Hi friends! Today I want to tell you about how I and my wife walked a pilgrimage with a group of pilgrims to a monastery near Lviv. I have never participated in such events before, but my wife has already had this experience. She had previously participated in the same kind of pilgrimage , but a few years ago, and now she wanted to do it again. I decided to support my wife and walk more than 50 km with her on two days, considering that I love hiking.
All participants of the meeting gathered in Lviv, near the church of St. Michael the Archangel, located near the Powder Tower. At first, we were all divided into groups and each group got its own leader and number. The groups started leaving the gathering place in a growing order, from first to larger. We were on the road, so we were escorted by the police and temporarily stopped the traffic until all the people passed. We passed Lysenko Street, turned to Lychakivska Street and walked along it to the turn to the Glynyanskyj Tract. On the street Glynyanskyj Tract we reached the exit from Lviv and reached the village Miklashev, where in front of the Church of the Blessed Virgin Mary we made the first halt.
I forgot to say that we went with a minimal set of things in our backpacks, we only had water, sandwiches and outerwear. And our sleeping bags, sleeping mats and other heavy things went in a special truck that went to the destination on the highway. When we left the Lviv borders, we walked mostly on dirt roads. The dry and sunny weather made it easy to walk the dirt road. In case of rain it would be a real swamp, but this time we were lucky.
For the first day of the hike, we walked 36 km and reached the village of Glinyany, where we stayed overnight at a local school building. We had dinner there, which was cooked in a mobile kitchen and went to bed in one of the school's classes. We used our sleeping bags and sleeping mats, we picked them up on a truck that was already waiting for us in the schoolyard.
In the morning, after breakfast and morning mass in the local church, we went on. Today we walked much less than yesterday - 15.5km, so by the evening we were in the monastery, Univsky Lavra.
The Holy Assumption Unique Lavra of the Studio Charter is one of the oldest monastery complexes of Ukraine, the central monastery of the Halych Diocese during the XIV-XVIII centuries, the center of the monastic life of the monks of the Studio Charter. The monastery was founded at the end of XIV century Prince Fedor Lubartovich, who was also his patron.
Nowadays the monks of Univ Lavra take care of orphans of school age, teach catechism of children in the local school, are engaged in plant growing, animal husbandry, horticulture, beekeeping. The monastery's workshop produces church articles (candles, offices and coal for incense).
Every year there is a pilgrimage to the monastery, with thousands of pilgrims arriving there. The pilgrimage that my wife and I were part of was an anniversary, twenty-fifth. It is especially beautiful there in the evening when pilgrims bypass the territory of the monastery with candles in their hands. Unfortunately, my photos cannot convey this beauty.
After spending the night in the monastery, we had a lot of free time in the morning. After visiting all the local shrines, we were just sitting on a bench in the monastery courtyard when the cat approached us first and then the dogs we took turns stroking.
We got back to Lviv by bus, there was no need to walk back on foot.
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