The Rosary made him late … and saved may lives!
In 1932, my grandfather worked as a slate mason in a German mine near Luxembourg. Every morning he would go to work on foot, while reciting his Rosary. At that time there were no buses yet. The trip took half an hour one way, so he used this time to pray.
One morning, after walking a big part of the way, he suddenly realized that he had forgotten his rosary. He considered what to do: Should he continue walking or go back to pick it up? He made up his mind and ran back home, then ran to work. He nevertheless ended up being 10 minutes late for work. His workmates had to wait for him because as the head of the team he had the keys to the gate. Together, they started for the mine.
Just as they were about to go down, they heard a sound similar to distant thunder. The men looked at each other, seized with a great fear: something must have collapsed! Part of the mountain had crumbled down. Thank God, there were no miners inside the mine! After a first inspection, they discovered that huge rocks had come loose inside and obstructed several galleries...
If my grandfather had not been late on that day, many work-ers would have perished in this disaster, including him! All recognized the protection of God and the Blessed Virgin in this event. When he got home, my grandfather told me the news, and I was thoroughly shocked.
Since then, the Rosary has been honoured in our family. We should never forget that it has saved us from many misfortunes.
Inge Kowalski, in "Retendes Gottes volk" Collected by Fr Albert Pfleger, Marist, for the Collection of Marian Stories.
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TWENTY-NINTH SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME
Holocaust survivor Viktor Frankl makes surprising comment about happiness
Self-transendance is what actually gives us meaning, according to the famous psychologist and author.
Before he was captured by the Nazis and thrown into a concentration camp during World War II, Viktor Frankl was an accomplished neurologist, psychiatrist, and professor. But his experience of the worst kind of suffering and affronts to human dignity taught him invaluable lessons about human nature, hope, and happiness.
After escaping from the camps that killed his wife, parents, and brother, Frankl went on to found Logotherapy, inspired by the idea that the most powerful force in a human’s life is the desire for mean-ing, which Frankl wrote about in his best-selling book about his survival, Man’s Search for Meaning.
Before his death in 1977 at the age of 92, Frankl was interviewed on the CBC’s Man Alive and two excerpts from that show demonstrate why he remains so influential — and even counter-cultural. Frankl, who received 29 honorary doctoral degrees and many prestigious awards, said that the phrase "the pursuit of happiness," is a contradiction in terms:
‘Happiness can never be really pursued; happiness is a by-product — and must remain that way — of pursuing a task or a person other than yourself. This becomes most obvious in sexual neuroses … precisely in so far as a person is hunting, chasing, pursuing his own happiness and pleasure, he is doomed to failure … The more you give yourself, the more you forget yourself, in love or in work, for the sake of a cause to serve or a person to love, you will become happy precisely by not caring for happiness, by overlooking and forget-ting whether you are happy or not.’
This is what self-transcendence is about, according to Frankl — not being primarily concerned with yourself, but something — or better yet — someone other than yourself. "Man becomes himself, man actualizes his self, man is human precisely to the extent to which he is not concerned with himself …"
(aleteia.org/2017/05/05)
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