata for their physical and spiritual needs.

According to the testimony of Philomena Yuskiv, "She showed her love for her people through her heart-felt desire to lift them up morally and spiritually; she taught children, youth and women, served the sick, visited the poor and needy, taught liturgical chant and looked after the Church's beauty." Numerous miracles are ascribed due to her intercession after her death.

On 27 June 2001, she was proclaimed Blessed by St. Pope John Paul II in Lviv, in a beatification ceremony during the Holy Liturgy in the Byzantine rite. Over 1 million people attended. Bl.Josaphata speaks to modern people about the beauty of a radical life according to the Gospel and the need for compassion and solidarity with those in need. She shows that even small acts of love can change the world