Paul M. Zulehner

Visions for the Church

Orientation in times of Church Reorganisation

Translated by the author together with Rod Pritchard-Smith and Sr. Helen Plum SSND

Patmos Publishing

Visions for the Church

Church reorganisation: An introduction

The Viennese stand-up comedian Helmut Qualtinger told the following joke featuring “Herrn Travnicek”: “I don’t know where I’m going, but that way I’ll get there quicker.” Similarly, it was formulated pointedly within the “sixty-eight Movement”: “When they didn’t know where they wanted to go, they increased their labours.” At present, a similar thing is happening in some Church communities.

The Church is not in a crisis, even when there is still so much discussion about a Church crisis.1 It makes no sense to hold the Second Vatican Council responsible for a crisis which doesn’t exist.2 As so often in the past the Church is going through a deep reorganisation of its structure, which is to be expected from time to time.

There has been a transformation of the culture over the last few decades – a culture which prides itself on being modern or even postmodern. The various Churches have difficulty in keeping pace with cultural change. There is a temptation not to take part in the changing modern culture and to bunker themselves in a silently disappearing past. The former times are praised, mostly by the Lefebvrians who call themselves The Society of St. Pius X. They look longingly back to how the Roman Catholic Church was before the French Revolution. This was before the beginning of modernity with its deep respect for individuality, human rights, equality for women and religious freedom.

The nostalgic retro-temptation

The prophet Jeremiah preaches in the name of Yahweh against such longing for the past. The people had been deported to a foreign culture, to Babylon. Nostalgic prophets dreamt of a speedy return to the past and the abandoned home: Jerusalem. Jeremiah vehemently scourges these nostalgic prophets as false and warns the people insistently:

For thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel: Do not let the prophets and the diviners who are among you deceive you, and do not listen to the dreams that they dream,

for it is a lie that they are prophesying to you in my name; I did not send them, says the Lord.

For thus says the Lord: Only when Babylon’s seventy years are completed will I visit you, and I will fulfill to you my promise to you and bring you back to this place.

For surely I know the plans I have for you, says the Lord, plans for your welfare and not for harm, to give you a future with hope.

(Jr 29:8–11)

For the next 70 years, however, God had other plans for his exiled people:

Thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, to all the exiles whom I have sent into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon:

Build houses and live in them; plant gardens and eat what they produce.

Take wives and have sons and daughters; take wives for your sons, and give your daughters in marriage, that they may bear sons and daughters; multiply there, and do not decrease.

But seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the Lord on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare.

(Jr 29:4–7)

Today, are the Churches not living through such an interval of 70 years’ exile?3 If so, a new pastoral mode is needed as well as a new social structure for the new era. This means that today God expects from his Church a profound reorganisation, and this in a modern culture, into which God himself has led her. In the midst of such a reorganisation the Gospel is understood more deeply thanks to the Spirit of God.

The Church is responsible for proclaiming the Gospel, which through the power of God’s Spirit has brought so many fruits in the course of its two-thousand-year history, particularly in Europe.

Need for visions

In the required reorganisation of the Church there is a dangerous temptation. Experts in the development of organisations warn against “more of the same”, unimaginatively carrying on just as before, even though everyone suspects in the word of German politician Erhard Eppler, “If we continue like this, we will no longer continue.” All developers of organisations urge caution.

If in the course of the reorganisation of the Church there is a shortage of means and the number of people (members, Churchgoers, volunteers, ordained) shrinks, then it often happens that the business goes on without change. Experts call this “downsizing” Church business on “low flame”. One then says fewer priests, therefore bigger pastoral areas and less local Sunday masses. It is also said that since people drive long distances when they go to discos and supermarkets, why should churchgoers not also drive a long distance to Sunday mass. Theologically this is questionable.

A “Church self-service” is expected from the individual Church members, for families with little children (have you already bundled three children into a car?), for the old, for the sick in need of care and for those who are handicapped. A Church for the mobile healthy ones without children comes into being! The proximity to the people is given up in favour of the maintenance of an expiring form of the Church.

With such structural measures the phasing out of the conventional Church shape cannot be prevented. Some rather fear that such measures even accelerate the decline. Vitality is lost. It would be exactly this vitality which could express itself in a new form of the Church. However, one which perhaps we do not now know, but which God will bring into being.

Do not remember the former things, or consider the things of old.

I am about to do a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it? I will make a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert.

(Is 43:18f.)

The prophet Isaiah asks this in God’s name.

Liveliness of an organisation

Martin F. Saarinen – an American born in Finland – researched the question of what makes a (Methodist) parish vital.4 He concluded that Church communities and organisations go through a life cycle. This starts with birth, continues through childhood to youth to reach adulthood. The organisation then gets old: It runs through the phases of maturity, aristocracy, bureaucracy and finally dies.

This is the first painful insight of his analyses: Organisations are “born” but they are at the same time also mortal. This includes Church organisations, such as parishes, spiritual movements or orders! Once there was a blossoming Christianity in Asia Minor and North Africa. The European areas of Czech Republic, Estonia or the former East Germany also had a strong Christian culture5, before they became during the era of communism atheistic cultures with an aggressive stance towards the Church.

Saarinen clarifies that young organisations also have to grow and transform into adult organisations. Above all, organisations are born from the strength of a vision.

Take the example of Jesus: What he did and what he spoke was the vision of a world, in which God’s dream of creation can be realised. “The Kingdom of God” was the name of this vision. To implement this vision in history, he inspired people with it – the Church’s childhood! The Jesus-movement started. It was not just any community but a “vision-community”. As a town on the mountain it should be a light for others (Mt 5:14) and healing like salt (Mt 5:13); clearly showing how people live when God’s love for people and the love among one another spreads.

This youthful vision-community grew. The Constantine shift of 313 had linked Church and state closely together and accelerated the growth of the community. The persecuted Church of the catacombs was now transformed into a State-Church; this again became a “people’s Church” culturally deeply established in the population. This quantitative growth was admittedly at the same time a qualitative weakening. As Silvanus of Marseilles wrote in the fifth century:

“And you, Church, have got weaker by your increased fertility, have sunk back by the increase and have lost vigour. Certainly: You have sent the members through the whole world which although has the faith in name, however, no faith strength and you started to get rich in numbers but poor in faith; you got further with respect to the body, but your spirit atrophied.”6

This condition characterises the large Christian Churches to this day. Even though there are many Roman Catholics and Protestants, there are few Christians.7

Different roles have developed in such times of quick growth. While the clergy gained power the lay-people were weakened in intense fights.8 The ordination of the one became the subordination of the others. A fundamental pastoral schism emerged.9

What was very decisive were the closely interwoven shared tasks between the different managers in the church and the state. The structures of the Church with its dioceses and territorial communities corresponded to the structures of the Roman Empire – the Church had “incarnated itself structurally”.

In the Middle Ages something similar happened. The complete living environment of people was structured by the Church. The people were obliged to celebrate the mass in their parish, to pay the tithe, to be married, to baptize their children and to bury their family-members. The term for this relationship with the parish was “Pfarrbann”.

The “old” orders, ie. the Benedictines and Franciscans, the Dominicans and the Jesuits, played an important role in strengthening the Church as a relatively independent institution. This social structure of the Church has dark and light sides. Europe owes the Church its institutions for education and hospitals as well as the development of an effective state administration; but on the other hand, there were the Inquisition, the colonisation of other continents and religious wars.

The Jesus-movement was fully adult in that phase since it had trained an administration compatible with its vision. The administration of goods, money and members were well regulated.

The four elements which help an organisation to grow were shown clearly in Saarinen’s study: the community, the programme, the administration and all three interwoven with the strength of the birth-vision. Community, programme and administration must always be tested by the vision and rub against each other and develop themselves. This birth-vision forces the Church to continual development and purifying, sometimes also to radical conversion and to penitence, to a confession of its guilt as made by John Paul II at the beginning of the third millennium to the displeasure of many in the Church.

A strength of the Christian Churches is its determination not to be shaken at its original birth-vision. This is held tightly in its charter – the Sacred Scriptures handed down faithfully thanks to the definition of an untouchable canon. Of course these sacred texts have a history of reception, carried by God’s Holy Spirit. This remains obligatory for the development of the Churches. However, it mustn’t be prevented from developing further in different cultures and times. This is not the case at least today where the Constantine epoch, characterizing the destiny of the Church for centuries, has come to an end, while mankind is coming together – a unification constantly threatened by fear and therefore by violence, greed and lies.

Getting old: Weakening of the Vision

According to Saarinen, the ageing of an organisation starts precisely when the strength of the vision declines. It is, he notes cheerfully, a popular time for anniversaries. The jubilant communities of the Church look back (such as married couples, members of religious orders, priests, organisations) and are pleased about the strength of their vision at the beginning and what it has become.

After the vision the programs become old if they are not updated early enough. What remains is a community which is well managed, self-satisfied but ageing at the same time. If the community is also lost, the administration only rules with its structures and paucity of vision. It is then often only all about money, hardly about God. A dying Church body is managed successfully. Its end: organisational death after a creeping, silent implosion.

Renewal and resurrection

The life cycle of individuals is irreversibly placed between birth and death. Not so that of organisations. These have the possibility of obtaining what they lack and gaining new vitality and strength. Renewal is possible in every phase of life and age.

If an organisation is in the phase of “maturity” in which the strength of the vision declines, then it needs to regain vision. If it is an “aristocratic community”, in which vision and program are missing, it requires an update of both. According to the bible, the miracle of a resurrection from organisational death is possible.

An example of the renewal of the vitality of a community is offered by “Servant John”. He lets the risen Christ tell to the community of Laodicea in Asia Minor:

And to the angel of the church in Laodicea write: The words of the Amen, the faithful and true witness, the origin of God’s creation:

“I know your works; you are neither cold nor hot. I wish that you were either cold or hot.

So, because you are lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I am about to spit you out of my mouth.

For you say, ‘I am rich, I have prospered, and I need nothing.’ You do not realize that you are wretched, pitiable, poor, blind, and naked.

Therefore I counsel you to buy from me gold refined by fire so that you may be rich; and white robes to clothe you and to keep the shame of your nakedness from being seen; and salve to anoint your eyes so that you may see.

I reprove and discipline those whom I love. Be earnest, therefore, and repent.

Listen! I am standing at the door, knocking; if you hear my voice and open the door, I will come in to you and eat with you, and you with me.

To the one who conquers I will give a place with me on my throne, just as I myself conquered and sat down with my Father on his throne.

Let anyone who has an ear listen to what the Spirit is saying to the churches.”

(Rv 3:14–22)

We can learn a lot from the analysis of Saarinen. Primarily a powerful and moving vision must stand not only at the cradle of every organisation. This is and remains the guarantor of its liveliness in its further development as well. When its strength weakens, the organisation ages and loses little by little what it needs for the life in space and time: community, program and administration.

Vision’s weakness

Now the boy Samuel was ministering to the Lord under Eli. The word of the Lord was rare in those days; visions were not widespread.

At that time Eli, whose eyesight had begun to grow dim so that he could not see, was lying down in his room;

the lamp of God had not yet gone out, and Samuel was lying down in the temple of the Lord, where the ark of God was.

(1 S 3:1–3)

Times without prophetic visions in Israel were counted as dark years. The people felt godforsaken if the “mouth of God” (this is the translation of “prophet”) ceased. “A people without visions perishes” (Dorothee Sölle)10.

At the time of the archpriest Eli this was obviously the case. Eli “could not see anymore”. Eli was vision-less. His eyes were blinded. He slept in his usual place. All this taken together helped the Israelites to be aware that the Lord hid himself: “the word of the Lord was rare.”

The young Prophet Samuel and the priest Eli, by Edward Burne Jones from The Vyner Memorial Window in Oxford Cathedral c. 1872

The report in the Book of Samuel shows how visions come to the people again. God himself gets active; the lamp of God hasn’t gone out yet. God makes use of whom he chooses. In this case God, however, does not appoint the respectable but corrupt office bearer Eli but rather the young inexperienced Samuel. Perhaps like our young lay people in the Church?

Whereas both sleep deeply in the temple; it is the sleep which not only makes one passive but receptive to the call of God.

Then the Lord called, “Samuel! Samuel!” and he said, “Here I am!”

and ran to Eli, and said, “Here I am, for you called me.” But he said, “I did not call; lie down again.” So he went and lay down.

The Lord called again, “Samuel!” Samuel got up and went to Eli, and said, “Here I am, for you called me.” But he said, “I did not call, my son; lie down again.”

(1 S 3:4–6)

The course of the story is touchingly up-to-date. God calls and Samuel goes to the priest because he thought in his inexperience of God that Eli had called him at night. However, Eli sends the young man back to sleep again. And the whole thing happens twice! This is the obstinate misunderstanding of the laity. They understand themselves as called by the priest (and) but do not understood that they are directly called to be co-workers with God! All this can happen if somebody does not hear God’s inner voice yet. Therefore, the report continues briefly: Now Samuel did not yet know the Lord, and the word of the Lord had not yet been revealed to him. (1 S 3:7).

With this comes the great hour of Eli. When the boy appears at him the third time, he realises that God wants to call the boy. He therefore teaches him the knowledge of God: it is the greatest service of any office in the church to teach the people to listen to God. Eli has succeeded in doing this. When God called the next time at night God was heard by Samuel:

The Lord called Samuel again, a third time. And he got up and went to Eli, and said, “Here I am, for you called me.” Then Eli perceived that the Lord was calling the boy.

Therefore Eli said to Samuel, “Go, lie down; and if he calls you, you shall say, ‘Speak, Lord, for your servant is listening.’“ So Samuel went and lay down in his place.

Now the Lord came and stood there, calling as before, “Samuel! Samuel!” And Samuel said, “Speak, for your servant is listening.” (1 S 3:8–10)

The story about the vocation of Samuel teaches us that there are times when the strength of visions is weak in the people of God. One can scourge the weak faith of the world and of the people. But God is also responsible for this. He falls silent. There is a powerful vision only when God needs people once again to convey his vision.

We learn humbly that visions do not come through the office bearers – at least not always. God calls the young and unspent Samuel and not the old and tired Eli. He elects the beginner and not the experienced professional. Benedict of Nursia therefore writes well in his rule that in common consultations the youngest in the community has to be asked first. And if the Church appoints elderly people into Eli’s offices, how can these people learn from the young Samuels what God expects of them? Do the Elis of today listen attentively to what God wants to tell them through today’s Samuels? Or are they often deaf to God because they do not listen to the people?

About the power of visions

Saarinen, Samuel, Solomon: All three teach us how important visions are for the life of religious organisations and their ability to act. Today, perhaps we have so much discontent in some parts of the worldwide Church because we lack motivating visions. Structures are indispensable for the incarnation of a vision in history. But they are not a substitute for visions. The present Church reorganisation is more concerned about structures than visions. We speak more about money than God. Of course Churches have to make structural adjustments. Only when these are done do the churches start thinking about visions. As Saarinen teaches we should look at things the other way around.

The benefits of visions are the following:

Visions orientate

Visions are like the star which was seen by the Magi from the East (Mt 2:1–12). They followed the star and therefore they could find the way to the new-born child in the cradle. The star gave them orientation. Orient means to rise up – and we think of the sun. However, the sun for the Christian communities is Jesus, who has been made Christ in the resurrection (Ac 3:26). The Christian places of worship are built facing east, showing clearly that Christians are directed to Christ who raises them up. how will the church continue? But how does he, Christ, the master of his Church, continue with us?

