Smrtonst covid: zanimljivo poređenje Mađarske i BiH. Čemu cjepivo?

 

Zanimljivo je usporediti razvoj smrtnosti (uvijek to treba uzeti uz izvjesnu opreznost, pitanje je vjerodostojnosti izvora i svih pojedinosti određenoj smrtnog slučaja) u Mađarskoj i BiH. Mađarska je jedna od država sa najvećim postotkom cjepljenih u Evropi, dok je slučaj obrnut kod BiH. Ipak, grafike su skoro paralelne u glavnim crtama. 

Čemu je onda poslužilo cjepivo?

Ali je rano za brzi odgovor. Taj za koje dvije godine mogao bi biti katastrofalan s obzirom na cjepljene. U Mađarskoj izgleda da koriste dosta Sputnik, koja ima po onome što se čuje manje štetne posljedice, i možda ih to spasi, ali u drugim zemljama doista može doći do katastrofe.

Izdržite: ne cjepite se. Izdržite jedno vrijeme kao građani drugog reda; poslije će vam biti lakše.

Sermon for the Feast of the Most Holy Trinity, Sunday, May 30th, 2021

 

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen

My dearly beloved in Our Lord,

“Oh, the depth of the riches of the wisdom and of the knowledge of God! How incomprehensible are His judgments and how unsearchable His ways!”

With these words taken from the Epistle of St Paul to the Romans, Holy Church directs our mind towards the great reality of God.

The human mind is capable of knowing the very basic truths about God: His existence and His attributes such as immensity, His being all-powerful, and His providence. But only few individuals come to this knowledge for our mind is too deeply affected by profound darkness, the consequence of original sin. In other words, we are incredibly stupid in the original sense of this term. We are ignorant even of such things as should be plain to us.

“Modern” and “enlightened” man has reached the summits of ignorance, and of stupidity. It has been the sad prerogative of the most recent times that for example atheism – the denial of the existence of God – has been erected as a model of social life. It has even become quite universal by now! Materialist atheism – communism – has set the beginning; the “western” system based on the absolute “values” of human dignity and human freedom has followed suit by separating the state from the Church; the great majority of nominal Catholics has by fondly accepted these ideas. An unbelievable number of Catholics, led by wolves in sheep’s clothing, believe that they adore the same God with other “monotheistic religions”, ignoring and blaspheming the very mystery of the Most holy Trinity.

Just before this universal demise the Vatican Council (1869-1870) had made clear quite a few of the underlying principles. Among other things it proclaimed that, even though the fundamental truths about God can be known by the natural power of the intellect, it was most fitting that these very truths be revealed by God. For in this way they can be known more easily, by all, and without any danger of being mixed up with manifold errors.

Since “modern” man has decided to doubt everything, systematically, he must end up in the greatest confusion of mind. The confusion and degradation of the moral life which we witness today, is but the necessary consequence of this confusion of the intellect. Whoever wants to escape from sinking down into the mire of moral degradation, must necessarily make a great and constant effort to get his ideas and principles right, and to keep them that way.

God’s wisdom and knowledge are unlimited. His ways are unsearchable, i.e. they cannot be understood by our small and limited human reason in their very depths. His judgments are incomprehensible, i.e. we cannot fully see or understand how God’s plans work. We know through Faith that nothing can escape God’s power and will. But on a day-to-day basis we may find it incredibly difficult to admit this truth. In fact, everything that comes our way, anything that crosses our path, is under the total control of the best of Fathers. It is an effect of His providence which has but one ultimate goal: God’s greater glory.

As I tried to hint at the beginning, we must be aware of the fact that our mind is deeply darkened by the foremost consequence of original sin: ignorance in our intellect which God has given us to know the truth. Add to this the wound with which the human will power is left since original sin, malice, and you have the main ingredients of the unsavory staple food of our daily existence! Our condition is that of reasonable creatures who are profoundly ignorant and prone towards evil as a consequence of sin. Only God’s grace, which Jesus-Christ has obtained for us by his Passion and Death on the Cross, can save us from succumbing to the fatal consequences of our state!

