April 23, 2025
Author: Vitéz Nob. Attila Bánó Historian Staff Captain
Let me begin by saying that I’m not superstitious, and I don’t believe in the myths surrounding numerology, but from time to time I encounter phenomena that make me stop and think.
Before Easter, I was waiting for the publisher to send me the typeset version of my new book’s manuscript. I always create an index of names for my books. This time, too, I had already prepared the list of personal and place names, which was just waiting to be matched with page numbers.
Just before Good Friday, the full edited material of the upcoming book finally arrived — around 450 pages long. I should mention that most of this is made up of 500 archival, in-text photographs, which split up the text far more than if it had been presented continuously.
I set to work. I knew that Holy Saturday isn’t meant for work, but I thought the Almighty would forgive me if I finished the name index for the book Northern Transylvania Has Returned, 1940, (Észak-Erdély hazatért, 1940) which many are eagerly awaiting. Well, when I got to the word Jerusalem among the hundreds of alphabetically ordered names, the search program showed only one page number. It was page 33.
That hit me hard, as I immediately saw the age of our Lord Christ associated with Jerusalem. I thought to myself: what are the chances that this city — the site of Jesus’s crucifixion — would appear on exactly page 33 of a 450-page book, and that I would discover it on the very day commemorating His suffering and death, on the eve of celebrating His resurrection?
I can’t pretend to answer that question or explain the meaning of this story, but there must be some explanation for this event that feels so miraculous.
Wishing you a Blessed Easter!
Vitéz Attila Bánó de Tapolylucska et Kükemező
Historian Staff Captain