Visions motivate

Visions create movement, growth and vitality. They activate our imagination. They bring people together and inspire cooperation between them. Antoine de Saint Exupéry’s saying is unforgettable: “If you want people to build a ship, then wake the longing for the open sea in them.”

Visions criticize

Prophetic words are never only pleasant. Prophets always disturbed the usual run of things. The prophet Amos was a thorn in the side of the king and the priests of his time. Vision-based criticism is an indication of loyalty with the people of God. It arises out of the worry for the vitality of the church communities. Prophetic criticism is born out of love for the Church.

Prophets who do not fulfill their critical obligation betray their mission among the people of God. To be silent rather than talk would certainly be more agreeable for them. But they could not be silent because God had put his hand on them. Sometimes the prophets spoke resolutely. Were they perhaps the predecessors of the many, or too many, calls for the reform of the Church nowadays? Moreover, sometimes the prophets behaved unconventionally and were therefore accused of disobedience. Does the Church have enough prophets today? That means people who speak prophetically or act as prophets. Or does the Church as in the time of Amos only consist of “priests” as anxious administrators of the inheritance? And are the prophets courageous even when they must learn from the destiny of all earlier prophets that they do not make themselves popular with those in power by their criticism? Only the false prophets were praised in Israel (Lk 6:26)? Jesus said once: Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it! How often have I desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing! (Lk 13:34) Or in the Acts of the Apostles: “Which of the prophets did your ancestors not persecute? They killed those who foretold the coming of the Righteous One, and now you have become his betrayers and murderers.” (Ac 7:52)

Everyone is gifted with visions

No, this is what was spoken through the prophet Joel: “In the last days it will be, God declares, that I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh, and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams.”

(Ac 2:16f., Jl 3:1–5)

God gives his prophetic spirit generously. He wants to pour his spirit onto all the people of God “at the end of times”: biblically meaning, the Messianic time and the time of the Church. The miracle of Pentecost is proclaimed! The young just like the old will be prophets and are given visions by God.

If we take this promise seriously nowadays, then it means that every Christian bears a God-given vision within telling him or her what God expects from his Church today. To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good, so said Saint Paul to the community in Corinth (1 Cor 12:7).

The question how this wealth of God-given visions can be mined then arises for the Church and its leaders. At first only I have access to my vision given to me by God. If I want to bring forth my vision which is what I have to contribute to the vision of a Church community, then I must withdraw into myself. Listening to God in deep silence and solitude I will ask the question: “God, what do you expect of me within the Church to which you have ‘added me’ (Ac 2:47)?”

Providing visions for the community

If for example a parish council seeks a vision for the community to whose service it is elected and sent, then its members will meet on a weekend to search for a common vision. They have to listen to each other to find out what could be a suitable common parish vision, to develop this vision and to come to an agreement about it in a broad discourse with the parish members.

Some members of the parish council think the quickest way of making this happen would be to provide such a vision for the parish by qualified specialists. But is it then really the vision of the parish, which is rooted within the many visions which God has put into the hearts of the members of this community? There is no doubt that providing a vision is faster than forming one in a complicated discourse If a vision is merely given to them, then no one will view it as their own nor be influenced by it for a long time. Visions coming from outside, even when they are plausible, hardly motivate. In that case, the leaders need a lot of energy to move people and to keep them on the path of the imposed vision.

Finding vision within community-visions

Although it is more time-consuming, it is more effective to find and to agree on a vision for the community. Such visions work from the inside. You can lead a horse to water but you can’t make him drink. In this case the art of the leadership does not consist in providing the goals and in winning people round. Rather they encourage the members, “added” by God to the community, to lift up the vision they are bearing in their heart. Pictorially speaking the small “vision-rivulets” of the different people would flow together and become a rushing “vision-current”. The task of making sure that the community stays on the gospel path, remains the duty of the ordained office bearers, even though they share the responsibility with all members. This is the reason why the Gospel (not the Codex) is put on the head of a bishop during his consecration. The presbytery, the parish priests, share this duty with the bishop in safeguarding the path of faithfulness of the Church and their communities.

We will now present a process by which a common vision could be formulated.

“Small visions”

First everyone needs to look into one’s own center, one’s own “life-house” and life story, and standing before God ask which vision God’s Spirit has placed into their heart. Everyone paints a picture or writes a text of that vision. Then all come together in small groups of three to tell each other about their small parish vision. After having listened to the stories of each group they look for a handful of elements for a common parish-vision. These elements they bring to a plenary session. In this phase, they are not discussing but listening to what God’s Spirit is revealing to his Church through each member.

Once the small parish visions are listed, the participants of the parish visioning process meet together and view the common elements and the differences. It is the differences which enrich. Variety is a blessing, even if some of the differences seem to be incompatible contradictions. A first picture of a common parish vision begins to appear.

In many such visioning processes rich visions have become visible. They circle center around God and his people. Presence to God and at the same time to people is sought. The principle is: “to be immersed in God is being immersed with people, especially the poor and vice-versa.“11 Ultimately such elements revolve around the two elliptic centers of God and love of neighbor. (Lk 10:27)

But what is found within them can also be “one-sided”. Sometimes spiritual seekers are so engaged with satisfying their spiritual hunger that they lose sight of the poor. Others in the present phase of their lives are perhaps spiritually barely receptive and prefer direct service to the poor. Some immerse themselves in God without coming closer to the poor. Others are involved with the poor and are unaware of how deeply they are already in God when they act out of loving compassion. (Mt 25)

Testing on the testbed of the great Vision

Naturally like ‘deaf rocks’ power and interests dulling the individual’s visions will also be included in the golden visions of the heart. No one is immune to the danger of confusing one’s own ‘bird’ – interests and power – with the Holy Spirit.

Therefore, on the way to a possible genuine common vision, it is absolutely essential to test the vision presented against the cleansing biblical tradition. This means relating the vision of the ‘great Sacred Scriptures’ with the many ‘small sacred scriptures’ which are God’s gift carried within everyone. In 1634 the Protestant mystic, Jacob Böhme, express this thus: „I carry Sacred Scripture within me.“

This testing process brings strength. Failing aspects are discovered, personal visions are enriched and destructive, one-sided aspects are overcome. At the same time, it can foster critical analysis and course corrections.

When this is all done the common reworked vision can be formulated in a succinct text. If there is an image included, the presentation of the vision to others will be facilitated.

The vision is an indispensable step to a sustainable social structure of the Church. It can be translated into the pastoral activities that are gradually initiated. The way to failure is to begin too many projects at the same time. There are many other questions to consider in light of the vision. Are there enough people who carry the vision? How many others can be convinced to embrace the vision, express their Adsum, their ‘here I am’, and recognize and develop their gifts? How will the ministry of the ordained look when many members assume their God given responsibility? How can they foster the many who are called and gifted rather than discouraging them by patronsing or anxiously distrusting them? How can they contribute so that the many ‘Samuels’ recognize God and follow the ways of Jesus? How can the Church ensure that there are enough people who can do the abundant work of the ordained – and not least of all, to safeguard the life giving celebration of the Eucharist, which is the source and summit of all Christian life and Church involvement?

In this last phase of the process to formulate a parish vision, it should be quite clear that it is very important to test the vision with the Sacred Scriptures which are entrusted to the Church.

Sacred Scripture relates in detail Jesus’ vision from his disciples and the community of disciples.

This vision of Jesus has deeply influenced people in the Church through the ages. Great theological documents were produced from it. Through the ages this vision of the Church was handed down in wonderful and impressive images through Christian art. They can still affect us today.

Such visions of the Church set in images will now be presented. Naturally I do not claim to provide a complete picture. Rather they are visions that have played a sustaining role in the course of my fundamental pastoral research and also in the continuing formation activities on all levels in the Church. In sharing these images, I have sensed how they inspired, encouraged, healed from depression, uplifted and gave a message. These old and unused visions of the Church are like an effective antidote against the resignation among the honorary and full time personnel. They help end the depressing management of declining old church structures. Instead, they contribute so that together the transition to a new church structure will be created with determination, courage, and imagination. The feeling of decline can give way to a hope of a breaking open. Such confidence is already the beginning of a new time for the Church. In the end visions are nothing else than the future rising in our hearts.

Unspent Visions of the Church

Orpheus, Greek wine-bowl-painting, 2nd – 3rd century

Orpheus and Christ

An ancient myth

A myth expresses through a unique story something that fits everywhere and always. Through inspiring stories those questions are considered that have always affected people. Perhaps this is the oldest question of mankind: What is stronger at the end, death or love?

Contemporary thinking is split on this question. Death is stronger some say. Everything ends with it. And the dream of immortality of the beloved person too. Others, however, hope for love beyond death. They are not able to imagine that the beloved person would no longer exist. And more and more people doubt. They regard both as being possible. But their hope is too faint for building their life on it. Yet their doubt is not strong enough to abandon all hope for a victory of love over death.

The ancient Orpheus myth could serve as a mirror for the growing number of contemporary sceptics. And this is the ancient tale.

The Greek Orpheus

Orpheus loves Eurydice. The beloved is bitten by a poisonous snake and she is snatched by death. Eurydice must go down to the netherworld.

This destiny does not let the loving minstrel rest idly. He sets off on his way to the netherworld. Thanks to his song on a lyre he passes Cerberus safely who refuses the mortal one’s access to the netherworld. Charon takes him over the Styx (Acheron), the river of death. He reaches Hades and Persephone who rule the netherworld.

These are so touched by his love that they allow him to lead Eurydice back to the land of laughter, life and love. But they imposed a seemingly easy condition: He mustn’t look around during the long journey back to the world of the living.

Eurydice follows Orpheus as he continues on his way. He does not hear any steps of the silent shadowy Eurydice. His doubts whether she is following really grow with every step. So the doubting lover finally turns round: And Eurydice he loses forever.

Look at the tragic message this myth brings! Not love over death, but death over love wins at the end. The dark fears of so many people are fed. Instead of being reduced they are multiplied.

The Christ-Orpheus

Since 175 AD the young Clement, born in 150 AD in Athens, taught at the Catechetical School of Alexandria – that is where the Nile flows into the Mediterranean Sea. In the Eastern Church tradition, he is regarded as a respected Church Father. The myth of the Greek Orpheus was known by the early Christian Church in Rome too. In the Catacombs of Domitilla or this one of Saints Marcellinus and Peter there are mural paintings of the myth in a Christian variation.

Christ-Orpheus. Fresco in the Catacombs of Saint Marcellino and Peter, Rome, 4th century

The similarity of the two Orpheuses – the Greek Orpheus and the Christian Orpheus – is captivating. Both wear a Phrygian cap. Both are minstrels. Both holding a lyre.

The early Christians apparently were convinced that the topic of the Greek myth is also the innermost topic of the Gospel. Whether death is stronger than love occupied primarily Eastern theology. Not only Eurydice as a single person suffers the destiny of being wrested to the netherworld, it is the destiny of everyone who has “human nature”. The whole of mankind suffers from a mortal wound.

Christ, the minstrel of God, loves “Eurydice”, i.e. mankind, which became a slave to death. Love forces Christ, as happened to the Greek Orpheus, to descend to the netherworld – he became a human being and died. In the Eastern Church tradition, the key event of Easter is the “Descent of Christ into Hades”. What Christ risen from death did first was to descend into Hades. Until the reform of the Roman Liturgy by the Second Vatican Council the Apostles Creed stated: „He descended into hell.“ It is exactly the same process which is told in the Greek myth.

The Greek Orpheus nevertheless is different from the Christ Orpheus. Christ Orpheus does not look back. Looking back doesn’t fit either with his life or with following him: “No one who puts a hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God.” (Lk 9:62) Christ Orpheus goes his way without looking back, without self-absorption, he is obedient only to the will of his God. Whereas the Greek Orpheus failed, this new Orpheus is able through song to bring back his beloved Eurydice, i.e. mankind, back to the land of laughter, hope and resurrection. Clement from Alexandria taught this analogy.

The unique struggle

This was the basic conviction of the early Christians. And it is to this day. Death may have the last word from the human view and experience: From God’s view, Love – which is God – has the last word. That the Christ-Orpheus descended for Eurydice-mankind is the basis of this conviction: God became a human and out of love for humanity he entered death. Descending into hell he broke hell’s power over mankind. Mankind was cured of its mortal wound. It is not by chance that we find the painting of the Christ Orpheus in the Roman burial grounds of the Christians. The Christians say just at the place of death – at the graves – that death does not have the last word.

The so-called Easter sequence “Victimae Paschali Laudes” is one of the most wonderful songs of Christianity in which this basic hope of the Christians is sung joyfully. It is an Easter hymn praising the “slaughtered lamb”. The melodies of this Gregorian chant bestow on the hymn power and solemn dignity:

Victimae paschali laudes

Immolent Christiani.

To the Paschal Victim let Christians

offer a sacrifice of praise.

Agnus redemit oves;

Christus innocens Patri

Reconciliavit Peccatores.

The Lamb redeemed the sheep.

Christ, sinless,

reconciles sinners to the Father.

Mors et Vita duello

Conflixere mirando;

Dux vitae mortuus

Regnat vivus.

Death and life were locked together in a unique struggle.

Life‘s captain died;

now he reigns, never more to die.

Dic nobis, Maria.

Quid vidisti in via?

Sepulchrum Christi viventis

Et gloriam vidi resurgentis.

Tell us Mary, “What did you see on the way?”

“I saw the tomb of the now living Christ.

I saw the glory of Christ, now risen.”

Angelicos testes.

Sudarium et vestes.

Surrexit Christus spes mea;

Praecedet suos in Galilaeam.

“I saw angels who gave witness;

the cloths too which once had covered head and limbs.”

“Christ my hope has arisen.

He will go before his own into Galilee.”

Scimus Christum surrexisse

A mortuis vere.

Tu nobis victor Rex

miserere.

We know that Christ has indeed risen

from the dead.

Do you, conqueror and king,

have mercy on us.

Amen. Alleluia.

Amen. Alleluia.

The lyre

Orpheus is a minstrel. He accompanies his songs on a lyre, one of the oldest stringed instruments. God’s loving minstrel Christ Orpheus also carries a lyre in his left hand. According to Clement, the young director of the catechetical school in Alexandria, the lyre is the Church. The loving minstrel makes its strings sing. Thus the salvific song of laughter, hope and resurrection can resound for Eurydice-humanity.

Christ-Orpheus. Fresco in the Catacombs of Saint Marcellino and Peter, Rome, 4th century. Detail

This picture is very instructive for our sense of Church today. Far too often today we place the Church in the center of our critical considerations.

According to the representations of the Christ Orpheus in the catacombs in Rome, it is primarily not all about the Church, however. The topic is God and his world, Christ and his unbelievable commitment for his humanity, his Eurydice, who had become a slave of death. For her he commits all he is and has. In one of Paul’s letters to the community in Phillippi he included the following hymn sung by the early Christians:

Who, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited,

but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness. And being found in human form,

he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death— even death on a cross.