“Modern” man pretends that he is naturally good; and that there is no supernatural life. By this he cuts himself from the “true reality”. The natural order is upset because an important element, malice and sin, is cut out from the picture. The supernatural order is becoming sterile and ineffective because it must be superposed to the natural order: gratia supponit naturam – grace pre-supposes nature.

An immediate but often neglected effect of this wrong starting point is that “modern” man has a “paternity problem”. If it is true that God is “our Father in Heaven” - and it is certainly true! - then by cutting himself off from God, man cuts himself from his true Father.

The earthly father contributes to the coming about of a new human being by pro-creation. The heavenly Father immediately creates the soul without which there is no human being!

As human fatherhood creates a lasting relationship between the father and his child, so the divine fatherhood – God creating the human soul – creates a lasting relationship between the human being and his Creator. Either relationship – natural or supernatural – generates automatically certain duties and rights between a father and his child.

In the natural order, a father rejecting his child, or a child breaking with his father, deeply affects the human being. A human “paternity problem” is difficult and makes life difficult. This is a sad, but daily experience nowadays…

In the supernatural order the “paternity problem” mostly goes unrecognized, although its effects are even more disturbing and nefarious.

We witness this as members of the Catholic Church which is deprived of its human authority, the Pope and the jurisdictional Bishops. Authority has a lot to do with paternity. This sad state of affairs – which we cannot repair, but which only God can bring back to normal – has the most far-reaching consequences, as we can see. Daily we suffer from this lack of paternal direction, teaching etc. and our souls mourn and wait while we see so many souls falling into the traps of their disorderly ego, of the world and of the devil…

We are subject to the manifold sequels of the immediate or mediate rejection of God’s fatherly authority: The thrones of the Christian emperor, kings and princes have been overthrown. Christian nations have beheaded their king and father, some physically, all of them morally speaking. Parricide is one of the most horrible crimes. Christian nations doing away with their leaders do not go unpunished – obviously. They are left to their own devices, or they are annihilated.

As we recognize the problem of lacking paternity or authority, there may be little we can do about it on the natural or human level.

But on the spiritual and the supernatural level the solution is never far: For God does not die; and He does not give up those who truly are, and want to be His children.

St Francis of Assisi after his conversion got into trouble with his father who wanted him to succeed him in directing his business. So he ended up giving back everything material he had received from his father, under the regard of his bishop, even the very clothes which he was wearing. Then he said: Henceforth I shall speak more truly: Our Father, who art in Heaven...

Even if we are left without human leadership – and in many regards that is our situation – we can always look up to our Father in Heaven who cannot and will not give us up. Our Lord has reminded us lately – on the feasts of his Ascension and of Pentecost – that he is our advocate with the Father. Through him, and through him alone we have access to the paternal heart of the heavenly Father. Let us glorify Him through our Faith and our good works, under the caring eyes of Our Lady and all the Saints.

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.

P. Arnold Trauner (paterarnold@hotmail.com), njemački i engleski

Apsurd cjepljenja. Primjer Mongolije

 

Prvi graf označava postotak stanovništva neke države koji je primio barem jednu dozu cjepiva. U dva zadnja mjeseca Mongolija, inače s 3,1 milijuna stanovnika, od kojih skoro pola živi u Ulan Batoru, cjepila je skoro 60% pučanstva, ostajući tek iza Izraela. 

Upravo tada i počinje naglo skakati smrtnost, koja se vidi na drugoj grafici. Ali i to je bez smisla, jer radi se o smrtnosti od kojih 2 osobe na milijun. I radi toga sve ovo?

Očita je jedna stvar: ako koja država ne želi cjepivo, bit će isključena iz međunarodnih kredita i ostalih gibanja. I kako će se uvijek u skoro svakoj naciji naći neki izdajnih, tako će svugdje provoditi istu kriminalnu politiku. 

