Signs of the Times  

      "But who am I that the Mother of my Lord should come to me?"    Luke 1:43


     THE STORY OF JOSEF TERELYA

     Secretly, he prayed.  It was January 1964 and Josyp Terelya had just been transferred to another prison in the Soviet Gulag, one of the more 210 concentration camps and 36 prisons in the Ukraine, where 450,000 people were detained.  This camp was in the Donbas Kom....region.  It was known as PJA-128-22.
     And being caught in prayer here meant one thing--solitary confinement.  In the Gulag, solitary confinement in a closet-sized room.  No windows and barely enough air and dripping moisture everywhere that left a man sick and miserable.  Salt was placed on walls to retain moisture as an added misery.  There was one meal a day which consisted of a small portion of bread and fish and two cups of water, and the challenge in this state of intense hunger is not to lick the salt off the walls, because along with the cold, it could produce fatal results.
      Prayer was  the only survival kit that inmate Terelya trusted.  As he traveled from prison to prison, he kept close to God's heart and always in his mind.  As a religious and political prisoner, this dissident knew that trust in God was something the system could not strip him of.
      Terelya was born Oct. 27, 1943 in the Carpathian Ukraine.  Both his parents were Communists when Stalin's reign of terror was at its peak.  Terelya's family was predominantly Catholic and after the fall of Nazi Germany, some of them worked in the underground to keep the church alive.  Riased by his grandparents, Terelya was nurtured in the faith and his personal role in the underground church became so strong that by age 18, he was branded as an enemy of the state.  IT was the height of irony since Terelya's mother had been employed by the party to eradicate Christianity.
       In the summer of 1947, when Terelya was 6, the Soviets decided to liquidate the Ukrainian Ccatholic church.  At the time, according to Terelya's father's records, there were 700,000 Eastern Rite Catholics in the Carpathian region, 450 churches and chapels, 281 parishes, and 359 priests.  Throughout the UUkraine, there were 2,772 parishes and 4 million faithful.  When Stalin died in 1953, the church had already been decimated and by the mid-1960's, there was nothing left.  More than 10,000 churches throughout the Soviet Empire had been destroyed, and most of the faithful were incarcerated, silenced or dead.
       On Sept. 4, 1962, they came for Terelya,  Even his parents, who were communist party prima donnas couldn't help.  Charged with inciting nationalism, he was sent to the Gulag.  It was the beginning of three decades of imprisonment.  The Soviet prison system stretched from the Ukraine to Siberia to Moldovia and Terelya visited much of it during three decades of subhuman living, beatings and attempted escapes.  Yes, Terelya would escape, but each escape  was followed by recapture and a longer sentence.  Soon, he wasn't just a nationalist--he was an enemy of the Bolsheviks and therefore classified as a high risk prisoner.  Special camps were built for such prisoners, and Terelya soon found himself in the middle of swamps and bogs, places that made escaping virtually impossible.  For inmate Josyp Terelya, death was all but a certainty.
        In prison, the beatings were horrific.  Blood loss and broken bones often left him certain that death was imminent.  Still Terelya continued to pray.  And he continued to survive.  "Glory be to Jesus Christ," he would proclaim, serenading his jailers.  Our Father's, Hail Mary's and Creeds would flow from his lips.  Over time, he survived riots, starvation, psychiatric wards, and even crucifixion.
      Like alexander Solzhenitsyn, Terelya became a living legend in the Gulag system.  The KGB officials and communist hierarchy tried everything short of shooting him, but as his reputation grew, direct termination of his life became an unwise option because officials feared civil retribution or political embarrassment.  Meanwhile, Terelya kept escaping any way possible, even through tunnels.  But his attempts were always fruitless because there was nowhere to go but back to prison.  To isolation cells and surveillance capms, and finally to a special cell where his destiny would unfold.
      On Feb. 12, 1970, at Vladimir Prison in Special Corpus 2, the supernatural intervened in an event that the whole world would learn about.  Vladimir was a cold, stark prison that epitomized the strange horrors of the Gulag.  20 to 30 people would be crammed in 10-by-10 foot cells.  No sunlight.  No heat.  Only artificial light that kept on all day and night to induce terror and mental deterioration--24 hours a ya--day after day after day.
       By then, Terelya was down to 120 pounds, his athletic boxer physique reduced to a shell of his former self.  He ached and developed rheumatism.  His kidneys and liver often faltered, while his many broken bones left him in chronic pain.  Vladimir meant pain--all kinds of pain.  Constant beatings and psychological torture and unending cold.  But even here, Terelya was a renegade.  He kept on praying and kept on agitating the officials.  That was what his life consisted of until Feb. 12, 1970.
       While he was lying prostrate in prayer, suddenly, without warning, he felt an unusual warmth that flowed through his body.  And then, shortly after 10 p.m., Terelya says a brilliant light filled his cell.  It was an unusualy light, something Terelya had never seen before.  It was "like moonlight," he later wrote, but it almost seemed to be a "living light."  Gradually this aureole settled next to his bunk bed and within seconds, Terelya says the Blessed Virgin Mary materialized.  It was a brief appearance, but an unfathomable experience, recalled Terelya.
     Instantly, Terelya remembers that the Virgin filled his distraught body with peace.  All his fears dissipated and were replaced by an intense feeling of security that was emanating.  Mary's blue eyes penetrated his soul and he said she was beyonf beautiful in human terms, unlike anything he had ever known.  She appeared, he would later write, like a "huge jewel in shimmery light--majestic beyond imagination."
      In this apparition, Mary came as a young, peasant looking woman wearing a blue veil and light clothing, despite the cold, damp cell.  And most of all says Terelya, she was real--very, very real.  He said the Virgin spoke to him and told him some of his future.  She instructed him to pray to the "angel of the Ukraine" and then Mary admonished him.  He recorded her words to him:
   "YOU MUST LEARN TO FORGIVE THOSE WHO PERSECUTE YOU THE MOST.  I WILL ALWAYS BE WITH YOU BUT YOU'RE NOT READY.  YOU DOUBT.  YOU QUESTION.  YOU MUST GO THROUGH ALL OF THIS.  YOU MUST CHANGE YOUR LIFE AND LEARN TO UNDERSTAND YOURSELF SO YOU WON'T BE LIKE CAIN.  THERE ARE DIFFICULT YEARS BEFORE YOU OF TRIAL AND HUMILIATION, BUT FROM TODAY ON, YOU'LL NEVER HAVE FEAR.  I SHALL BE WITH YOU.  I HAVE SHED MANY TEARS.  MANY PEOPLE ARE DENYING THE FUTURE LIFE.  THEY ARE DENYING MY SON.  AROUND US IS A VERY INTENSE INTOLERANCE.  RUSSIA CONTINUES TO REMAIN IN DARKNESS AND ERROR AND TO SPREAD HATRED FOR CHRIST THE KING.  UNTIL PEOPLE SINCERELY REPENT AND ACCEPT THE LOVE OF MY SON, THERE WILL NOT BE PEACE BECAUSE PEACE COMES ONLY WHERE THERE IS JUSTICE.  PRAY FOR YOUR ENEMIES.  FORGIVE THEM AND BEFORE YOU THERE WILL BE A VERY BRIGHT ROAD.."

         With this, Josyp said that the Virgin suddenly showed him a spectacular vision.  It was a vision of war.  "I saw fire," Josyp recalled.  "I saw fire and tanks and knew there would be war between Russia and some other country.."   With that, the Virgin vanished.
      Two years later to the day--Feb 12, 1972, it happened again.  This time Mary reportedly intervened to save Terelya's life....

    Part 2 to be continued with more messages....