Unlikely Evangelists
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Josyp Terelya is a Ukrainian Catholic who, along with many other lay people, helped keep the faith alive in the underground church during the communist regime, after most of the clergy had been either killed, imprisoned or expelled. He was zealous and out-spoken and became such a thorn in the side of the KGB that whenever he spoke, he was arrested; whenever he was imprisoned he promptly escaped, even from their maximum security prisons, the church’s answer to Houdini.
Eventually they lost patience and decided to kill him. In solitary confinement, cell 21, they planned to freeze him to death. In this way they could avoid all the paperwork of a formal execution. “It was the middle of winter and they were forcing in frigid air. The walls were coated with ice so thick you could make it ring by tapping an object against it. They stripped me of my winter clothes, leaving me there in a light shirt. In half an hour I felt my jaws freeze shut. I couldn't move them and the very roots of my hair hurt.
My mind was working, I was aware I was freezing and gathered my strength. I climbed the grate on the cell door to warm my head against the ceiling light bulb. The guard on duty, looking through the peephole saw this and switched off the light. I sat on the bed and began to freeze.
There was an old quilt you could see through and I wrapped myself in it. Too weak, I finally lay down, praying and awaiting my death. It was then that I became aware of an intense flash in the room, a very powerful light, and heard what sounded like someone walking in my cell...the cell started to feel warmer. Against my frozen eyelids I felt the palm of a woman’s hand. When the hand lifted I was able to open my eyes. There before me was the Virgin Mary.
“You called to me” she said “and I have come” (She told him when he would be released, that he would be unharmed, and consoled him in this trial) “After the Blessed Virgin disappeared, I took off my shirt and started walking around the cell, that’s how warm it was. I was sweating.
After half an hour the KGB officials and prison hierarchy came to the cell, along with a doctor; all in fur hats and warm coats, they could not believe I was still alive, let alone standing there without a shirt. They were furious and demanded to know what had happened.
I told them the Mother Of God was here with me”... Josyp was released 4 years later, at the time Our Lady had told him and the rest as they say is history, the communist regime is gone, Lubyanka prison is closed, and the sanctuary lamps burn brightly again across Russia, even in the heart of Moscow, drawing the people back to God. During the apparitions of Our Lady in Fatima ,she prophesied that Russia would be converted and her Immaculate heart would triumph, how wonderful to see it being fulfilled before our very eyes !