Rješenje je negirati se i ne popustiti. Nažalost, vrlo je vjerojatno da će mnogi platiti glavom svoju ovisnost od glupe kutije. Nakon toga možda neki drugi reagiraju.

Ne puštajte na sebe znak zvjeri.

Sermon for Pentecost, May 23rd, 2021

 

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen

My dearly beloved in Our Lord,

“Consummatum est – it is consummated” (Jn 19:30). Today it is no longer Our Lord who speaks these words with his last breath before he dies; but it is the Church which he has founded in the solemn instant of his redeeming death on the Cross. For today Holy Church commences its action which will only cease with Christ’s last coming to judge the living and the dead.

For us who are members of the Church militant, things keep changing. But these changes are like the changing backdrops or scenery in the “great world theater”; they are superficial and accidental. The substance of world history remains unchanged since the Incarnation and the Redemption.

The entire history from Creation and after the fall of Adam and Eve is simply the preparation and expectation of Christ’s coming, the great Advent: The Old Testament was pregnant with Christ, St Ambrose of Milan says.

The Incarnation of the Second Divine Person, the Word of God, constitutes the fullness of times.

The New Testament and the Church are the continuation of the divine mission which Christ has taken upon himself. Anyone who thinks otherwise, has not the slightest clue about the true sense of history.

St Thomas Aquinas teaches that the visible creation has the sole goal to fill up the places of the fallen Angels in Heaven. It makes a lot of sense because all of God’s works have a clear goal and sense. His plans cannot fail. He, being almighty, has all the means to reach his goal.

Today Our Lord sends the Holy Ghost to the Apostles and disciples as promised. Thereby he also keeps his promise to be with them, made at the moment of his going away: “and behold I am with you all days, even to the consummation of the world.” (Mt 28:20) He goes away without leaving them? Yes, by sending his spirit, the Holy Ghost who proceeds from the Father and from the Son (Credo of the Mass), after a few short days.

So there is but one single divine plan, decree or mission for the world, which covers the entire history from creation to the last judgment. This is why the opinion of some who say that now the Church founded by Christ has failed (which is untrue!) there will be a new type of Church, that of the Spirit. It is ludicrous at least, heretical at worst to think or say anything of this kind. You could just as well pretend that God is changing – which He is not: God is “the Father of lights, with whom there is no change, nor shadow of alteration.” (Jac 1:17)

Our Lord speaks very clearly about the mission of the Holy Ghost and its nature: “But when he, the Spirit of truth, is come, he will teach you all truth. For he shall not speak of himself; but what things soever he shall hear, he shall speak (…). He shall glorify me; because he shall receive of mine, and shall shew it to you. All things whatsoever the Father hath, are mine. Therefore I said, that he shall receive of mine, and shew it to you.” (Jn 16:13-15) The Holy Ghost is one in nature with the Father and the Son, He is of the same nature as the Father and the Son, because there is only one divine nature or substance. The only distinction in God, in the eternal life of the Blessed Trinity, is in the relations between the three Divine Persons. That is the life of the Blessed Trinity “ad intra”. But whatever God does by creating and providing for his creatures, “ad extra”, He does through his nature, not through one distinct Person – except of course the Incarnation, where only the Second Divine Person unites to itself a human nature.

For the sake of our better understanding, we can legitimately appropriate certain divine actions to certain divine Persons: the creation to the Father, the Redemption to the Son, our sanctification to the Holy Ghost. But we must always keep in mind that this is an analogical manner of speaking and thinking; and that anything God does “ad extra”, outwardly, is done by God through the divine nature!