Therefore God also highly exalted him and gave him the name that is above every name,

so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bend, in heaven and on earth and under the earth,

and every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.

(Ph 2:6–11)

A second point: in the great drama between God and mankind the Church plays a cooperative role – it is like an instrument. On this instrument the song that saves Eurydice-mankind from death shall resound. The Church therefore is not a moral institution but joins God in healing mankind of the mortal wound.

Christ-Orpheus. Fresco in the Catacombs of Saint Marcellino and Peter, Rome, 4th century. Detail

Last but not least, the Church does not sing its own song. It is the song of Christ. He grips into its strings and plays his salvation song. He makes the strings of the Church resound with the help of the “plectrum”, according to the painting of the Christ Orpheus in the catacombs of the saints SS. Marcellinus and Peter. This is the small stick used to pluck the strings to make them vibrate. Clement teaches that the plectrum is the Holy Spirit. It is God’s Spirit letting the song of salvation resound on Christ’s lyre – the Church.12

Questions naturally arise from this wondrous vision of the Church.

Maturing into cosmic Christ

´The Cosmic Man. Illustration to the second vision in Liber divinorum operum, Codex Latinus, 12th century

It is a basic melody of Christianity that it is about God and its world. The world was then quickly divided into the baptized and therefore saved and the unbaptized who were lost.

Of course exceptions were made in this traditional flat division. Why should innocent unchristened children go into hell? Or the great religious believers before Christ, such as Adam and Eve, Abraham and Sarah, David and Solomon? The opinion of St. Augustine that only a few will be saved and the rest will belong to “the damned mass”, has influenced “Western Christianity” over a long time. It even affected the practice of Baptism. In case of danger of death, the embryo was baptised with a syringe in the womb. In 1903 this was forbidden by the Prussian government for medical reasons.

Hildegard von Bingen

At the same time there also was another vision of Christianity. We find this with the Mystics. And they counted on texts of Sacred Scripture which had become invisible in Western preaching. An impressive example is Hildegard von Bingen (1098–1179). Many know of her healing medicines, her compositions or art of cooking. Church historians praise her as a courageous woman who was not afraid to confront the church leaders of her time with harsh words. Most of all she was a graced visionary.

A magnificent vision of God and the world

In her famous book about the divine works (Liber divinorum operum, written between the years 1163–1174) she sees God and in him the world with “the Son of Man”.

God the “father” as the source of all being protrudes with His head out of the frame of all reality. But this “protruding” God is permanently giving birth, according to the German mystic Meister Eckhart. God’s divine love, his very essence, is the only reason for this image. It is from this primordial source before all time that the Logos, the Son is born. He is a fiery depiction; fiery like love and fiery like the Holy Spirit who unites the Father and the Son, the Source and the Word.

The body of the “Logos” curves like the belly of a pregnant woman. And the whole creation is within this body “of the Logos”, with all its powers and forces, its dangerous elemental forces. And in the center is the human being, that is Jesus, the Christ – “the son of man”.

The vision of the abbess, who founded two Benedictine cloisters in Bingen and Eibingen, is it full of messages even for us today.

God – a dance of love

First: God’s essence is Life and Love, and is giving birth constantly out of love. Richard Rohr, the gifted contemporary Franciscan theologian from America, has formed the picture of God as a “dance of love”.

Creation – born from God

Thereupon: The creation arises from this God giving birth out of love. “Ex amore”, as formulated the wise theologian and mystic Dorothee Sölle. The Old Testament expresses this in the same way in the Book of Wisdom:

For you love all things that exist,

and detest none of the things that you have made,

for you would not have made anything if you had hated it.

How would anything have endured if you had not willed it?

Or how would anything not called forth by you have been preserved?

You spare all things, for they are yours, O Lord, you who love the living.

(Ws 11:24–26)

Everything takes place in God’s “world body”

Primarily however, all creation takes place in God himself – in his world body. Nothing happens “outside” of God. But to formulate it this way is not without problems. We are reaching the bounds of our religious language and imagination. God, who is not tied to space and time, is put in connection with creation with all its brokenness. By speaking this way, a questionable picture of God often remains that limits God to human comprehension.

What a universal view of all reality! What a drama of loving between God and his creation to which it constantly gives birth! Nothing can be which God does not hold in existence by giving birth. Christian theology speaks about a constant creation (creatio continua). This creation is not aimless; it is aimed at completion.

An old Christian hymn

This view of God and the world is not foreign to the Holy Scriptures of the Jews and Christians. Even though this view faded in the Western Church tradition, it was never completely forgotten. The mystics lived from it and referred to it in their wondrous texts. These texts, which are important for the everyday spirituality of Christians, have also never been not aimless, it. They were read in the liturgy and pondered in the liturgy of the Hours.

A core text is in the letter to the community in Colossae. Whether Saint Paul, or somebody from his school is the author, is not important in regard to the greatness and resonance of the text. The Christian Churches count it as one of those inviolable texts, in which God’s intentions are revealed to us. The author took the hymn from the early liturgy of the Christian communities and expanded it for his proclamation with a view to the cross as well as to the Church. This is the heart of this hymn about Christ:

Giving thanks to the Father, who has enabled you to share in the inheritance of the saints in the light.

He has rescued us from the power of darkness and transferred us into the kingdom of his beloved Son,

in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.

He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation;

for in him all things in heaven and on earth were created, things visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or powers—all things have been created through him and for him.

He is before all things, and in him all things hold together.

He is the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, so that he might come to have first place in everything.

For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell,

and through him God was pleased to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, by making peace through the blood of his cross.

(Col 1:12–20)

For him

The vision of the mystic, Hildegard, and the hymn from the letter to the Colossians have an important topic in common. It revolves around the Logos born from the heart of the Father and the human being Jesus, who was appointed as Christ through the Resurrection (Ac 2:36). He is a visible image of God for us, a dignity which the creation story image to man and woman: so God created humankind in his image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them. (Gn 1:27)

The whole of creation –set in motion toward the creation of humanity – happens within the Logos. “Everything is created in him”, in his “world body”. However, everything is also created “through him”. And this “in him” and “through him” flows into an overarching “for him”.

According to the hymn, however, this is not only the intent, but it actually happens. Even more, in Jesus, who became the Christ, all of creation began to reach its completion. Christ is consequently named the “firstborn” of all creation. This is only meaningful if there are others born later – all of humanity whose nature God himself has adopted in the incarnation, and whose mortal wound, namely death, is definitively healed by his death on the cross.

The world is saved

Different from the pessimistic tradition of the Western Church, the horizon of the Colossian hymn is universal. Everyone is included, nobody is excluded: “and through him God was pleased to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, by making peace through the blood of his cross.” (Col 1:20).

What an optimistic song of the early Church! In the end God will “have dominion” over everything and in everything! “When all things are subjected to him, then the Son himself will also be subjected to the one who put all things in subjection under him, so that God may be all in all.” (1 Cor 15:28) Just as the destructive history of original sin affected everyone, so too God’s victory over death affects everyone. “Therefore just as one man’s trespass led to condemnation for all, so one man’s act of righteousness leads to justification and life for all.” (Rm 5:18)

Easter is the kerygma of the Church. Death has lost its power over mankind.13

While once at the heart of the world dwelt death and futility – now dwell God and life. “The world is saved” Easter hymns cry with joy. Every celebration of the Eucharist has this Easter jubilation as its topic. Every sacramental celebration has its source in it. The Easter jubilation characterizes the Christian life: “The hope for resurrection can free us of a lifestyle of frantic ‘self-assertion’.”14

Inheriting salvation

Contemporary theology speaks in view of such magnificent promises of an “inheriting salvation”. Creation in which nothing can happen without God’s Holy Spirit, has an unstoppable inner dynamic and orientation towards completion. The beginning of the completion has a name and a face: Jesus, the Christ, resurrected from death. As the firstborn he is the head of a completed creation. Detached from space and time, He is open to assume the many “later-born” as members of His completed world body. This will continue, until the whole creation is perfect. Christ thus grows “cosmically”, an image loved by recent theology.15 In dialogue with the scientific theory of evolution this hopeful picture is corroborated. Teilhard de Chardin, whom pope Benedikt XVI announced in 2009 he would rehabilitate, speaks about a point Omega to which the whole creation develops: “We know that the whole creation has been groaning in labor pains until now.” (Rm 8:22)

Or like Hugh Miller, a religious Protestant geologist from Scotland, who in 1854 – that is five years before Charles Darwin’s pioneering book The Origin of Species – had pondered:

“I ask, what are the essentials of geological history or that of the genesis? Decisive is the progress in both. In both we find the advancement of a dead matter to modest, then to higher life-forms. But did this ascent come to an end? No. God still lets higher follow on low.

God is going to prepare the poor humanity for a higher status now. The work of the seventh day is salvation. Creation and creator the creator will finally unite as one person. The ascent from a dead matter to man has as its goal God. This point of union was there from the beginning. True God and true man. You recognize the adorable Lord of all future.”16

Therefore, the history of salvation and world history – both are one story for God – have entered their final phase. The “end times” are now, according to the first Letter of Saint Peter as well as the first Letter to the Corinthians: “He was destined before the foundation of the world, but was revealed at the end of the ages for your sake.” (1 P 1:20) “These things happened to them to serve as an example, and they were written down to instruct us, on whom the ends of the ages have come.” (1 Cor 10:11). The dogmatic constitution of the Second Vatican Council states: “Already the final age of the world has come upon us and the renovation of the world is irrevocably decreed and is already anticipated in a real way.” (LG 48).

God is universal in his will to save everyone. “This is right and is acceptable in the sight of God our Savior, who desires everyone to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth.” (1 Tm 2:3f.) He heals every person through his Holy Spirit. He dwells in the innermost part of everybody. The soul of everyone is like an “inner mansion” in whose innermost room God lives as describes the by Spanish mystic Teresa of Àvila.

Inheriting disaster

The change to an optimistic approach regarding salvation as supported by the Second Vatican Council could become rosy and naive. This may happen, if the dark side of the long history of humanity is overlooked. The dynamic movement towards Christ inherent in history is damaged and disturbed. From the beginning, the history of mankind is characterized by violence, greed and lies despite all the efforts of people of good will.

There is a meaningless way of life which the first letter of Saint Peter calls “the futile ways inherited from your ancestors” (1 P 1:18). Tradition uses the vague and confusing expression “original sin” for this disturbance. What is meant are those demonic hostile powers which infiltrate and constantly hinder the work of God.

Therefore, every single person is exposed to two big powerful currents: God’s dynamism toward to salvation (“Erbheil”, “inheriting salvation”) and the dynamics of fear (“Erbschuld”, inheriting evil tendencies, “original sin”) which counteract the maturing of love and salvation. This is a painful experience that the apostle Paul sorrowfully addresses and deeply influenced Martin Luther’s key teaching about justification:

„I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate.

Now if I do what I do not want, I agree that the law is good.

But in fact it is no longer I that do it, but sin that dwells within me.

For I know that nothing good dwells within me, that is, in my flesh. I can will what is right, but I cannot do it.

For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I do.

Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I that do it, but sin that dwells within me.

So I find it to be a law that when I want to do what is good, evil lies close at hand.

For I delight in the law of God in my inmost self,

but I see in my members another law at war with the law of my mind, making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members.

Wretched man that I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death?

Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, with my mind I am a slave to the law of God, but with my flesh I am a slave to the law of sin.”

(Rm 7:15–25)

The Church: revealing and healing

The Church is placed into the drama of God and his creation. Its mission can be explained in the context of the magnificent vision of the hymn to Christ in the letter to the Colossians and of the vision of the mystic Hildegard by a quotation from Jesus to his disciples. In the Sermon on the Mount he teaches them:

“You are the light of the world. A city built on a hill cannot be hid.”

“You are the salt of the earth; but if salt has lost its taste, how can its saltiness be restored? It is no longer good for anything, but is thrown out and trampled under foot.”

(Mt 5:14.13)

In the history of salvation, according to the famous Hans Urs von Balthasar, a lot that happens is veiled. Salvation happens in the shape of human loving. Love is salvation “in the atheistic mode” (Karl Rahner with reference to Mt 2517).

The task of the Church is to reveal what is veiled. It can do this through how it lives, what it speaks about, when it is asked, and not least what it sings and celebrates. In all what it is and does, the Church is like a “revealing agency” for God’s work in history. It speaks primarily about the plans of God for the world: God created it out of love. Through his Spirit God promotes its completion. By becoming human and entering into death, Jesus as one of us, spearheads humanity to its completion.

Everyone as a human being is called to completion in love. By revealing the works of God in the history of salvation, the Church contributes to the maturing of the world towards its fulfilment. When the Church celebrates the Eucharist and the celebrating community eats Christ’s body, then not only the Church as the body of Christ grows, but a part of the world (the Church) grows now into its completed shape, into the “world body” of God, into the Cosmic Christ.

Salt heals. We talk about healing salts and use them to be cured by following the proven instructions of the mystic Hildegard von Bingen. In order for people to mature in love a great deal of healing energy is needed, especially to heal them from the demonic fear of death and its tragic consequences – violence, greed and lies.

The Church with the Savior (Heiland) becomes a “healing-land” (“Heil-Land”). Whoever enters its community loses something of the fear of death and the concern about themselves: Love can grow. At the same time, the Church tries to play a part in a healing “civilization of love”. Together with people of good will it tries to dismantle “unjust structures”, to create room for justice and peace.

The Descent of Christ into Hades: Of what do we believe God is capable?

Descent of Christ into Hades, Chora Cathedral, Istanbul, Byzantine fresco, 14th century

The descent of Christ into Hades plays a central role in the Eastern Church Easter liturgy. Like the Greek Orpheus, Christ, the loving minstrel of God, descends into Hades, where the dead are in the power of death. He returns from there into life together with humanity.

The Eastern Church tradition loves this Easter picture. It does not show Christ rising out of the grave at night. It shows us Christ who goes down to hell and rises from there together with mankind. The progenitors Adam and Eve represent mankind. Through them death came, and the risen Christ frees them from the dead. The descent of the risen Christ into hell has therefore a cosmic meaning and happens for all people without reservation (Bishop Hilarion18[18]). The orthodox Easter liturgy therefore lets Hades (the ruler of the netherworld) complain:

“If only I had not taken him anyway, this one who was born from Maria, because he came to destroy my power; he broke my iron gates and because he was God, he freed the souls which I held as prisoner.”

O Lord, blessed be your cross and your sacred resurrection!

Hades moans today: “My power has disappeared. I received one who died as mortals die but I could not hold him tight; through him I lost all I had dominated. I had control over the death since the beginning of the world, however, he took up everyone with himself!”

O Lord, blessed be your cross and your sacred resurrection!19

The Greek Church Fathers pondered what happened at the moment of the resurrection. At first they reflected on a cunning God: The Devil could not understand the consequences of God’s incarnation. He did not suspect the incarnated God could enter in the sphere of his influence by dying. Clement of Alexandria tells, that Christ risen from the dead preached the Gospel in hell for three days. Then he led those out of hell who believed in him.

