Hildegard Baumgarthuber

Hildegard Baumgarthuber

Last August, Hildegard Baumgarthuber, from Vienna, died of cancer. She was quite well known in Switzerland as she collaborated with the Caux conferences for many years. She was a mother of five children and was also very active in her parish on the outskirts of Vienna. She took on the task of providing shelter and food for many Poles on their way to Caux from Jaroslaw and other cities after the change of regime. Just before the onset of her illness, she visited her son and his family in the United States, from where she wrote a letter to her parish that constitutes a kind of spiritual testament. Here it is, slightly abbreviated:

"As we know, visions are rare. In these times without measure, we must decide each day to live according to God's standards. Only then will God have mercy on us and grant us a new beginning.

Many of us are tempted to resign ourselves, but there is only one thing that can help us to move forward: to entrust our lives totally to God every day. But we should not do this in secret, but in our community, in the groups where we have our roots; it is there that we need to talk about it, because only in this way will we come closer together to God, to Jesus.

Let's talk about the miracles, small and big, of our life, not only here but also where people think that the church is a Moloch, an institution, a tax collector. Only then can we allow others to experience God. His mysterious reign - which some call the church - is indeed not of this world. It begins in each heart, through a contact with God, an experience that may be as different as fire and water, but which is very personal. This is where God's reign begins, not sometime after we die. Practice together in your exchanges; share your experiences in your families where there are such great problems, and wherever disunity and absurdity are progressing.

We want to be a light for our parish of Wolfersberg, but we will only be so if we allow ourselves to be filled each day anew at the source of life. Because God must grow and I must shrink.

One more point: go to your priests because they are the top of the mountain but, in this position, they are threatened by loneliness and isolation. With your openness, help them to become more and more rooted in this strange thing that is the parish. Our great opportunity is to experience the universality of the church that crosses all cultures, all nations and each person.

Don't think too much about things that are incomprehensible because the time may not yet have come when God will allow you to understand them. Everyone must know and believe very firmly that God leads the parish if everyone allows himself to be led by God, unconditionally.

Your Hildegard Baumgarthuber"