Throughout history, and more and more, people get mixed up in their religious ideas because they have lost their solid grounding in metaphysics – the manner in which things are. Therefore modern religion, as Pope St Pius X clearly points out in his Encyclical “Pascendi”, is reduced to sentimentality. The Catholic Faith for present-day nominal Catholics is more by far about “spirituality” than about dogma and putting their lives in accord with dogma. This is not the genuine Catholic religion preached and promulgated by Our Blessed Lord! Rather he tells us today: “If anyone love Me, he will keep My word, and My Father will love him, and We will come to him and make Our abode with him.” A person who attaches his mind and will to do what God wants him to do, thereby shows his love for God. It is not a lip confession, but one in spirit and truth, for deeds speak louder than words. This effective love of God, charity, provokes God to come and make His abode with that person, which is called the indwelling of the Blessed Trinity in the human soul. And in order to be sure that we understand him rightly, he adds in the negative: “He who does not love Me, does not keep My words.” In other words: By their fruits you shall know them! If we offend God’s commandments seriously, only just one of them, we force God to leave our soul, we have turned God’s invisible temple into a cavern of brigands.

Instead of effective charity, which crowns and includes all the other supernatural virtues, “modern man” contents himself with sentimental or passionate affections of love (amor). But this love, just as joy (laetitia) are human passions; whereas charity is a theological (divine) virtue. “Amoris laetitia”, a composite of two passions, is not the same as joy and charity, which St Paul numbers as the first of the twelve Fruits of the Holy Ghost! “But the fruit of the Spirit is, charity, joy, peace, patience, benignity, goodness, longanimity, mildness, faith, modesty, continency, chastity. Against such there is no law.” (Gal 5:22-23) Because there is a definite law containing the inordinate exercise of our human passions which easily get out of control due to the weakening of our fallen nature… NB: It is very similar with the ambiguous title of the Vatican2 document “gaudium et spes” which designate the passions of joy and hope…

While the Church, or rather Our Lord through his Church, perfects the number of the elect, the anti-Church operated by all those who are ungodly or decidedly anti-godly does its work by fishing in the murky waters of human weakness and evilness. If any proof were needed after three centuries of intellectual and moral decay, we find it in the crisis which has been fabricated over the last year! An entangled web of lies and half-truths has been thrown out over the entire globe, and it is next to impossible to escape it, or to see exactly what is the morsel of truth in different, often enough conflicting and contradictory information. The fact that it works so marvelously for the greatest part of mankind, even to the point where many people risk their life through accepting demented “inoculations”, proofs to what extent the unholy spirit has taken hold of, or destroyed, their minds and wills.

Therefore God’s plan, the work commenced by Christ and continued by the Holy Ghost, the soul of the Church, is consummated in its structure and in the unfailing means necessary to complete it during “the little while” running up to Christ’s final coming. Let us realize that this work will be completed with or without us, and that therefore we are the ones who have everything to gain or to lose through our participation or non-participation in God’s merciful plan. “For many are called, but few chosen.” (Mt 20:16; 22:14) “Wherefore, my dearly beloved, (as you have always obeyed, not as in my presence only, but much more now in my absence,) with fear and trembling work out your salvation.” (Phil 2:12)

Let us do this under the protecting mantle of Our Lady, the Queen of May, the Guardian of Faith, the Mother of Holy Hope and of fair love!

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.

P. Arnold Trauner (paterarnold@hotmail.com), njemački i engleski

Sermon for the Sunday in the Octave of OL’s Ascension, May 16th, 2021

 Sermon for the Sunday in the Octave of OL’s Ascension, May 16^th, 2021

 In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen

 My dearly beloved in Our Lord,

 It is fascinating to study, think and meditate about the Church as founded by Our Lord Jesus Christ! Today we have the most annoying problem that rare are those who seriously undertake this studying, thinking and meditating.

