NEWS FROM AUSTRIA

I wish to give you my heartfelt thanks for your letter and the gift of the most beautiful Bible I have ever seen! I have a Thompson Reference Bible which my husband got for me through Germany via America many years ago, and which I read daily. But this ­ in lovely green leather and in modern English - is a true jewel!

I am an ardent Bible reader, every day before breakfast, but I get involved in frustrating almost daily events, as so many questions arise, and there is not one single person here in my life with whom to discuss them, for although the majority are Catholic, they have never read their Bibles (or don't possess one) as it was never encouraged. Anyway, all I can say is a most heartfelt `thank you' for my new Bible.

Perhaps it has never been, but now it is certainly not a world in which to be happy. I see Sky News and CNN news each day, as current affairs interest me greatly (I studied history) and daily events are frightening, the brutality and cruelty of mankind to mankind, and to animals, is frightening. I have begun to wonder how our Lord, so pure and righteous, can bear to look on the humanity He has created, and not destroy us. Each daily news brings some horror previously never heard of, and brutal beyond our imagination.

And so life goes on. I am alone, but feel God's loving care with me, despite illness and problems. He has given me good friends.

--Sis. Mary Knechtl