The Church Fathers are divided on whether some or all were saved by Chris’s descent into Hades. It seems that hope predominates for everyone. Some, like Gregor of Nyssa, think that by the descent of Christ into Hades hell, death and the devil came to a definitive end. How could God’s victory be perfect as long as some hostile power still remains, even if it has been defeated? In the words of the great Greek Church Father:

“Because the one who lives eternally does not undergo physical birth in order to live but by his death calls us back to life. Our whole nature should now participate in the return from death. With his hand stretched out and bowing down to our corpse, he desired to draw so close to death that he drank mortality and initiated resurrection in his own body, thereby awakening the whole human race through his power.

The sheltering body for the deity was exalted together with the deity in the resurrection and came from nowhere except from the matter of our existence. If in our body the activity of one sense organ is active, the other organs with which it is connected have a sensation. Therefore, the resurrection of a part – as if mankind were a single person – extends to the whole; because there is a deep unity in our nature, therefore the part propagates the whole.

So what do we learn about the mysteries of our faith when the One Standing bends down to the fallen to raise them up?”20

God who will be all, will be in all. When the gospel teaches this, it seems to me to announce the destruction of sin. If God is in everyone, then sin can no longer be in them. If somebody thought the sin would continue to exist, then how could he maintain the teaching that God is in all? Because the phrase ‘God is all in all’ would be disproven as soon as an exception were made with respect to evil, if this continued to exist. Therefore, if God is in all, then it is impossible to be in that which has no existence.”21

A current question

The question is not only important when looking at the times before Christ but also for us today. Many of our contemporaries have no good biographical and/or cultural chance to hear the Gospel and to accept it. I am thinking of the many people in the “atheizing” cultures former Christian areas of Europe, such as the Czech Republic, Estonia and East Germany. The number of those atheising is also increasing in formerly Roman Catholic countries. In addition, think of the members of the great world religions. The world view has become multicolored or diversified not only worldwide but also in our former Christian countries with a denominational monopoly.22 A question arises with an acute urgency: Can such a variety of people, of whom only a minority is A question arises with an acute urgency: Christian, be saved?

Missionaries like Francis Xavier travelled around the world driven by an anxious concern to baptize as many people as possible. The same concern was evident in the regular Baptism preparation. Bishop Josephus Dominicus Lamberg of Patavia (Passau) wrote an Epistola pastoralis in 1726. The first chapter was about baptism. But he dealt only with the question of whether midwives were instructed adequately by the parish priests about what they had to do if childbirth did not go well.

Theology, while still anxious about salvation, has avoided saying that God would let innocent children go to hell just because they could not be baptized. Just as there was a special place for the ancestors of the Old Testament (limbus patrum); similarly, a place with natural bliss for unchristened innocent children (limbus parvulorum) was set up.

Today we look at the one world believing that god has a history with it. We take seriously with the Eastern Church Fathers that which God has accepted, is saved: God took on human nature which all people share. Therefore, theology began, primarily after the Second Vatican Council, to ask whether we may hope that God saves everyone at the end of time. According to Karl Rahner asking this question is one lasting significance from this Council.23 Karl Rahner had coined the picturesque phrase of “the anonymous Christian”, to grasp this hope also theologically. His colleagues attacked him intensely for this. He was accused of an insubordinate usurpation of people who did not want to become Christians. For him what happened was not a usurpation by the Church rather much more an outpouring of God’s generosity. In regard to the accusations Rahner said in all necessary sovereignty that he only counts two undisputed statements in Sacred Scripture. The first one: God wants the salvation of all people (see 1 Tm 2:4). In addition, the second: Without Christ nobody will be redeemed. He thus only wanted to talk about the chance for salvation for everyone not about a Church affiliation for everyone. This could surely be a great “outrage” for the faithful of other religions. It is difficult for them to accept according to Christian teaching, that the salvation of all, even for atheists and Buddhists, is connected to God’s incarnation and the resurrection of Jesus. Jesus, unfettered from time and space through his resurrection, is from then connected with all. This not only brought him to the head of the new creation, it also enabled him to accept the creation maturing in its fullness as his “world-body”. In any case, this teaching of the Christians is no “usurpation” of others but a “total giving” to others.

What may we hope for?

Hans Urs von Balthasar was a passionate advocate for the hope that God in his unwavering faithfulness (The Rock, his work is perfect, and all his ways are just. A faithful God, without deceit, just and upright is he; Dn 32:4) will bring everyone to a good end. He was inspired by the seer Adrienne of Speyer. In her visions, she sees an empty hell. There is only an abstract sin separated from the sinners. Based on these visions, he wrote his pregnant reflections in the small book “Was dürfen wir hoffen?” (What may we hope for?)24

Hans Urs von Balthasar agrees with the seer, that hell is empty. He goes through many texts from Sacred Scripture. Of course, he does not overlook the threatening discussions about hell. Nevertheless, at the same time he reads the hopeful texts about the overcoming of hell by the incarnation, cross and the resurrection of Jesus Christ. He joins both lines together and argues in the same way as Karl Rahner: The dark words remind us of what human life is all about when what we are and do matures. At the end of human life stands hell. For everyone. No one in degenerate humanity would have a chance. But thanks to God’s grace this is not the last word for everyone. Everyone is saved in Christ, as in Adam everyone has “sinned” and has become a slave to death. Certainly, nobody is saved without his personal freedom. However, nobody will be redeemed if God in his mercy does not lead us into the true liberty of loving.

Hans Urs von Balthasar argues in the same way as Karl Rahner and at the same time heavily criticised him.25 His pictures are more biblical, though. He seems to count on the court speech in Mt 25. Those who really love will be saved. However, such redeeming love is only possible when it is released by the Holy Spirit himself. This Spirit of God works where she wants: finally, in the whole of creation and in all people. She leads every man through her power on the way to redemption, which is completion. The Spirit makes it possible for us to become what we are – loving beings because we are all images of a loving God.

If God’s Holy Spirit works in everyone but this love becomes Christlike only in a small number of human beings, then apparently the Spirit works in a “veiled” way. Hans Urs von Balthasar speaks about the really loving, „to whom God’s Spirit is given in a way veiled to us“.26 This veiled work of the Spirit in everyone differs to the “revealed” acting of the Spirit in the Christians. For Christians, however, it is not revealed just for themselves. The core missionary task of the Church is to be a revealing light for the others (Mt 5:4)

In an Easter sermon, Karl Rahner has expressed this fact as follows:

“The earth, our great mother, is concerned about herself. She groans under transitoriness. Its happiest celebrations are suddenly like the beginning of a funeral ceremony and, if one hears her laughter, one trembles wondering if she is crying while laughing. She gives birth to children who die, who are too weak to live forever.

They have too much spirit to abstain from eternal joy, because - unlike animals - they see death before it comes; they are not mercifully spared the guarded experience of the end.

He has died.

However, ‘he died’ does not mean (as we unchristian spiritualists short-sightedly think), that his mind and his soul, the vessel of his eternal divinity, has escaped from the world and earth;

because the body, which connected him to the earth, has been broken in death and because the murderous earth has shown that the child of the eternal light has not been able to find a homeland in its darkness.

We say he died and immediately add, descended into the realm of death and was resurrected. With this „that which died“ has a completely other meaning than fleeing the world which we try to attribute to death.

Jesus has said himself that he will step down into the heart of the earth (Mt 12:40), into the heart of all earthly things, where everything is connected and united and where in the midst of this unity death and evanescence dwell.

He penetrated into this in his death.

He was – a sacred ruse of eternal life – defeated by death, so that death could devour him into the innermost part of the world.

Descending to the mothers and the roots of unity, he implanted in them his divine life forever.

Because he has died, he is owned a fortiori by this earth. He is there now and not longer are there evanescence and death.

In his death, he has become the heart of the earthly world, divine heart in the heart of the world, while this is still its unfolding in space and time it lowers its roots into the omnipotence of God. He has already started to assimilate to this world. He has assumed the world forever.”27

Such hope is not foreign to conservative circles. In the Marian spirituality from Fatima, a prayer used is: „Lead all souls to heaven, especially those in greatest need of your mercy.“

Once again, the prayer of hope for the Easter Liturgy of the Eastern Church:

“You, my liberator, have descended to Hades

and as Almighty You smashed its gates

as creator You have co-raised the dead

and, You Christ, have broken the thorn of death

and have delivered Adam from the curse,

You friend of humans. Therefore, all of us call:

Save us, Lord!”28

Is the end of morality approaching?

Some people in our Church contradict such an optimistic hope in the matter of salvation. They criticise it as a liberal position which is not rooted in the depths of the Christian faith. Some are afraid of the end of all morality if the Church announces such salvific optimism. Without the fear of hell humans becomes immoral.

However, Karl Rahner argues against such a critique, maintaining that optimism does do not diminish the dark side of the history of mankind and the history of each individual:

“Such an attitude may seem natural for the liberal bourgeois individuals of today because they know nothing of the incomprehensibility of God’s justice and his all-consuming holiness.

And They therefore think that God can justify himself only in front of before the tribunal of mankind with the message of victorious mercy. But those who perceive from afar who God is and, who feel compassion for the dreadful darkness for mankind’s history, for them the salvific optimism which the church has accepted is an almost frightening message which challenges challenging the last power of belief.”29

Moreover, what makes people evil is less their immorality, which one can restrain with the threat of hell. Or as presented in old school theology – incomplete repentance born out of the fear of hell is not sufficient for forgiveness. Perfect repentance, which is born out of love, is required for salvation.

More and more today, also in western theology, it is suspected that the root of all evil is fear which in the end is a fear of transitoriness, futility and death. The depth psychologist and theologian Monika Renz suspects that the primordial fear is actuated already before birth.30 Great theologians including Søren Kierkegaard, Eugen Drewermann, Eugen Biser and Benedict XVI31 view this incurable fear as the source of violence, greed and lies.32 No appeal is helpful against fear as underlined in the letter to the Romans (Rm 7:15–25). According to modern research fear destroys solidarity.33 Only someone who is healed from fear can be free to become what he already is: a loving human being. Therefore, the great theological thinkers of our time mentioned just mentioned plead for a shift from a moralising to a therapeutic Christianity:

“The Church does not impose anything on man and does not present just any kind of system of morality. The most important thing is really that the Church brings God to the people. That it opens the doors for God and gives the people what they most need, what they most expect [from the Church], and what can also most help them. It does all this above all by the great wonder of love, which happens again and again if people stand by others and help them in the name of Christ, without making a profit and without having to do this as a job. According to Eugen Biser, this therapeutical character of the Christianity which is healing and giving must be made much more visible in the future.”34

Church as land of healing

The work of the Church is not to judge, not to condemn, to neither banish nor destroy; rather, in following Christ, it is to become a place of healing.35 God is praised as the doctor of His people already in Israel:

“He said, ‘If you will listen carefully to the voice of the Lord your God, and do what is right in his sight, and give heed to his commandments and keep all his statutes, I will not bring upon you any of the diseases that I brought upon the Egyptians; for I am the Lord who heals you.’”

(Ex 15:26)

It speaks for itself that Jesus is represented in many pictures of Christian art as a pharmacist.

The following vision of church will show the deep concern of Jesus that the healing compassion of his God be visible and experienced.

Becoming like the father

Rembrandt Harmensz van Rijn, Return of the prodigal son, oil painting (Hermitage Saint Petersburg)

A lesson Jesus gives to the leaders of the chosen people of Israel, holds its validity for his Church built on the twelve apostles. Jesus completely knows himself as one who is not only deeply connected with his God, but also reveals the innermost intentions of God’s heart. In the depth of God’s heart is his compassion.

John Paul II urgently reminded the Church about this topic in his important encyclical, “Dives in misericordia” (1980). He therefore declared the first Sunday after Easter, Mercy Sunday. The canonized Polish pope based his teachings on the Polish mystic Sister Faustina Kowalska. She had a vision of the risen Christ; from his heart compassion radiates onto the world. “Jesu ufam tobje” – “Jesus, I trust you”, he recommended to the Church as its prayer for the boundless compassion of God.

God’s innermost reality is mercy and compassion is not a unique idea of the Polish mystic. (Jesus himself struggles so that religious leaders could understand this. He demonstrates it whenever he can, openly in his actions. He is rarely together with the powerful or even healthy. We find him more often in “bad society” (Adolf Holl36): at such as the customs officials who were spurned by the population because of their cooperation with the Roman occupying power and their tendency towards corruption; he was together with prostitutes, sinners and those who failed.

This annoyed religious people. They rejected this image of a God of compassion. To stop Jesus from spreading this idea further, they went after him. His passionate advocacy of this image of his God contributed considerably towards the religious leaders murdering the advocate of divine compassion.

Jesus tried everything. The doctor and evangelist Luke reports this in the middle of his gospel. Jesus tells the story of the compassion of the father and his ‘two prodigal sons’ (Lk 15:11–32). This story can be seen as the ‘Gospel within the Gospel’ of the evangelist Luke (Jacob Krämer37).

This parable told by Jesus has inspired Christian art. Today one of the most excellent representations today hangs in the Hermitage in Saint Petersburg. It is the touching later work of the impoverished and almost blind Dutch painter, Rembrandt van Rijn (1606–1669), from the year 1669.

Rembrandt shows the ‘return of the prodigal son’ in a touching manner. However, the painting shows also the other son: distant, stiff, with a shepherd’s staff. In the parable of Jesus, he stands for the religious leaders of the people – and today, for the leaders of the Church. Jesus was met with a lack of understanding. The appeal to the painting’s observers is the same as the one which Jesus addressed to the religious leaders of his time. Jesus’ message was: Become acquainted with God and how he is to all people, and especially to those who come to him through detours! Try to understand him and the intentions of his heart! Most of all learn yourself to be like this father brimful with compassion! What an appeal to our Church! What a strong and moving biblical vision which constantly requires redemption!

The following meditation tries to unwrap this message through the parable of Jesus.38

The story

This is the story Jesus tells the religious leaders of the people of Israel who mistrusted him:

Jesus continued: “There was a man who had two sons. The younger one said to his father, ‘Father, give me my share of the estate.’ So he divided his property between them.

“Not long after that, the younger son got together all he had, set off for a distant country and there squandered his wealth in wild living. After he had spent everything, there was a severe famine in that whole country, and he began to be in need. So he went and hired himself out to a citizen of that country, who sent him to his fields to feed pigs. He longed to fill his stomach with the pods that the pigs were eating, but no one gave him anything.

“When he came to his senses, he said, ‘How many of my father’s hired servants have food to spare, and here I am starving to death! I will set out and go back to my father and say to him: Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you. I am no longer worthy to be called your son; make me like one of your hired servants.’ So he got up and went to his father.

“But while he was still a long way off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion for him; he ran to his son, threw his arms around him and kissed him.

“The son said to him, ‘Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you. I am no longer worthy to be called your son.’.

“But the father said to his servants, ‘Quick! Bring the best robe and put it on him. Put a ring on his finger and sandals on his feet. Bring the fattened calf and kill it. Let’s have a feast and celebrate. For this son of mine was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found.’ So they began to celebrate.

“Meanwhile, the older son was in the field. When he came near the house, he heard music and dancing. So he called one of the servants and asked him what was going on. ‘Your brother has come,’ he replied, ‘and your father has killed the fattened calf because he has him back safe and sound.’.

“The older brother became angry and refused to go in. So his father went out and pleaded with him. But he answered his father, ‘Look! All these years I’ve been slaving for you and never disobeyed your orders. Yet you never gave me even a young goat so I could celebrate with my friends. But when this son of yours who has squandered your property with prostitutes comes home, you kill the fattened calf for him!’.

