Candles for our deceased

Dear Ašáci, greetings to you.

The time of remembrance of our deceased is approaching. This year too, it will be possible to visit two "events" related to this in Aš: on Sunday, November 1st, at 3 p.m., I will serve a Requiem (a service for the souls of the deceased) in the cemetery chapel at the Aš cemetery. I will recommend the souls of the deceased to the mercy of the Heavenly Father through Jesus Christ. If you bring the name of a specific person or people on a note, I will include them in my prayer that day. And then on Monday, November 2nd from 6 p.m., you will be able to light a candle for your deceased in our Aš church . It will be a period of prayer and singing, which I will be happy to guide you through. I look forward to seeing you. Don't be afraid to come!

Some time ago, just across the border in Konnersreuth, I visited a new museum dedicated to the life of Therese Neumann (died 1962). She was a woman of mystical spiritual experience. She often experienced Jesus' suffering with people in her own body and fell into ecstasies during which she saw things that we ordinary people do not always see. I was interested in one story: The young Jew Bruno Rothschild converted to the Catholic faith in the late 1920s. And then he even became a priest. He was only a priest for a short time, because he died on a train platform in Nuremberg on Christmas Day 1932 from heart failure. It probably saved him from a concentration camp (A. Hitler came to power a month later). He knew Theresa. He belonged to a close circle of her acquaintances and spiritual friends. She was at his funeral. An eyewitness, another priest, later testified: At his coffin she fell into ecstasy. Her face shone. She later confided to me that she had seen Bruno in the glory of heaven, that he had told her that he was infinitely happy and that he had only been in Purgatory for a short time (note: a place where some souls prepare to meet God after the death of the body). But this short time seemed like an eternity to him…

Dear friends, dear survivors, it is good to pray for the souls. They need our prayerful memory so that they can more easily reach where they have been heading all their lives... To the infinite happiness of God's closeness.

Your pastor Richard Polák