From: richarra@gmail.com   
      
   Are there any blind-spots in your life   
      
    Are there any blind-spots in your life that keep you from recognizing   
   God's power and mercy? When two blind men heard that Jesus was passing   
   their way, they followed him and begged for his mercy. The word mercy   
   literally means "sorrowful at heart". But mercy is something more than   
   compassion, or heartfelt sorrow at another person's misfortune.   
   Compassion empathizes with the sufferer. But mercy goes further; it   
   removes suffering. A merciful person shares in another person's   
   misfortune and suffering as if it were their own.  [Matthew 9:27-31]   
      
      
   <<>><<>><<>>   
   March 30th - Bl. Restituta Kafka   
   (Also known as Helen Kafka, Helena Kafka, Maria Restituta Kafka,   
   Sister Restituta)   
      
   Memorial 30 March   
   30 October on some calendars   
      
   Executed 1943   
      
   Pope John Paul II has beatified probably more holy persons than any   
   pope before him. One reason for this is that during his reign the   
   secret archives of Republican Spain and the Nazi and the Communist   
   governments have become largely available. With these sources now   
   accessible, it is becoming easier to discover what and why Catholics   
   suffered for their faith in the cruel years of totalitarianism.   
      
   On June 21, 1998, the Holy Father, concluding a three-day visit to   
   Austria, declared four Austrian nationals “blessed”. One of the most   
   fascinating of this group was Sister Restituta Kafka, a nun who was a   
   nurse and anesthetist in a Viennese hospital. The account we follow   
   here tells little about her background, but presents a stirring   
   account of her martyrdom. It comes from the London Tablet.   
      
   According to The Tablet, Sister Restituta was no ordinary nun. Friends   
   often called her “Sister Resoluta”, for resolute she was: a very   
   independent woman who stood firmly by her decisions. After a busy day   
   at the hospital, following her usual routine, she would drop in for   
   dinner at a nearby tavern and order “a goulash and a pint of my   
   usual”--her favorite beer. If she was set in her ways, she was also   
   unimpressive in appearance. Though short in height, she was also plump   
   in figure, weighing “14 stone” (196 pounds). As an experienced   
   technician, she was probably middle-aged.   
      
   For all that, Sister Restituta was a caring woman, very competent in   
   her specialty, and graced with an infectious sense of humor. Her true   
   character was to be tested after the Nazis seized Austria in April   
   1938.   
      
   One of the first steps the invaders took was to close over 1400   
   establishments that were under religious control. More than 200   
   convents were suppressed, all Catholic societies and youth   
   organizations were disbanded, and numerous charitable institutions   
   were seized. Sister Kafka was allowed to continue her work, but her   
   hospital was put under the control of personnel loyal to the new   
   government.   
      
   Restituta, a woman religious as well as an anesthetist, had always   
   carefully attended to the spiritual needs of her patients. Although   
   religious acts were now forbidden in the hospital wards, she continued   
   to pray, at least privately, with the sick, and see that they secretly   
   received the last rites. The surgeon with whom she worked in the   
   operating room was a fanatical Nazi, but he depended so much on her   
   that at first he kept quiet about her forbidden religious   
   interventions.   
      
   Not long afterward, however, when a new hospital wing was opened,   
   Sister Kafka made bold to hang crucifixes in the rooms. She was also   
   discovered making a copy of an anti-Fascist song. The surgeon now   
   decided it was his patriotic duty to report her to the Gestapo. As a   
   result, on Ash Wednesday, February 18, 1942, a group of SS storm   
   troopers came to the hospital and arrested her.   
      
   Sister Restituta was imprisoned for a year, but imprisonment did not   
   change her character or her firmness. Although the food allowed her   
   was meager, she gave most of it to others. Thus she saved the life of   
   a pregnant mother and her baby.   
      
   After a year of trying to break this unbreakable woman, Martin   
   Bormann, Hitler’s own secretary, decided that it was necessary not   
   only to punish Sister Kafka, but to make an example of her and show   
   others that disobedience would not be tolerated. He sentenced her to   
   execution by the guillotine, that weighted lethal knife that had   
   brought quick death by beheading to so many during the French   
   Revolution. A chaplain was allowed to attend Sister Kafka to the door   
   of the chamber of execution but no farther. He reported hearing the   
   swish and thud of the sharp steel down its tracks.   
      
   Sister Restituta had chosen the religious name in honor of a Roman   
   martyr of the third century, who, by the way, had also died by   
   decapitation. The Nazis were aware that Catholics would want to take   
   Sister Kafka’s body and honor it as that of a martyr, so they hurried   
   it off for burial in an unidentified mass grave. She was the only nun   
   to be sent to the guillotine by the Nazis in the German territories.   
      
   It is customary at beatifications for the friends of a Blessed to   
   present the pope with an ornamental reliquary containing a bone of the   
   candidate for beatification. Sister Restituta’s reliquary contained   
   just a piece of her habit, the only earthly thing she died possessed   
   of. In 1995 the street on which her old hospital stands, now a   
   maternity hospital, had been renamed “Sister Restituta Street”. Thus   
   all babies born there now have her name on their baptismal   
   certificates.   
   –Father Robert   
      
      
   Saint Quote:   
   In your prayers, if you would quickly and surely draw upon you the   
   grace of God, pray in a special manner for our Holy Church and all   
   those connected with it.   
   --St. Louis de Blois   
      
   Bible Quote   
    "In the days of those kings, the God of heaven will set up a kingdom   
   which will never be destroyed, and this kingdom will not pass into the   
   hands of another race: it will shatter and absorb all the previous   
   kingdoms and itself last for ever.."  [Daniel  2:44]  RSVCE   
      
      
   <><><><>   
   PRAYER TO JESUS CRUCIFIED   
   TO OBTAIN THE GRACE OF A HAPPY DEATH # 3   
      
   My Lord Jesus Christ,   
   through that bitterness   
   which Thou didst suffer on the Cross,   
   when Thy Blessed soul   
   was separated from Thy sacred Body,   
   have pity on my sinful soul,   
   when it shall depart from my miserable body,   
   and shall enter into eternity.   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)