“‘My son,’ the father said, ‘you are always with me, and everything I have is yours. 32 But we had to celebrate and be glad, because this brother of yours was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found.’”

Everybody must leave the parental home

This story has often been interpreted and pondered by psychologists and theologians. These are some aspects which have touched me:

Everybody has to leave the divine ‘parental home’. Nobody can stay forever in the heavenly paradise. All of us were born from it: Perhaps we experience and endure this when we emerge out of the deep feeling of unity with all creation that we experience in our mother’s embrace, into a hostile and threatening yet charmingly attractive world.39 To help us on our way through life we are the heirs of many treasures.

In the end, everybody fails on the life-journey

Each of us is on a lifelong journey through the world, nobody remains at home. The two great challenges we have to master are loving and working. The younger of the two sons fails in both. He lands in the midst of prostitutes. Finally, after he has not used but wasted his inheritance, he finds himself among pigs, for every religious person in Israel a horror to be among “unclean” animals. He has “messed up” his life.

Rembrandt Harmensz van Rijn, Return of the prodigal son, oil painting (Hermitage Saint Petersburg). Detail

Rembrandt inscribes traces of this life in the feet of the son who returned home. The shoes are tattered. The soles are hard and injured. “All is not well” is the message.

However good it may be in our lives we often take wrong roads and lose our way. This in both love and work. We never really reach our potential or realise our dreams. In our longing, we always want more.

“When they kept on questioning him, he straightened up and said to them, ‘Let anyone among you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her’” (Jn 8:7), Jesus said addressing the religious leaders (Pharisees), who wanted to sentence a woman to be stoned to death because she had failed in marriage. However, to condemn means life dies, not arises. Therefore, Jesus proclaimed: “Neither do I condemn you.” (Jn 8:11) His intention is to heal. He wants to raise up those who failed and are downtrodden, not condemn them.

What remains is an unquenchable longing for the divine “home”

Rembrandt paints the shabby son with all appropriate attributes. His head is shaved, the symbol of the slave, the constrained one. At the same time, the symbol of the free son can be seen by the dagger in the belt. In the face of a failed life, in the face of debt, an inalienable dignity and a deep feeling for the parental home remains. Life-plans may fail, but man himself does not fail. Moreover, we feel that living on earth we are abroad as in a foreign country and home is elsewhere: “But our citizenship is in heaven.” (Ph 3:20)

This is the experience of many sensitive people. The deeper we are in the swamp, the greater is the longing for solid ground. The more we become alienated from ourselves, the stronger is the desire for a coherent life, for wholeness and shalom, which means peace. In all these experiences the longing for the “parental home” appears little by little.

Can this longing only emerge undisguised, if we have already had the experience of leaving? Who can long for home if they have not gone away? Does the longing for paradise not presuppose its loss? Could it be that we only value it if it has been lost?

The “prodigal son” remembers how it was before and longs to have it again. He starts on his way back to his homeland, back to the shelter of his father’s home.

The Father: Compassion

“So he set off and went to his father. But while he was still far off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion; he ran and put his arms around him and kissed him.” (Lk 15:20).

Rembrandt Harmensz van Rijn, Return of the prodigal son, oil painting (Hermitage Saint Petersburg). Detail

Not only does the son miss his father and the shelter of his house, the father (whom Rembrandt paints as old and going blind, which happened to Rembrandt himself) also misses his son. The father has been waiting for the homecoming of his son. He longs for him. When the son approaches, the father is already expecting him and sees him from a distance. He hugs the returnee. Without any reproach he accepts him back. The deep emotion moving him is compassion.40

Rembrandt Harmensz van Rijn, Return of the prodigal son, oil painting (Hermitage Saint Petersburg). Detail

Compassion is seen by many as the maternal side of God. Some point out that “compassion” and “womb” have the same root in Hebrew, “rechem”. Rembrandt symbolizes this maternal side of the father through the resting of a male and a female hand on the shoulder of the returnee. The rigorousness of justice and the goodness of compassion! In the case of a conflict compassion prevails above justice. Or should one say: if the peak of divine justice is his compassion. Therefore, God’s intention with humanity is not to destroy but to raise it up! To this the Babylonian Talmud tells the following story:

“Twelve hours has a day;

in the first three hours the Saint, let him be blessed, sits

and deals with the teachings of the law;

during the next three hours, he sits in judgement of the whole world,

and as soon as he sees that the world deserves annihilation,

he rises from the chair of law

and takes his place on the chair of compassion;

in the third quarter he sits and feeds the whole world,

from the horned buffalo to the eggs of the lice;

the saint, let him be blessed, sits in the fourth quarter,

and jokes with the leviathan,

because it is written: ‘The leviathan which you have created,

to play with!’ “41

A feast of resurrection

The father awards all regalia of a free man to the son who returned: “Quick! Bring the best robe and put it on him. Put a ring on his finger and sandals on his feet.” Then he holds a celebratory feast with and for the rehabilitated son. The fatted calf is slaughtered. The tables buckle with foot and drink. Music plays. They feast and are happy.

“But the father said to his slaves, ‘Quickly, bring out a robe—the best one—and put it on him; put a ring on his finger and sandals on his feet. And get the fatted calf and kill it, and let us eat and celebrate; for this son of mine was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found!’ And they began to celebrate.” (Lk 15:22–23).

The father also mentions the reason for the joyful celebration: “For this son of mine was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found.” A resurrection has happened. Anéste is the expression for “is alive again” in Greek; it is the word which is used for the resurrection of Jesus Christ. For the son, who felt that “there is no more life” life was fully opened again. The past is buried; the future is open. The enslaved becomes free. The dead man is alive.

The elder son

Everyone is happy with the father, except one – the son who remained at home. He does not come along. He cannot understand his father. His brother first wastes the fortune of his father. Then the father acts as if nothing has happened. He is even pleased with him who had placed himself in a degrading situation, and takes him unconditionally into his arms and into his house.

The elder son does not understand that nothing else matters to the father other than that his son is alive. As it is said in psalm 33:

“Truly the eye of the Lord is on those who fear him,

on those who hope in his steadfast love,

to deliver their soul from death, and to keep them alive in famine.”

(Ps 33:18f.)

This is the nature of divine compassion, that life life arises and does not die. Therefore, Jesus teaches: “The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly.” (Jn 10:10)

Church of compassion

One can gain personal insights when contemplating the picture by Rembrandt and hearing the story from the gospel of Luke. With which of the characters do I identify? With which one does my Church identify where I with others have been „added by God“? (Acts 2:47)

My image: the younger son

Some breathe a sigh of relief because they find themselves in the prodigal son. On the detours of their life they know that God, is “a faithful God, without deceit, just and upright is he” (Dt 32:4).

He is not unforgiving, but heals and helps man one stands up and offers him new perspectives. The younger son, who represents the whole of mankind, can hope for reception by the compassionate father. This is the central message of Jesus about his God. This does not denigrate nor humiliate. Jesus is compassionate with the people. He doesn’t answer requite violence with violence. He uses his divinity to bring back into the house of the father those who are wayward or astray. Jesus said: “I have come to call not the righteous but sinners to repentance.” (Lk 5:32)

Jeopardising the Churches: The elder son

Jesus focuses on the indignation of the elder son. He stayed at home, in a certain sense he was spiritually held back. In the story of Jesus, he stands for the undiscerning religious leaders of his own Jewish people. They think God cannot be so, even more, Jesus cannot preach in the name of their God if he does not care with which people he associates. “Tell me with whom you associate and I’ll tell you who you are”, is often our attitude. God should be severe. A judge. “A God who always only loves and forgives, loses his masculinity”, said a teacher of Christian theology recently. One cannot forget the hate of Friedrich Nietzsche for a God who has a “weakness” for the weak. Nietzsche and the modern elder son do not accept a God of compassion:

Too long have they been allowed right, these little people: thus at last they have been allowed power, too – now they teach: “Only that is good which little people call good.”

And “truth” today is what the preacher said who himself sprang from them, that strange saint and advocate of the little people who testified of himself “I – am the truth”.

This immodest man has long made the cocks comb of the little people rise up in pride – he who taught no small error when he taught “I – am the truth”.

Was an immodest man ever answered more politely? But you, O Zarathustra, passed him by and said: “No! No! Thrice No!”

You warned against his error, as the first to do so, you warned against pity – no one else, only you and those of your kind.

You are ashamed of the shame of the great sufferer; and truly, when you say “A great cloud emerges from pity, take care mankind I”.

When you teach “All Creators are hard, all great love is beyond pity”: O Zarathustra, how well-reading weather-omens you seem to me! How well you think I learned the signs of the weather!

You yourself, however – warn yourself too against your pity! For many are on their way to you, many suffering, doubting, despairing, drowning, freezing people –.

I warn you too against myself. You have read my best, my worst riddle, me myself, and what I have done. I know the axe that fells you.

But he – had to die: he looked with eyes that saw everything-he saw the depths and abysses of man, all man’s hidden dis-grace and ugliness.

His pity knew no shame: he crept into my dirtiest corners. This most curious, most over-importunate, overcompassionate god had to die.

He always saw me: I desired to take revenge on such a witness – or cease to live myself.

The god who saw everything, evert man: this god had to diel Man could not endure that such a witness should live.42

The Gospel leaves open whether the father could win over the elder son and convince him to come to the feast and to be pleased about the “resurrection” of the “dead” son.

Are we as members of the “Jesus-movement” at least joyous about those who “come home” after long detours in their life and various failures caused by tragedy and guilt?

How do those who are responsible in our Church act with priests who do not keep the vow of celibacy and feel pain and regret only years later? Why does the Church laicize such priests and thus indirectly denigrate the laity who have the highest dignity within the people of God due to their rebirth in Jesus Christ?

Subordination of the other can never be derived from the ordination of the one! Why does the church by “moving back priests into the “lay state“ transform the highest dignity into an act of punishment?

Are we, for example, grateful that people who fail in their marriage want to take part in the meal of the father again and that God does not put another condition on somebody who wants to come home?

During a spiritual sharing about experiences which ordinary people made have with God, a divorced and remarried woman said: “I have a deep feeling in my heart that God forgives me. But at the same time I observe that the Church is not ready to forgive me.” She meant the Roman Catholic Church because the Orthodox Church and also the Churches of the Reformation take another approach in their pastoral work. The Orthodox tradition obliges the bishop to remember “akribia” the strict law of God, but on the other hand for but in concrete single cases to act as a house father (“oikonomia”)43, who does not condemn but creates a favourable opportunity for the life ahead- and this if necessary by a “second coronation”, that is a new marriage.

The challenge: Becoming like the father

This leads us to the real challenge for our Christian Churches. This consists of beginning to identify ourselves as Jesus identified with the Father. We should grow into him. In this way, his compassion can become our compassion.44 Therefore Henri Nouwen advises as the central point of his meditation on the painting by Rembrandt that all of us “should become like the father”. This will cause resistance from the guardians of law in the Church. Jesus was taken to the cross because he himself was the clear and inestimable revelation of God’s compassion. He never gave up being so.

Live!

Jesus and the leper, Evangelistary of Echternach, c. 1040

“Help people to live!”45 was the title of one of my first books about the orientation for the pastoral work of our Church. This is God’s prime concern, the main focus in the pastoral work of Jesus and therefore an imperative for his Church.

Life as a matter of God’s concern

Many texts in the First Testament tell of God’s stance against death and for life. Ezekiel the prophet speaks very intensely about the terrible, deadly experience in of the Babylonian exile:

“And say, thus says the Lord God to Jerusalem: Your origin and your birth were in the land of the Canaanites; your father was an Amorite, and your mother a Hittite.

As for your birth, on the day you were born your navel cord was not cut, nor were you washed with water to cleanse you, nor rubbed with salt, nor wrapped in cloths.

No eye pitied you, to do any of these things for you out of compassion for you; but you were thrown out in the open field, for you were abhorred on the day you were born.

I passed by you, and saw you flailing about in your blood. As you lay in your blood, I said to you, ‘Live!‘“

(Ezk 16:3–6)

The people of Israel are in a very precarious situation, the prophet remembers its origin. The people are unappealing, nearer to death than to life. God draws near to the suckling, who lays in his blood, and promises him life. This is God’s intent, elementary and clearly. The people in exile could draw hope from this.

The noun “life” (hajjim, zoé) is central in the Bible. For the pious in the time of the Old Testament it was the gift par excellence. God keeps his people alive, protects them. This means living in peace – schalom (1 Cor 7:15). In Hebrew “schalamu” means undamaged, healthy, in order and successful life. Such life is the result of a relation to Jahwe, the God the Saviour (conf. Ex 3:2). This happens not only in the life beyond. The God-given land of life is this world. God created it for human beings.

Certainly the resurrection of Jesus focused the attention of the Christians on life after death. This is life par excellence, everlasting life. This relativises life before death perceptibly, but this life doesn’t lose its meaning. The experience of the Old Testament remains, that God has called us to “a life in shalom” and this now. Moreover, if there are traces of a successful life before death, they are a presage of the eternal life to come. Marie Luise Kaschnitz expresses this in one of her poems:

Life after death

Do You believe, I was asked,

In a life after death

And I answered: yes

But then did not know

any information to give

On how it should appear

How I myself

Should appear

There.

I knew only one thing

No hierarchy

Of saints sitting on golden chairs

No cascade

of damned souls

Only

Only love set free

Never exhausted

Inundating me.

No stiff golden protective coat

Garnished with gems

A cobweb-light garment

A breath

Around my shoulders

A caressing beautiful motion

As once from Tyrrhenian waves

Like words that flow back and forth

Fragments of words

Come You come

Web of pain bedecked with tears

Mountain and valley ride

And Your hand

Again in mine

So we lay

You read out loud

I fell asleep

Woke up

Fell asleep

Woke up

Your voice receives me

Releases me and always

And quickly.

More, therefore, asked the questioners

Do you not expect after death?

And I answered:

Less not.

Marie Luise Kaschnitz46

The anchoring of human beings in the hope for a life to the full (Jn 10:10) that lasts for ever, opens a new strategy for conducting the transitory earthly life. Who already is in a life that can’t be taken away is free to use the transitory life unsparingly – lovingly. This person doesn’t rely on a lifestyle of frantic self-assertion: “The hope for resurrection from death, the belief in breaking through the barrier of death makes us free from a life of pure self-assertion which is truly death.”47 On the contrary, one is able to invest one’s life, to venture it, to “give it”. One is able to die: loving in the midst of one’s life and at the end to render the life to God. In that way death is overcome before dying and in dying itself. That ancient Christian experience is summed up in the sentence: “We know that we have passed from death to life, because we love each other.” (1 Jn 3:14) Even structures which bring death are overcome from their roots. Salvation from the empty way of life handed down to us from our fathers (and mothers) occurs (see 1 P 1:18).

Life as the center of the pastoral work of Jesus

Numerous healing tales which are told about Jesus show that God worries about people’s life. From many possible appropriate stories, the cure of a leper is quoted here as reported in the Gospel of Matthew (Mt 8:1–4). I choose this event because it inspired a Benedictine monk of the island of Reichenau to represent it as an illumination. He supplies us for today a fascinating vision of the Church. Here is the picture (Codex Echternach, 1040) and the biblical report:

When Jesus had come down from the mountain, great crowds followed him;

and there was a leper who came to him and knelt before him, saying, “Lord, if you choose, you can make me clean.”

