Twenty four years ago today, April 27, 1987 the Blessed Mother allegedly appeared in Hrushiv Ukraine with a warning and words of consolation.
She came on the Feast of the Ascension, exactly one year after the nuclear reactor disaster at Chernobyl saying "Do not forget those who have died...Chernobyl is a reminder and a sign for the whole world."
In 1990 while producing a television documentary in Ukraine, I visited Hrushi and interviewed a handful of people who had witnessed the apparition above the church of the Holy Trinity. In all, some five hundred thousand witnesses claimed to have seen the Virgin Mary over a four month period.
Mary apparently told them she came to thank the Ukrainian people because they had suffered so much at the hands of a raging lion who had been prowling around seeking whom he could devour. She said their suffering would come to an end and one day Ukraine would become an independent state.
She then urged disciplined, Christian fortitude, "Forgive your enemies. Through you and the blood of the martyrs will come the conversion of Russia. Repent and Love one another...Teach the children to pray. Teach them to live in truth and live yourselves in truth. Say the Rosary. It is the weapon against Satan. He fears the Rosary. Recite the Rosary at any gathering of people."
The apparitions were significant because 73 years before the Blessed Mother appeared in the same village and warned, "There will be a war. Russia will become a Godless country and Ukraine, as a nation, will suffer terribly for 80 years and will live through the world wars, but it will be free afterward."
Her prediction came to pass after decades of diabolical slavery to the notorious KGB. Ukraine became an independent, democratic state on August 24, 1991.
I ran across the notes I took while working in Ukraine and I was reminded of the power of persistent, persevering prayer in the face of the most outrageous odds... And of the immensity of God's unending mercy and his desire to let us know that he is with us-even when everyone and everything seems to be against us.
So let us all remember the simple yet powerful words she proclaimed in that faraway village, "The eternal God is calling you!"
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