Trafika Europe 7 - Ukrainian Prayer

Felix Austria

what to do with themselves. Last night one of themwalked under people’s windows, screaming demands that people let him in for the night. He shouted, “I have nowhere to sleep, my feet are freezing.” And finally he found where to warm them: police picked him up, so he had to warm himself under arrest. Lately there are so many thieves, swindlers, brigands that it is scary even to go out into the street. You feel like barricading inside the house and not even poking your nose out. And sometimes you think: who said it was safe inside the house? Who said that here too there wasn’t a bandit waiting—someone to whom you expose your defenseless neck? Petro says there is news that an ancient ostensory

disappeared from St. Anne’s Catholic Church in Ozeriany. Again, no traces and witnesses, all doors latched and locked, windows intact, everything appears in proper order inside. It is as if radiant angels came down through the walls and took the precious object to Heaven to praise Jesus with its help. This has been going on for a while: in Mykulyntsi, where they had just rebuilt the church after a fire, two golden patens dissolved into thin air: one of them depicting the cradle in Bethlehem, the other the Holy Sepulchre. Just the day before the priest and the deacon secretly hid the platters in an ironbound trunk. In the morning the deacon broke down screaming: the trunk is open and empty; the only key had been with the priest; both are now in prison.

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