He stretched out his hand and touched him, saying, “I do choose. Be made clean!” Immediately his leprosy was cleansed.

Then Jesus said to him, “See that you say nothing to anyone; but go, show yourself to the priest, and offer the gift that Moses commanded, as a testimony to them.

We will meditate on the four (groups of) people one by one: The leper, the central figure Jesus, the two persons behind Jesus and in the background the people following – therefore us.

The leper

Jesus and the leper, Evangelistary of Echternach, c. 1040. Detail

The leper s drawn by the artist at the edge – at the edge of life and at the edge of society. His knees are weakening. He is down. It was no life. It lacked everything that makes life full and worth living48:

Nobody looked at him and therefore he had no worth. If somebody approached he had to cry from a distance so people should keep away from him. A life without esteem and relationships is no life.

The leper couldn’t do anything more. His life was predictably dying little by little. It would have ended in a miserable death. There was nothing more he could do. It is typical for many sick people to feel helpless. A life without autonomy, a life in which one can’t do anything, is no life.

And finally, he didn’t belong any more. The German word “Aussatz” for his illness refers to its social dimension. He was an outcast from the community. A life without homeland and community is no life.

It is not surprising either that the rabbinical scholars at the time of Jesus counted the lepers at the time of Jesus as dead. It is a kind of “death before death”, a “social death” within life.

Yet when the leper hears about Jesus the healer, all rules are ignored. He approaches Jesus and hopefully stretches out his life-empty hands to him.

Jesus

Jesus does not disappoint him. He does not observe the norms either when it concerns the life of a man. Jesus does not carry coincidentally the scroll of the law in his left hand. He brings from God a new law as Moses had brought the stone tablets of the law down from Mount Sinai. So Jesus announces the law of God which certainly is higher than the law of man. The most sacred laws such as the sanctification of the Sabbath had to be put aside if it is about the human being who is God’s primary concern, not even an animal was an exception. Breaking the human law, Jesus approaches the leper; pictured by the illustrator in the moving feet of Jesus.

Jesus and the leper, Evangelistary of Echternach, c. 1040. Detail

Thus at least during the moment of the encounter, Jesus is giving the leper all he needs for life.

He looks at the leper with open and attentive eyes. The life of Jesus, painted with the divine halo, jumps from his eyes to the “dead” leper. Jesus makes the unseen seen. This creates life, because all life originates from the encounter, according to Martin Buber. None of us can look at our own faces. We always need a mirror for this. The best mirror for a person is the neighbor. Genesis speaks about “knowing“ when Adam and Eve came together celebrating a feast of love and made a son: “Now the man knew his wife Eve, and she conceived and bore Cain, saying, ‘I have produced a man with the help of the Lord.’” (Gn 4:1) Also Mary says at the annunciation by the angel that she doesn’t ‘know’ anyone (Lk 1:34). In the feasts of erotic sexual love people face each other; they are sensitive and vulnerable moments of knowing and recognizing someone as a woman or as a man.

Jesus then stretches out his hand and touches the “dead man”. In this way, life comes into him because he was touched by the creative hand of God. The creator’s hand is very impressive in Michelangelo’s picture of the creation of Adam and Eve. As healer Jesus carries this creative divine power in him as well as some other people to whom the power is also given. The healing touch gives the socially dead man a new life. He gets back the sovereignty of a healthy person. Jesus sends the healed one to the priest to make his offering as described by Moses. Nowadays, Jesus would have sent him to the registration office.

What happens in the encounter is like a resurrection in the midst of life before death. Sensitive bible readers have always understood it like this. All the ‘raisings’ by Jesus painted in frescoes in the medieval Church of St. George to Obernzell on the island of Reichenau in Lake Constance are together on one side of the Church. The cure of the leper is among them. By curing a leper Jesus practices resurrection.

This is quite in line with Eastern Church salvation theology. People suffer from the wound of death. This takes on various forms. Sin is one of them and also suffering and anxious dying. In the name of God Jesus overcomes death with its many faces at its very roots.

The two men behind Jesus

The Benedictine monk of the island of Reichenau paints two men behind Jesus: Peter and John, pillars of the Church. Peter stands for law, John for love. The colours of the clothes of Jesus are seen on the clothes of both apostles.

Jesus and the leper, Evangelistary of Echternach, c. 1040. Detail

Again the artist shows us the moving feet of the two with sensitive attentiveness, they also are walking. This is an integrated double movement: At first they walk behind Jesus. The old spiritual phrase for this is “imitation of Christ”, walking in the footsteps of Jesus. The ordained administrators are responsible for keeping the Church communities entrusted to them faithful to this imitation.

The early Christians were referred to those “who belonged to the Way” (Ac 9:2) But the two do not only go behind Jesus, but even doing this they go in the direction of the leper.

And not to overlook: Everyone comes down from the mountain (Mt 8:1). The mountain stands symbolically for the proximity to God, to heaven. Christians always are – as Jesus himself – at the same time close to God and to the poor.49 You never can separate God and charity from each other. Wellness spirituality is just as foreign to them as pure social activism.

The illustrator then shows us what makes the Church be Church. Peter looks at his right hand. He saw how Jesus had treated the leper. He has understood the teaching. Being Church means treating people as Jesus did: approaching primarily those who are on the edge, at those who are downtrodden. Then looking at them, touching them healingly, empowering them, bringing them home and thus leading them back into life. It is like operating a practice of resurrection out of small deaths.50

The Church according to the vision is called to be an advocate for the downtrodden and damaged life51 in imitation of Jesus. Where she acts according to Jesus she reveals God’s intention to all people. And this intention is since the beginning of world “Live!” (Ezk 16:6) Wherever the Church acts in the spirit of Jesus it reveals God’s intent for all people, which from the beginning is „Live!“ (Ezk 16:6)

In doing so the church is not just a helping diakonia, it also practices political diakonia. The Church only helps the victims of injustice and misfortune. it is more concerned that there are less victims tomorrow. It cares about more just and better living conditions for all people. According to Cardinal Cardjin the famous founder of the Catholic Labor Movement, the Church not only gives the hungry fish, but also teaches them how to fish. The most effective form of charity is politics. In view of a certain kind of piety prevalent in the Church today Pope Benedict XVI is surprised and said:

“One often really wonders how come Christians who are believers personally, do not have the strength to allow their faith to have a stronger impact on politics.”52

And ourselves?

The illustrator added contemporaries to these three groups of the biblical event. They are considerably different in their clothes from the biblical actors.

Jesus and the leper, Evangelistary of Echternach, c. 1040. Detail

This is the discreet sermon of the Benedictine monk. By the picture he invites the observer to enter in this movement of the biblical event. Climb up to the mountain with Jesus at night to be alone with God and absorb the attitude of God’s hear in you. When You come down from the mountain walking behind Jesus and enter the brightness of day approach to those who are “lepers”, i.e. the excommunicated, the outcasts of today. There are many at the edge of life and society nowadays. Many are downtrodden, and their knees are weak.

The “Aussatz” – the one cast out – may have new faces today, but it’s social destructive power is still working. People are discriminated against. A great number of people are starving and are thirsty. There are sick persons, persons in need of care, adults who feel disturbed by their children. According to Hans Magnus Enzensberger53 people even in rich societies are in danger of becoming “superfluous”. The old discriminations are not overcome: between Jews and Greeks (racism), slaves and rich (economic) and between women and men (sexism: cf. Gal 3:28). A dream of the Church is that at least in the Church there should not be such old forms of discrimination for we have become one in the body of Christ.

Someone may ask where they can find themselves in this picture. A first feeling may be, in the leper who needs to be healed by Jesus. However, the monk also places us with the group in the background behind Jesus. As the healed ones we can be healing for others. Overall we should become like Jesus. What a vision of the Church!

Basic processes of Church life

Annunciation to Mary, Sacramentary from Saint Gereon, Cologne, c. 1000

The Church is a realm for experiencing God’s vivifying activity. So that this can be tangible and meaningful, a few elementary processes are necessary. Such basic processes of every Christian community are: receive, praise and giving. With biblical texts and paintings of the Middle Ages we meditate on these three basic gestures which we find not only in Christian life.54

Receiving

In the Sacramentary of Cologne, painted about the year 1000, the room of experience of the Church is depicted in the picture. The frame of the picture is clearly marked out. What happens, takes place within the Church. And vice versa, The Church is there, where this event happens.

There is an encounter in the dark green area. It is the encounter between the Angel of the Annunciation and Mary. The gospel according to Luke reports it in in the Infancy Narrative.

“In the sixth month the angel Gabriel was sent by God to a town in Galilee called Nazareth,

to a virgin engaged to a man whose name was Joseph, of the house of David. The virgin’s name was Mary.

And he came to her and said, “Greetings, favored one! The Lord is with you.”

But she was much perplexed by his words and pondered what sort of greeting this might be.

The angel said to her, “Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God.

And now, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you will name him Jesus.

He will be great, and will be called the Son of the Most High, and the Lord God will give to him the throne of his ancestor David.

He will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there will be no end.”

Mary said to the angel, “How can this be, since I do not know man?”

The angel said to her, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore the child to be born will be holy; he will be called Son of God.

And now, your relative Elizabeth in her old age has also conceived a son; and this is the sixth month for her who was said to be barren.

For nothing will be impossible with God.”

Then Mary said, “Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word.” Then the angel departed from her.

(Lk 1:26–38)

We see the angel, God’s messenger. He brings a Word from God to Mary. The right hand of the angel is painted disproportionately large. The fingers are exaggerated, held up in a gesture of blessing. He who brings a message from God, becomes himself a blessing, because he brings life. This is also an image for the Church. It facilitates the encounter with God’s word for human beings. In this way it becomes a blessing, therefore a source of life for human beings.

Vice versa, if a person approaches God’s word, life emerges. The woman in the painting does just that. She stands up and draws closer to the messenger. His message is obviously so powerful that she can’t remain seated. In a deeper meaning the message is unsettling: It brings her to her feet. This is one of the reasons why Christians in the liturgy stand up when the gospel is proclaimed. It does not keep us in our place. We are urged to go and act.

Then our gaze is drawn to the hands of the woman. These are not held up for blessing. Rather, they are open and empty. She is prepared to receive the message and which is a blessing and life. This gesture expresses receiving, which has a many-layered sense: as listening, as sceptical55 inquiry, as belief and as trust.

Life, the picture tells us, comes from encounter. It is given as gift to those who receive it. Life is – from the perspective of human beings – given life. As soon as I perceive this, I stop saying: “There is life”, but “God gives life”. I cease saying, “There is the world and human beings”, rather I know: “God, You give us the world and gift us each other. We are the gifted; we are richly rewarded; rich, because we are given life.

As richly gifted people we can understand more deeply the Beatitudes of Jesus, given to the multitude on the mountain:

“Then he looked up at his disciples and said:

‘Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God.

Blessed are you who are hungry now, for you will be filled.

Blessed are you who weep now, for you will laugh.

Blessed are you when people hate you, and when they exclude you, revile you, and defame you on account of the Son of Man.

Rejoice in that day and leap for joy, for surely your reward is great in heaven; for that is what their ancestors did to the prophets.”

(Lk 6:20–23)

The poor will own the kingdom of God. According to the Old Testament, the poor are defined as those who do not own land. Land here means first of all the land of Canaan, which God promised and gave to his chosen people. To dwell peacefully in that land, to own a portion of it, was a sign of God’s favor to his faithful Jewish people. However, those who didn’t own land were suspected of not being loved by God. They were counted secretly or openly as sinners from whom God had turned away.

The prophets protested, it is not like that. God is one a God who wishes life for all. Therefore, God is like an angry lawyer for the extremely poor, widows, orphans, workers from whom the salary is withheld. God is an enemy of a poverty, in with life perishes a poverty in which life perishes, and which therefore cries to heaven.56

From this another feature of human poverty can be seen. Because the poor have obviously no one they can rely on, they have no alternative (if they believe) than to have God as the one and only lawyer. Only God can give them hope of being save from death. From God alone they hope for salvation from death and expect not just survival, but rather a life of justice and peace.

If we look at life as such, isn’t everyone poor? None of us has life from ourselves. No one can give to us. Nothing in the world can protect us sufficiently or lengthen it. Measured by life our hands are empty, we are poor. If we are alive, it is because God gives us life in our empty hands.

The picture invites the observer to enter together with the woman into the encounter with the herald and life giving message from God. The artist expresses this invitation by having the woman “leave the frame”, more precisely she moves from our side to the herald. The artist invites the observer to follow the woman and do as she did.

The Second Vatican Council reused an older interpretation in its dogmatic Constitution on the Church in chapter eight when it taught that Mary is an icon of all who believe. The picture shows more concretely how Mary is a role model and guide for those who receive life through faith in God.

Praising

Whenever we as a Church learn from the woman to open our empty hands and receive life from God, we begin to sing together Mary’s song of praise, the Magnificat:

Elisabeth,

“And blessed is she who believed that there would be a fulfillment of what was spoken to her by the Lord.”.

And Mary said,

“My soul magnifies the Lord,

and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior,

for he has looked with favor on the lowliness of his servant. From this day on all generations will call me blessed;

for the Mighty One has done great things for me, and holy is his name.

His mercy is for those who fear him from generation to generation.

He has shown strength with his arm; he has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts.

He has brought down the powerful from their thrones, and lifted up the lowly;

he has filled the hungry with good things, and sent the rich away empty.

He has helped his servant Israel, in remembrance of his mercy,

according to the promise he made to our ancestors, to Abraham and to his descendants forever.”

(Lk 1:46–55)

This song is woven like a carpet. The threads for it come from the Old Testament especially its songs. Clearly the people of God live by praising God. The themes of the praise are as multiple as gift of life itself:

The believers of the Old Covenant sing most of all about the great acts of God: God’s delivering of the Israelites from Egypt and leading them into the Promised Land. They beat the timpani (see Ex 15:20) and always sang “for his steadfast love endures forever” (Ps 136:2). The life of God’s people is full of praise because God is their redeeming and saving God. Israel’s praise echoes God’s commitment for the life and survival of the people

Also the redemption of one single person is an occasion to praise God, to give Him high praise,

“I will praise you before the people, O God, before the nations I sing your praises For your steadfast love is as high as the heavens;

your faithfulness extends to the clouds.

Be exalted, O God, above the heavens.

Let your glory be over all the earth.

(Ps 57:10f)

Life in Israel is praise. Where there is no praise there is no life:

“The dead do not praise the Lord,

nor do any that go down into silence.

But we will bless the Lord

from this time on and forevermore.

Praise the Lord!

(Ps 115:17f.)

The believer announces his astonishment at God’s creation through praise to the Creator (see Ps 8; 19). Also, the Word of God and His instructions are an opportunity to perform before God. Even in tribulation God’s fidelity is the reason that the three young men in the fiery furnace to praise Him (cf. Dn 3).

The redeeming and life-giving God has shown Himself unsurpassable in Jesus’s life, death, resurrection and ascension. In Him God has given to humankind his indestructible ‘Yes’. His fidelity and mercy are definitely made apparent (cf. 2 Cor 1:18–20).

