A Director of the Bank as blessed? Christian Feldmann of the Catholic Church is reminiscent of Hieronymus Jaegen, who died 100 years ago in Trier, and in its appeal, God’s presence know in the middle of the world.
The Bank Director Jerome Jaegen fought against the dependence on material possessions in the interest of piety and human dignity.
His piety seemed so old-fashioned and conservative, that his wicked contemporaries gave it the nickname “Lily”. However, with his ideas, he appears as a pioneer of a world facing Christianity and self-conscious laity involvement, claimed his own way to God. The machine designer, the Director of the Bank, and a member of the Landtag Hieronymus Jaegen, 100 years ago, on 26. January 1919, died in Trier, took in his slightly old-fashioned-formulated writings with the view: to live with last consequence, and a radical Seriously, as a Christian, one had to go to the monastery. On the contrary, in the middle of the world a Christian is to be even more necessary to the world to meet with a Christian way of Thinking and Acting. In the middle of the responsible working life can be quite a mystic.
The teacher’s son from Trier, in the Prussian become a Bishop and a garrison town, studied in Berlin, mechanical engineering and construction, and the new Trier Volksbank in the 19 years of its activities as a Bank Director led to success and prosperity. The Volksbank was dedicated to the interests of the small savers and traders. In the Prussian Landtag he became interested, as a member of the Catholic centre party, the Concerns of the farmers and wine-growers at home, on the Moselle, fought for the Expansion of the railway network, and founded numerous clubs. Along the way, unobtrusive, helping the Bank-in-chief of the transactions of several monasteries and served as a Trustee of Catholic schools. Hours and hours of often monotonous work, without any fee.
A monk without a monastery, in the middle of the life of the world?
To be a monk remind, the Day – with a measurement visit at six o’clock in the morning, regular spiritual reading and extensive Meditation – was by no means intended as an escape from the world of business and of political engagement. Much is quoted Jaegens something offensive, and certainly a critical question of saying: “I slept in the closet for twenty years on the money and was not a Minute without God’s presence to fall Asleep.” If the quip encouraged to locate in permanent contact with God in the depth dimension of a normal life, then it has a good sense.
The same objective led him, as he tried himself as a spiritual writer, with the several editions of the books “The mystical grace of life” and “the battle for the crown”. His message, garnish with legal advice: A life in closeness to God was also for a professional fully dedicated to the “world’s people” because God’s presence all through and Holy. “Think it’s quite lively and I think a lot of this omnipresence of God, and you will soon be a completely different person.” So hard it is impossible to “climb higher”. You don’t need big Changes to the outer circumstances of life. Needed only a “passion,” strong enough “to you about your concerns and your phlegm, about all the money and Good things of this earth, and you raise itself to heavenly aspirations, to participate in the life of the infinite God”.
Soon to be a blessed?
In his last years of life, Jerome was Jaegen seriously ill. In 1919, he killed a 77-year-old; he was buried in a simple grave, just as he has. But the Trier began soon pilgrims with their Concerns to the “Jaegen-males”, as they call their secret Holy in a tender familiarity today. In financial emergencies, and inheritance Affairs they turned to him, but also before risky operations, in pregnancy conflicts, and a variety of psychological distress.
Since 1941, the beatification process in Rome is pending. There are eleven thick volumes of documents with documents and witnesses are to testify. Benedict XVI in 2006 signed an important decree on the recognition of Jaegens “heroic virtues”, as they say in the Curia language. The files went in the middle of the Second world war, to Rome, to the process rather tough start, and behind him is not a strong order, but an admirer of char without large financial resources. Of course, the diocese of Trier is increasingly committed to the beatification. In 1959, they brought Jaegens bones from Trier-main cemetery in the parish Church of St. Paul. When it was profaned, and moved the “Jaegen-male” again, in August 2018, this time in the market Church of St. Gangolf.
Christian Feldmann, theologian, Journalist, radio author, 1950 born in Regensburg, Germany, published more than 50 in many languages, translated books, especially portraits of classical sacred and pious cross-heads from Christianity and Judaism.