The Society of St Pius X, for example, does not hesitate to twist the truth in order to make it fit into its ideology which pretends that a Catholic can recognize a public heretic and apostate to be truly the Pope; and at the same time resist him even in areas where his pronouncements are covered by the infallibility of the Church in her teaching and governing. While most of its priests and adherents – like myself for many years – have no clue about the gravity of such an attitude, the SSPX leaders obviously know better. A person who had first hand knowledge of the thing, certified that in one seminary St Robert Bellarmine’s (feast May 13)expositionof the five different theological opinions on what happens in the case of a Pope being an heretic, was being taught. But his conclusion was bluntly misrepresented and destroyed, simply by inverting the fourth and fifth point – whereas the holy Doctor clearly says that the fifth and last opinion is the one he holds to be true… a fact which shows how intellectually twisted people can be – something you can witness daily with facts as presented by the media, for example.

Catholics have always stuck to what is expressed by the words of St Paul in 1Cor 1:10: “in eodem sensu, et in eadem sententia” - “Now I beseech you, brethren, by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that you all speak the same thing, and that there be no schisms among you; but that you be perfect in the same mind, and in the same judgment.” We find it in the antimodernist oath, for example, published and prescribed by Pope St Pius X (Sept. 1^st, 1910). “Sensus” appears six times in this important document, and in paragraph four, the phrase “eodem sensu eademque sententia” is used: “Fourthly, I accept sincerely the doctrine of faith transmitted from the apostles through the orthodox fathers, always in the same sense and interpretation, even to us; and so I reject the heretical invention of the evolution of dogmas, passing from one meaning to another, different from that which the Church first had; and likewise I reject all error whereby a philosophic fiction is substituted for the divine deposit, given over to the Spouse of Christ and to be guarded faithfully by her, or a creation of the human conscience formed gradually by the efforts of men and to be perfected by indefinite progress in the future.” It means that from whatever point of view you look at it, the teaching of the Church never changes in its meaning (“sensus”); and that the way the truth is expressed cannot vary indefinitely (“sententia”).

About St Bede the Venerable (feast May 27), another holy Doctor of the Church (+735), it is said that he “undertook the work of expounding the Sacred Books. In his interpretations he so strictly adhered to the teaching of the holy Fathers that he would advance nothing which was not approved by their judgment, nay, had the warrant of their very words.” (Brev.Rom. ad Matut. in II noct., lect. IV)

It is clear that in our days, after decades of the Church living in a state of being deprived of her authority, things are blurred and messy in the minds of most Catholics. Take for example the simple truth laid down in can.107 of the Code of Canon Law, that by divine institution there is a distinction in the Church between the clergy and the laity. Whereas “modern” man firmly believes that “priests are people like any others”, corroborated for example by the broad use and abuse of the “dialogue Mass”, even in setups that claim to be “traditional”. While there is nothing wrong intrinsically with several people or the entire congregation giving the answers at Mass instead of one or two altar servers, the “dialogue Mass” goes much further, and always has done so. The “Gloria”, “Credo” and “Sanctus” are also said by everyone – but they are the priest’s prayers in the low Mass. “But we do sing them, don’t we?” Yes! But a sung Mass is a sung Mass, and a low Mass is a low Mass. Their rubrics are partly different.

The inherent non-sense of the dialogue Mass being elevated to be a standard practice becomes apparent in the case of the “Sanctus”. It is the only longer passage (the others consisting of two or three words only) which the priest has to say in a slightly elevated voice – between silent and loud – and thus the priest’s role becomes basically impossible if everyone joins in reciting the “Sanctus” in a loud voice… very democratic maybe, but not Catholic.

Lately I picked up the parish bulletin in the local shrine of Our Lady (Maria Dreieichen). Lo and behold, the reverend in charge there is writing how beautiful it has been to have been allowed to celebrate Easter – with all the restrictions and precautions prescribed by the lay authorities, of course – after last year everything had had to be canceled. The contrasting “experiences” of these two years have taught him, among other things, that the liturgy was all about celebrating together; and that therefore “a Mass can never be ‘said’ or ‘read’” by the priest. I guess that last passage is for all those who are beyond reform, like myself and other very antiquated minds that die hard.