Thus Mary as role-model of the healed human being sings: “And my spirit rejoices in God my Savior, for he has looked with favour on the lowliness of his servant. For the Mighty One has done great things for me.” (Lk 1:47–49) “He has helped his servant Israel, in remembrance of his mercy.” (Lk 1:54) The Church’s praise is the reaction to God’s appeal through Jesus Christ to humanity: “Mankind, you are forever!” Because this is the belief of Christians, they cannot help but praise.

How much praise is a core-process of the Church can be seen in the painting.

Ascension of Christ, Egbert-Codex, in 980

The artist, from the end of the first millennium, paints what Luke in the gospel (Lk 24) and in the Acts (Acts 1) proclaims. Jesus went his way until he fulfilled His mission. Because he did not cease to love his Father and humankind, he was killed. However, God did not desert him. With his right hand, he took Jesus into his glory. So Jesus experiences God’s word spoken to all humankind and to the whole world: “Live!” God completes the life of Jesus and so opens for all everlasting life in its fullness.

God’s angels proclaim the great deed of God. The disciples hear the message, raise their hands and applaud. In applause we find the Latin word “laus” which means “praise”. Praise is the faith filled answer to God’s saving act of Jesus and all of us. At the same time, the disciples were sent out into the world, to proclaim God’s glory in deeds and praise so that all human beings praise their Father in heaven (see Mt 5:17).

How this appeared in the life of the early Church is told in Acts: “Every day they continued to meet together in the temple courts. They broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts, praising God and enjoying the favor of all the people. And the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved.” (Ac 2:46f.) Because God serves them with his Word and nourishes them with the Bread of Life they must praise Him. Encounter with God who grants life is the very source of Christian worship. Not even in the dark times of human life do Christians stop giving their God the “sacrifice of praise” (Heb 13:15). Through belief in God, who raised Jesus from death, they know that even suffering, tragedy, guilt and death are robbed of their final power. God has the last Word for final: “Live!” This victorious message empowers to give everlasting praise even in times of tribulation and darkness.

Praise is not the special task of a few people in the Church like monks and contemplative nuns. All have to proclaim the name of God and praise His great deeds for all are redeemed and called to eternal life. Whoever praises, stays alive. Only those who praise God and say to Him “You” will be freed from self-praise. They will experience God’s life within the praising encounter.

The German speaking Catholics name their prayer- and songbook “Gotteslob” (God’s Praise). This is the role of Christians within the world to celebrate God by praise and deeds.

When Christians in different places come together in the morning to praise God before starting their day, their praise merges with the Canticle of Zechariah, the Benedictus, “Blessed be the Lord!” It is the song of the redeemed man. When they come together in the evening “to clap their hands” before God their evening prayer peaks with the Magnificat of Mary, “My soul glorifies the Lord!” It is the praise of the redeemed woman.

The Church knows its vocation to worship and to sing praises to the Lord before all nations for the salvation of humankind (Ps 57:10). It unites with the hymns of those in heaven. The Church on earth may never forego the luxury of praise. This would be equal to denying the future of humanity.

Giving

Receiving and praising: These were the first basic processes in the life of a Christian and a Christian Community. The whole Church lives through receiving and praising. A third process rises by itself from both of these, the receivers singing praises become the givers.

This is illustrated in the story of the Feeding of the Five Thousand:

“When it grew late, his disciples came to him and said, ‘This is a deserted place, and the hour is now very late; send them away so that they may go into the surrounding country and villages and buy something for themselves to eat.’ But he answered them, ‘You give them something to eat.’ They said to him, ‘Are we to go and buy two hundred denarii worth of bread, and give it to them to eat?’ And he said to them, ‘How many loaves have you? Go and see.’ When they had found out, they said, ‘Five, and two fish.’ Then he ordered them to get all the people to sit down in groups on the green grass. So they sat down in groups of hundreds and of fifties. Taking the five loaves and the two fish, he looked up to heaven, and blessed and broke the loaves, and gave them to his disciples to set before the people; and he divided the two fish among them all. And all ate and were filled; and they took up twelve baskets full of broken pieces and of the fish. Those who had eaten the loaves numbered five thousand men.” (Mk 6:35–44)

Again it is a painter from the island Reichenau who put this biblical event into a picture. The event is presented on a green background. We have seen this already in the Annunciation scene. Maybe the green background tells us that, where God through Jesus and His Church acts for humanity, a realm of hope and life opens up.

The miraculous multiplication of the loaves. Evangeliastary from Echternach, c. 1040

In the center stands Jesus who is handing out the bread. He is depicted as the risen Lord. He is the resurrected, the living one, portrayed by the large, wide-open eyes. Thus Jesus is the center from where live emerges. What Jesus does first of all is to give bread. When John calls Jesus “the bread of life”, he is indicating that Jesus is giving himself, surrendering his very self. This brings life to those who are starving. The portrayal of the resurrected Jesus clearly recalls the crucifixion. Giving bread and being nailed to the cross are variations of self-surrender and loving dedication.

On either side of Jesus stand two men. What they are doing can be summarized thus: receivers become givers. Those who receive begin to distribute. Therefore, the hands of these men are different than the hands of Jesus. Whereas Jesus distributes with both hands, one hand of each man is receiving the other is extended in giving. By receiving they are impelled to a distributing love. We can formulate this in another way: The Church and Christians are bound to Jesus on one side and to the people on the other side. The composition of the picture moves in a clear direction. It flows from Jesus to the people. Both men lean towards the people, away from Jesus. This could give the impression that turning to the people and distributing is more important and effective than receiving.

The distributing hands of the men are noticeably portrayed. They are parallel to the hands of Jesus and equal in size and shape. Jesus lets himself being mediated through human beings. In reverse this means Jesus is “pro-existence”, namely, existence for others and so a role model for others. We are standing here before the basic rule of Christian life. The receivers were transformed into givers. The bible speaks of liberation and leads us to love of neighbor.

In comparison with the opinions of some of the scribes in the time of Jesus, the love of neighbor is not limited. From now on love for neighbors has no more boundaries. Even enemies are included. This is visible on the nailed hands of Jesus on the Cross. He has so surrender himself to people that in the future his hand will never be closed in a fist. God’s hand is open for all forever. The reason for this boundless human love is the love of the Father for humanity:

“You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be children of your Father in heaven. He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous.” (Mt 5:43–45)

Finally, the painting shows the people. One remembers the biblical picture that there are people “who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death” (Lk 1:79). It’s about survival and the lives of all the people. Love of neighbor as portrayed in the bible is therefore highly political.

The Last Supper and the Washing of the Feet

Supper and Feet washing. book of pericopes of Henry II

When artists in the Middle Ages depicted the Church, they showed two biblical scenes: The Last Supper and the Washing of the Feet.

The Last Supper forms those who sit at the table into a community. Eating the same bread and drinking from the same chalice, they grow together. The biblical tradition taught through the preaching of Jesus addresses this: using the word body which grows together from many members; the bread, formed by many grains; the wine, pressed from many grapes. The Last Supper unifies. The „unified“ become brothers and sisters. They are not only related by blood, but embodying Christ they are related in God, which is deeper and has more powerful consequences.

The Last Supper, celebrated by Jesus with his disciples before his suffering, forms the life of the Christian Church from the beginning. On the first day of the week it wasn’t only Mary Magdalen who came to the grave and found it empty (Jn 20:1). Remembering the Resurrection of Jesus, the Christians assembled on the first day of the week for the Lord’s supper. They did this in times of persecution in the subterranean burial chambers or Catacombs of Rome. When the Communists persecuted the Christians, believers congregated again in the underground.

The liturgy lets an experience of the senses occur happening in the depths of the assembled. Bread and wine are brought to the altar. They represent the fruits of the earth and the work of human beings, above all of those assembled to celebrate, who in turn stand for the one humankind. Then the leader calls down God’s Holy Spirit on the offerings praying that He may transform them. It is the “epiclesis”, a ritual especially emphasized in the Orthodox Churches. So that no doubts arise to what the transformation of the offerings and the assembled leads, the mandate of Jesus is remembered in “the words of institution”). The offerings and the assembled are transformed into the body given up and the blood poured out.

Two aspects are crucial, the transformation forms a community of its own kind; it shapes the future activity of the transformed people.

Community

Those who expose themselves to the transformation, run – figuratively speaking – into “God-danger”, the field of his transforming power. They leave the celebration different to how they came in. They entered divided, caught up in anxiety with its tendency toward greed and violence. The transformed people leave as “one” – united. They became the one Christ, God’s new creation, with Christ as the head of the consummated “world-body” (Hildegard von Bingen) and those transformed as members of this body. Pope Benedict XVI spoke at the World-Youth-Day in Cologne in 2005 about a chain of transformations:

“The first basic transformation (in the death of Jesus on the Cross into Resurrection) from violence to love, from death to life entails further transformations. Bread and wine become his body and his blood.

But at this point the transformation must not stop, now it must completely begin: The Body and Blood of Jesus Christ are given to us so we may be transformed. We should become the body of Christ, blood-related to him.

We all eat the one bread. That means: we become one with one another. Adoration becomes, so we have previously said, unification. God is no longer the total other opposite to us. He is within us and we within Him.

His dynamism permeates us and wants to spread out from us to others and the world as a whole so that his love becomes the dominating measure of the world.”

Therefore, the Last Supper, the Holy Eucharist, is not an event of private piety. It is “world-transformation”. It becomes possible by the transformation of those who God calls together to this celebration. In Austria, there are about 750,000, and in Germany three million Catholics who go to Church every Sunday and celebrate the Eucharist – the celebration, the Second Vatican Council called the source and summit of any Christian and ecclesial life. In addition, there are the members of the other Christian Churches. When real transformation happens, the country is different on Monday.

Washing of the Feet

The words of consecration remind us, in which direction the transformation through the calling down of God’s Holy Spirit (epiclesis) flows. They say “given up” and “poured out”. A biblical symbol for such a self-emptying is the Washing of the Feet, which Jesus carried out on his disciples during the Last Supper. For John, who reports extensively on it, the Washing of the Feet is more important than the Last Supper, which he mentions more casually. The Washing of the Feet is the expression of serving dedication and love. Jesus said: “No one has greater love than this, then to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.” (Jn 15:13)

Feet washing, book of pericopes of Henry II

Is there a danger in our Christian Churches that the Last Supper and the Washing the Feet are separated from each other? The former president of the Caritas Austria, Helmut Schüller, once described the celebration of the Eucharist on Sunday in parishes as “religiously beautified visits to pastry shops”. Sometimes the gathering for coffee after the liturgy is given more attention than the Eucharist itself. In addition, some see in the liturgical celebration a possibility to withdraw into their own hearts instead of letting God put gather them together into a community, into a “body”. Clearly though, to be put gathered together cannot happen without inwardness. But they reject the Sign of Peace, they deny the arrangement of the liturgical space which was self-evident at the Last Supper of Jesus with his disciples.

They prefer the processional arrangement, which of course has religious significance, because it is the favored image of the Church of the Second Vatican Council: the image of the people of God on pilgrimage.

Some speak up for support the processional arrangement only because by doing this they can protest against the liturgical reforms by the Council. For them the Tridentine Mass is devout, the Mass of the Council is empty. However, mass can be celebrated in both forms piously and effectively. This also applies to the manner in which Holy Communion is received. What counts is receiving with heart, and that can happen whether you receive Communion in the hand or the mouth. An ostentatious Communion by mouth can be as heartless as a superficial Communion in the hand.

Much more important than the arrangement is the participation of all the people in what Jesus commanded us to do. What is decisive, is transformation and that we leave other than we entered, because we have been transformed into the “body of Christ given for us”. Whether transformation happens can be seen if we leave the celebration as “feet-washers”. It would be too little to ask God to transform the offerings but to leave us alone.

The practice of feet-washing

If we ask God not to keep us in civil a conventional tranquility, in a kind of spiritual wellness, but ask him to make us susceptible receptive to for transformation, (because He is preempting anticipating our doing action with His grace57) what befalls us then? If we let it happen that we become His body, if we absorb Him during the Communion of the mass, what is changed changes in concrete terms in our life and actions? And truly concretely? In other words, if we are transformed into feet-washers, what does the praxis of feet-washing look like? The practice of feet washing look like?

In other words: If we are transformed into feet-washers – what does the practice of feet-washing look like?

“Whoever dives into God emerges next to the people, especially the poor. And vice versa”, according to the Pastoral Plan of Patavia. The Synod of Rottenburg in 1983 formulated in the document about youth: “The more mystical, the more political. And vice versa.”58 Roger Schutz spoke about the inseparability of contemplation and action.59 John B. Metz60 and Dorothee Sölle61 stressed the intertwining of mysticism and politics. Or simply as Jesus said: Love for God and for one’s neighbor can be distinguished, but are one. Mystically gifted Christianity teaches that love for the others is decisive because only in this can love for God be expressed. Teresa of Àvila admonishes her sisters:

“No, sisters, no! The Lord desires deeds. And if you see a sick person, to whom you can provide a little relief, then it should not bother you to lose your reverence and to show her your compassion; and if somethings hurts her, it should hurt you too, and if necessary you should fast so that she has something to eat.

…then you may receive pious feelings and presents, so that you think you have arrived there (in unification with God), and even some tiny elevation in the Prayer of peace (some think that by this everything is accomplished), but believe me that you have not yet come to the unification with God, and pray to God, that He gives you perfect love for your neighbor.

…to be in accordance with love whose nature is to be always at work.”

Teresa from Àvila62

But how does someone emerge who has been immersed in God? To understand this, it is good to know what sacred scripture tell us about God. One of the most read texts of the Christian Churches and also of the Jews (it is the founding narrative of Israel) is Ex 3:7–10. As in a mirror we can perceive how God relates to human beings. And whoever immerses oneself into God and becomes thus “God-shaped”, cannot do otherwise than to be with the people in the nature of God. Here follows the text which shows us how spirituality and the practice of feet washing can look:

“Then the Lord said, ‘I have observed the misery of my people who are in Egypt; I have heard their cry on account of their taskmasters. Indeed, I know their sufferings, and I have come down to deliver them from the Egyptians, and to bring them up out of that land to a good and broad land, a land flowing with milk and honey, to the country of the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Amorites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites. The cry of the Israelites has now come to me; I have also seen how the Egyptians oppress them. So come, I will send you to Pharaoh to bring my people, the Israelites, out of Egypt.’”

(Ex 3:7–10)

It is a spirituality of serving with heart and mind, with all one’s senses which we can learn in God’s school.

Eyes and ears

God is presented as one who sees and hears. The literal translation stresses the seeing and hearing by duplication, typical for a Semitic language: “I saw, indeed I have seen; I heard, indeed I have heard…” God is so to say eye and ear. He doesn’t ignore or overlook anybody – and that not in a moralistic inquisitorial manner, but he looks with benevolence and takes care of human beings, above all those who have no one, the poor. In the wonderful Churches of Lower-Bavaria, constructed by the Asam brothers, God’s eye and God’s ear are often painted in a triangle, the symbol for the trinity.

