Funeral for German Roman Catholic Bishop

Just to mention:  I don't follow Roman Catholic teachers and bishops, but someone sent me these two links to Cardinal Meisner.  They were very interesting and somewhat edifying, but they are in the German language.  In one of them Cardinal Meisner recounts the events of his life under dictatorships and expulsion from Silesia.  Since my father and his family was expelled from Silesia, and many ethnic Germans where I live in Canada have refugee background, this was important to me, touchingly and well told.

Here is the link to the funeral.

Here is the link to the interview and life story telling.

I enjoyed the sermon at the funeral when it focused on adoration of God and how we become important and human to each other when we adore God.  It reminded me of Bonhoeffer's "Life Together", where he shows that we don't live to manipulate each other, but that we are brothers and sisters to each other in Christ, and only in Christ.  Jesus is with us and between us.  All of this made me push harder to have evening devotions with my husband, he and I now being our own little home congregation of two.

In speaking about the expulsion from Silesia, Meisner points out, how many people had to go through heroic efforts to get their families out alive in severe winter weather, traveling the roads and relying on help from strangers.  His group survived intact, but we also know of plenty of tragedies.  These things are hardly treated in the media and history telling, which is unfortunate, he observes.  Yes, spoken like a Silesian.

He also tells stories about being Catholic in East Germany and contrasts his approach to Angela Merkel's. He explains how he was moved to Cologne from Berlin, by the Pope, against his own wishes to remain in Communist Germany to bloom where he is planted, so to speak.  He obviously was a thorn in a few people's sides, but he always considered this a good sign--it meant to him that he was on the right path.

So much about that, but now I have the links here.