Why do I insist on the dangers of a dialogue Mass? Because it has been an important inroad for changing Catholics’ attitude. Even from the early experiments in the 1920s and 1930s it becomes clear that the goal was to have everyone say most of the prayers, and in the vernacular. Never mind the “sensus” or the “sententia” held by the Church, for many centuries, including the teachings and the anathemas of the Holy Council of Trent! The goal was to level out the difference between clergy and laity, priest and congregation.

It has been achieved in the openly heretical definition of the Montini Mass, in §7: “The Lord's Supper or Mass is a sacred meeting or assembly of the People of God, met together under the presidency of the priest, to celebrate the memorial of the Lord.” This definition had to be changed – but the texts of the “new Mass” remained the same! Bp Guérard des Lauriers, who wrote the theological part of the “Short critical examination of the new ‘Ordo Missae’”, commonly known as the “Ottaviani intervention”, points out the implications: “None of this (i.e. the elements of the ‘definition’ in §7) in the very least implies either the Real Presence, or the reality of sacrifice, or the Sacramental function of the consecrating priest, or the intrinsic value of the Eucharistic Sacrifice independently of the people's presence. It does not, in a word, imply any of the essential dogmatic values of the Mass which together provide its true definition. Here, the deliberate omission of these dogmatic values amounts to their having been superseded and therefore, at least in practice, to their denial.”

Ideas have consequences. Start tampering with one jot of Catholic doctrine, and your Catholic life will come down like a house of cards – maybe not straight away, but rather sooner than later.

Let us therefore task to understand well, and to practice faithfully, anything that pertains to the Catholic doctrine, most especially with regards to the Church which is now so badly in need of our faithful service and consideration. - Let us remain at the side of Our Blessed Lady who in these days between the Ascension and Pentecost remained in the midst of the Apostles and Disciples, and who never ceases to plead with her Son in favor of the Church founded by him!

 In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.

 P. Arnold Trauner (paterarnold@hotmail.com), njemački i engleski

Sermon for the 5thSunday after Easter, May 9th, 2021

 

Sermon for the 5^thSunday after Easter, May 9^th, 2021

 

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen

 

 

My dearly beloved in Our Lord,

 

On this Sunday, and on the following Rogation days – the three days before Our Lord’s Ascension – Holy Church teaches us to pray. Together with the Gospel of the Rogation Mass, we learn that only prayer in the name of Jesus Christ is acceptable and efficient. Here it is particularly about the demanding purpose of prayers; the other ends of prayer being adoration, thanksgiving and atonement for sins.

Much of what Our Lord was saying in his last discourse to the Apostles – Jn ch.14-17 – remained dark for the Apostles until after his Resurrection and the sending of the Holy Ghost. This clearly shows that they have then been privileged with such extraordinary graces, in view of being destined to lay the foundations of the Church; “in medio Ecclesiae… in the midst of the Church” (Sir 15:5), as we pray on the feasts of Holy Doctors.

As a consequence of this, and of the theological explanations which Our Lord gives in today’s Gospel, only those who believe in Our Lord, true God and true man, can ask him with the assurance of being heard: “These things I have spoken to you in proverbs. The hour cometh, when I will no more speak to you in proverbs, but will shew you plainly of the Father. In that day you shall ask in my name; and I say not to you, that I will ask the Father for you: For the Father himself loveth you, because you have loved me, and have believed that I came out from God.” (Jn 16:25-27) Only those who are truly incorporated into Christ’s mystical body, the Church, through the true Faith and Baptism, have a right to be heard. Christ explains in the sermon on the mount: “Wherefore by their fruits you shall know them. Not every one that saith to me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven: but he that doth the will of my Father who is in heaven, he shall enter into the kingdom of heaven. Many will say to me in that day: Lord, Lord, have not we prophesied in thy name, and cast out devils in thy name, and done many miracles in thy name? And then will I profess unto them, I never knew you: depart from me, you that work iniquity.“ (Mt 7:20-23) Thus not any kind of faith in Our Lord saves the souls; but only the true Faith which bears fruits of justice through effective Charity.

