My dear sister,
(…) behold, in the year 1918 we carried out the enthronement of the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus in our family. After the death of the emperor a year ago, we, along with the children, prayed to the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus to be even more, if possible, the head of the family! You know the paths by which our “Head of the family” has led us! Good! You know what the emperor told me a few weeks before his death when he spoke about the saying of a “long and happy” reign? “It was not long, but it was happy, indeed!”
“But happy” – those are his own words about the years 1916–22; years that brought him, humanly speaking, only misfortune, persecution, falls, the most disgraceful slanders, and in the first years above all superhuman work without any results. From Vienna to Madeira, but happy because such was God’s will. I do not know if those who were happy in the eyes of the world during those years could say the same. Surely the Lord’s Cross sometimes weighed very heavily on his shoulders, but it did not disturb his inner peace. The kind “Head of the family” watched over this.
Blessed Charles of Habsburg, Emperor of Austria, King of Bohemia and Hungary, intercede for us!
(Empress Zita of Habsburg /1892–1989/, letter to Sister Hilaria, March 20, 1923,
during the situation of being a widow for a year with eight children;
bl. Emperor Charles died in exile in Madeira exactly one hundred years ago – April 1, 1922)