This again is confirmed by the next verse in today’s Gospel (v. 28): “I came forth from the Father, and am come into the world: again I leave the world, and I go to the Father.” To this we have to add the many statements in which Our Lord professes his union of nature with the Father (Jn 10:30; 17:11), and the Holy Ghost (Mt 28:19). Truth and Charity are the very bonds defining and uniting the three Divine Persons. Similarly there can be no real unity among humans if they do not care about the truth and the works of charity. The “moderns” who “believe in something” or that “there is someone up there”; the Protestants who invoke Christ while refusing to know his true nature and constitution, and being part of the one true Church – they all are far off the way to Heaven!

This verse also contains the entire story of the Redemption: the divine will to save the souls of good will by sending His own Son. It is so simple and clear that the Apostles are enlightened by a rayon of divine light and acknowledge their master’s divinity: “His disciples say to him: Behold, now thou speakest plainly, and speakest no proverb. Now we know that thou knowest all things, and thou needest not that any man should ask thee. By this we believe that thou camest forth from God.” (v. 29-30)

In the light of this sublime doctrine we can better understand the first verses of today’s Gospel: “Amen, amen I say to you: if you ask the Father any thing in my name, he will give it you. Hitherto you have not asked any thing in my name. Ask, and you shall receive; that your joy may be full.” (v. 23-24) The last words are further explained by Our Lord’s words which we read in the Gospel of the Rogation Mass:

“And he said to them: Which of you shall have a friend, and shall go to him at midnight, and shall say to him: Friend, lend me three loaves, because a friend of mine is come off his journey to me, and I have not what to set before him. And he from within should answer, and say: Trouble me not, the door is now shut, and my children are with me in bed; I cannot rise and give thee. Yet if he shall continue knocking, I say to you, although he will not rise and give him, because he is his friend; yet, because of his importunity, he will rise, and give him as many as he needeth. And I say to you, Ask, and it shall be given you: seek, and you shall find: knock, and it shall be opened to you. For every one that asketh, receiveth; and he that seeketh, findeth; and to him that knocketh, it shall be opened. And which of you, if he ask his father bread, will he give him a stone? or a fish, will he for a fish give him a serpent? Or if he shall ask an egg, will he reach him a scorpion?  If you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father from heaven give the good Spirit to them that ask him?” (Lk 11:5-13)

Let us pray, then, according to Our Lord’s instructions and wishes.

Especially all those who are awaiting their Confirmation here – the sending of “the good Spirit”! – should pray very fervently these days. There is a chance that Bishop Stuyver will come in June to administer this Sacrament, something we have had to put off last September! Under the present circumstances we can take few things for granted. Therefore we must pray and weep and implore God’s help and mercy all the more, being certain of the good outcome according to God’s sovereign will!

Do not forget that our prayers will be infinitely more pleasing to God, and therefore efficient, if we address them to Him not only through Our Lord, but to Our Lord through His Blessed Mother, the Queen of May, Our Lady of Good Counsel, Refuge of Sinners...

 

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.

 

P. Arnold Trauner (paterarnold@hotmail.com), njemački i engleski

Benito Mussolini, Ocu Piju

 (Opaska: neki kažu da je pismo upućeno ne Papi, kako je meni došlo iz drugih izvora, nego Ocu Piju, franjevcu. Ton pisma i vrijeme zbivanja opravdavaju ovu opasku. Hvala na upozorenju.)

Dragi i ljubljeni brate,

Svjedočim tvoju ljubav za istinu:

1.       Vratila me Bogu!

2.       Tvoja vjera je temelj moje pripreme za pomirenje

Od fašiste fašisti, vjerujmi.

Tvoj,    Mussolini

Drugog svibnja 1924