Typical for a “God-formed” spirituality is to see and to hear. And that in an ego-frightened culture prone to overlook and not to listen. According to the organization of the Syrian Church from the fifth century, a deacon lived next to the house of the priest. He was named the “eye of the Church”. In the morning it was his duty to go along the beach and to look if there was a dead body on the shore. After that he went into the villages to see if anybody was ill or needed instruction. And once a month he had to report to the priests so that the necessary measures could be undertaken.63

Nowadays this duty – to be the eye of the Church – falls to those in Caritas circles or committees of the Parish Council. Well organized institutions such as Caritas and Diakonia as well as the Charities of the Church (like Misereor, Adveniat, Renovabis, Dreikönigsaktion, Fast-soup-action, Bread for the World) prepare excellent analyses. Reports on poverty are written. All these organizations train the members of the Church to look and see at a time when culturally so many have learned to look away.

An alert mind

God perceives the root causes of poverty in Exodus 3. It is about oppression. This is a highly political term. Power is abused – here the power of the Egyptians against the Israelites. This causes the “cry of the poor”. There are other kinds of oppression which make the poor cry to God because no worldly power looks after law and justice, such as, the blood of Abel murdered by Cain cries to heaven(Gn 4:10); the outcry against Sodom and Gomorrah reaches heaven (Gn 18:20; 19:30); God hears his people crying out in Egypt (Ex 3:7–10); if widows, orphans and foreigners – the unprotected in Israel – are “exploited” then this reaches to the “ears of Yahweh” (Ex 22:20–23); to the heavens cry the hired workers to whom just wages are not paid (Dt 24:14f.; Si 35:17–19; Jm 5:4).

From the perspective of God, it is not enough to help only the victims. An alert mind is needed to uncover the causes of injustice and to remove them. John Paul II coined, in this context, the term “structural sin”.64

A compassionate heart

In the above-mentioned text God is saying about himself, “I am concerned about their suffering”. The term “to know” is closely connected to intimacy. God knows the suffering of human beings – in this context of the oppressed people of Israel, who cry to him.

A compassionate heart means to have compassion (John B. Metz). This is more than the sympathy of wealthy people sitting in their armchairs. Compassion is the same as immersing oneself in the practice of liberation, immersion in the everyday suffering and life of the people. Simon of Cyrene bent down under the cross of Jesus and carried it together with Him.

Benedict XVI recommended “the formation of the heart” to all who are active in the service of the Church:

“Professional competence is a first, fundamental requirement, but it is not enough. It’s all about people, and people always need more than technically proper treatment. They need humanness. They need a turning toward of the heart. For all who work in diaconal organizations of the Church it must be typical that they do not do only with competence what is needed now, but they turn to the other with their hearts so that they can feel their human kindness. Therefore above all, those helpers need together with their professional education a formation of their heart.”65

“Form our hearts according to your heart” is an old venerable Christian prayer.

Active hands

Open eyes and ears, an alert mind, a compassionate heart: these are indispensable qualities of a spirituality of feet washing. Added to this are involved, dedicated hands. In Exodus it is written, “So now, go. I am sending you. Bring my people out…!”

Without actually doing the work involved a spirituality of feet washing does not reach its full form. However, the tangible solidarity of charity does not start with doing. This comes at the end. This happens effectively of course only in well planned pastoral projects which are well designed and implemented. Such projects have a time-frame, a planned beginning and an ending with an evaluation. The evaluation of the project is essential, and not least of all, in order to learn from mistakes for further projects.

If the Church which tries to wants to attract people for such projects today, it has to consider the findings on about modern volunteerism. On the one hand strong religious motivations are helpful. On the other hand, the persons helping should have the opportunity to develop themselves. They want to have a sustaining influence – hardly anyone wants to give inconsequential guidance. likes to give consultation without impact. Volunteering is also a way of realizing oneself, self-realization, recognizing one’s own talents, developing them and implementing them in the development of the community. In addition, most people like to work in teams, which inspire and relieve them and let them find a shelter for themselves in such communities. Finally, an adequate appreciation is indispensable.66

Such activity calls for a corresponding culture of leadership. How are projects designed and carried out, conflicts managed in a cooperative manner? How does empowerment of coworker’s function? How is participation optimized? How do leaders make certain that the path, especially of the Gospel, is not abandoned? The more participation is sought, the more a competent leadership is needed. Leadership is a special gift of the Spirit to the communities of the Church:

“And God has appointed in the church first apostles, second prophets, third teachers; then deeds of power, then gifts of healing, forms of assistance, forms of leadership, various kinds of tongues.” (1 Cor 12:28)

Leadership within the Church is a way neither to higher dignity nor to a clerical disenfranchisement of lay people. It is a service to the Church. The biblical images are familiar: the shepherd (Ez 34, John 10), the hard-rowing galley slave (Ph 2:6ff.), the servant at the tables (Lk 22:27).

These visions of feet-washing are not to the taste of all in the Church. This distaste is a part of a long tradition. As Jesus started to wash Peter’s feet, he took Jesus for crazy. In unsurpassable clarity a gothic capital in the cathedral of Saint Gilles from 1142 portrays this.

Feet washing, frieze on the Cathedral Saint Gilles du Gard, 1142

And Sarah laughed

Sieger Köder, Visit of the three men to Abraham

The Church in Central Europe is in a phase of dramatic restructuring. It is leaving behind (involuntarily) the time of comfort in the Constantine Era in its post-Reformation form. Gone is the time when the mighty of the nations were interested in Christian belief. For the Catholic Church in Austria it was extraordinarily effective that the empress made laws for “the promotion of the glory of God”.

The Empress Maria Theresia noted on July 14, 1770 in her decree, “About the Sanctification of the Feasts” that various abuses had crept in; among others she perceived, “that the sanctification to be observed, for instance by common men, is neglected”. For her “the promotion of the glory of God and the strictest performance of those commandments by which the Christian Catholic Church in its sacred founder in particular is characterized” are extremely close to her heart. She gave the order by which the opportunity to idleness and from it the arising debauchery should be taken away from the neglectful “common man”, and so may lead men by better instruction to “due devotion on the Day of the Lord”.

Therefore, the weekly markets are moved from the morning of Sundays and Feast days, and in all parishes “instructions in Christian belief” have to be held. The control had to be done by the “Imperial-Royal Bohemian-Austrian chancellery” („Kaiserlich-Königlich böhmisch-österreichischen Hofkanzlei”).67

Each age brings its own organizational structure to the Church. During the reign of Joseph II, for example, the network of parishes was brought up to date and closely linked. In doing this, the Emperor not only had religious interests in mind, but also political ones. The parish priests, as servants of the state for religion, were responsible for cowpox vaccination, the poor and recruitment of soldiers. So that the “ministers of religion” were well prepared for their religious and civil tasks, Joseph’s mother, Maria Theresia, in 1774 installed in Vienna the oldest Chair of Pastoral Theology.

These times are irretrievably over. This may make us sad for some time. But have we really accepted the new situation? We can mourn the opulent pastoral circumstances of yesteryear. Furthermore, without mourning we cannot move on into the time to come. The mourning is fully done, courage is needed to rebuild the organizational structure of the Church. The Church is positioned by the Lord in the respective age. That does not always happen for the pleasure of the Church and its leaders who hang on to the past and adhere to it –this also often happened earlier as the prophet Jeremiah complains (Jr 29).

Just as in the grief work so likewise in the necessary structural modification of the Church, an event narrated in the book of Genesis may be encouraging. Sieger Köder put the story into a picture – as many artists did before him:

The story is told in the book of Genesis thus:

“The Lord appeared to Abraham by the oaks of Mamre, as he sat at the entrance of his tent in the heat of the day. He looked up and saw three men standing near him. When he saw them, he ran from the tent entrance to meet them, and bowed down to the ground. He said, ‘My lord, if I find favor with you, do not pass by your servant. Let a little water be brought, and wash your feet, and rest yourselves under the tree. Let me bring a little bread, that you may refresh yourselves, and after that you may pass on—since you have come to your servant.’ So they said, ‘Do as you have said.’ And Abraham hastened into the tent to Sarah, and said, ‘Make ready quickly three measures of choice flour, knead it, and make cakes.’ Abraham ran to the herd, and took a calf, tender and good, and gave it to the servant, who hastened to prepare it. Then he took curds and milk and the calf that he had prepared, and set it before them; and he stood by them under the tree while they ate.

They said to him, ‘Where is your wife Sarah?’ And he said, ‘There, in the tent.’ Then one said, ‘I will surely return to you in due season, and your wife Sarah shall have a son.’ And Sarah was listening at the tent entrance behind him. Now Abraham and Sarah were old, advanced in age; it had ceased to be with Sarah after the manner of women. So Sarah laughed to herself, saying, ‘After I have grown old, and my husband is old, shall I have pleasure?’ The Lord said to Abraham, ‘Why did Sarah laugh, and say, ‘Shall I indeed bear a child, now that I am old?’ Is anything too wonderful for the Lord? At the set time I will return to you, in due season, and Sarah shall have a son.’ But Sarah denied, saying, ‘I did not laugh’; for she was afraid. He said, ‘Oh yes, you did laugh.’”

(Gn 18:1–15)

Became old

They became old, Sara and Abraham, as the fading form of our Church. If you ask members of a parish council (as I did together with Anna Hennersperger in 200968), then there is a lot of suffering because of this becoming old. Children and young people are lacking missing in the parish communities and at services. It has become difficult to find volunteers. Often there is no parish priest. Not a few are concerned that soon they themselves will no longer be an independent parish. They are worried about their future. They fear dying.

Like Abraham and Sara many parishes seem to have had their best times behind them. In the years after the Second Vatican Council many had hoped that the parishes would remain alive. Meanwhile, however, a deep depression of becoming old spread. It expresses itself in widespread complaining and whining.

The incredible promise

Precisely to the elders God gives the promise of a young life: “I will return to you at the appointed time next year.” Within one year, according to the divine guests, the dream of the old people will be fulfilled. All their lives they had hoped for progeny, but they had not gotten a child. But now it will be born, although Sarah no longer fared as other women, and Abraham was already an old man.

Unimaginable: In the Sunday services of the Churches children and young people romp. It’s precisely they who want not only to live as part of and to worship with the community, but to participate in the work of the Church. The Church cannot fend off those who want to participate.

Sara’s reaction was at first ‘realistic’. Her feeling – biology speaks against what the threefold divine guests announced. In our Churches such a pronouncement seems to be unrealistic too. The trends indicate decrease in Church participation. Europe is definitely becoming secularized. According to John Paul II in his postsynodal letter “Christifideles laici” The “Believing Christians” from 1988, “People live as if God doesn’t exist.” The alienation of the people from the Church, shown by much reliable data, is continuing especially among the young generation and fatally, among modern young women. The familial channels for tradition of belief are clogged, religious instruction in schools is a losing battle. Church leaders have lost heart and only take care of the shrinking membership. Some name this as the fearless “little flock” – something Jesus did not mean when he said to his young movement: “Do not be afraid, little flock, for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom.” (Lk 12:32)

The small shrinking membership is lavishly managed. The hope for a new beginning which had inspired and motivated many during the time after the council has withered.

How great is the similarity between the depression of the old couple in the Old Testament and the Churches in our region!

It is understandable, that Sara – behind the entrance to the tent eavesdropping on the conversation between the divine guests and the old Abraham – let an incredulous laughter escape. This was obviously so loud that the guests could hear it. They confronted her through Abraham: “Why did Sara laugh”, they ask with consternation, “instead of rejoicing”?

The same event is told in another part of Genesis. There Sara is present only indirectly and it is not she who laughs, but Abraham himself. He does not laugh as unbelievably as Sara. Some experts of Sacred Scripture are of the opinion that he already anticipated joy. However, he also did not believe God completely. For him it would be enough if Ismael – born of the concubine Hagar – would stay alive. But God maintains his promise. He will bless Ismael, but he will make the covenant with Isaac.

„God said to Abraham, ‘As for Sarai your wife, you shall not call her Sarai, but Sarah shall be her name.

I will bless her, and moreover I will give you a son by her. I will bless her, and she shall give rise to nations; kings of peoples shall come from her.’

Then Abraham fell on his face and laughed, and said to himself, ‘Can a child be born to a man who is a hundred years old? Can Sarah, who is ninety years old, bear a child?’

And Abraham said to God, ‘O that Ishmael might live in your sight!’

God said, ‘No, but your wife Sarah shall bear you a son, and you shall name him Isaac. I will establish my covenant with him as an everlasting covenant for his offspring after him.

As for Ishmael, I have heard you; I will bless him and make him fruitful and exceedingly numerous; he shall be the father of twelve princes, and I will make him a great nation.

But my covenant I will establish with Isaac, whom Sarah shall bear to you at this season next year.’

And when he had finished talking with him, God went up from Abraham.”

(Gn 17:15–22)

Could the same happen with our Church, above all concerning its structure? Can a new form be born out of an old one as the child of the divine promise? Because it is His Church at issue and its competence to act in the world today? Do we trust God to do this?

After all, the prophet Isaiah was also given a word from God to encourage His people. Against all experiences he spoke a motivating word of hope to God’s people:

“Do not remember the former things, or consider the things of old.

I am about to do a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it? I will make a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert.

The wild animals will praise me, the jackals and the ostriches; for I give water in the wilderness, rivers in the desert, to give drink to my chosen people,

the people whom I formed for myself so that they might declare my praise.”

(Is 43:18–21)

In the midst of the lifeless desert God creates new life. The old ones have a child. What is passing away receives a future.

And God does all this. Not without the old ones, but with them. So we have to ask what is our contribution.

Our contribution

First, it is necessary to hear the word of promise. It is not the Church that will go away, but the familiar structure of yesterday. A new structure will be born.

It will not fall from the sky. The old shape of the Church will become fruitful again; in its womb the new one is formed.

Side-by-side

This means that in the time of transition from the one to the other shape two shapes will coexist side by side. Even then when the old shape has given birth.

The new shape is already coming into being. It can be recognized already. Therefore, Isaiah says: “See here!” Sometimes we seem to be too blind to see how inexorably the new form takes shape (like an embryo in the womb). “Do you not perceive it?”

Ultrasound?

Modern birth accompaniment is not only capable of feeling new life through ultrasound but imaging procedures can make at least its contours visible.

The throbbing of the heart can be seen. Whether it is a boy or a girl can be determined, which some parents don’t want to know before the birth. The future shape of the Church is also shown as a silhouette.

Decidedly believers

It will be a Church born of a personal decision to believe by modern people. In their final loneliness they have declared their Adsum (here I am, Lord) to their God-given Church-vocation. They know that in the cradle of the call in their heart God has laid a vision of his Church for the world. They explore those gifts of grace given to them as charisms by God’s Spirit. They develop these responsibly and take care that these gifts contribute to the welfare of the Church.

These convinced believers will be the most important witnesses for the gospel: among the people with whom they work together in their profession, in the media, in politics, in trade unions, in the economy, in the arts and culture. If they live within a family, they will form a kind of faith habitat according to their baptismal promises.

Word and Eucharist

The source of their commitment for promoting the gospel will be hearing the word of God and above all, celebrating the Eucharist. This makes them – united with brothers and sisters in Christ and therefore with all human beings – into “feet washers”, people who are helping and politically serving the poor.

Believing communities

This commitment to the Gospel happens within a believing community. On the one hand, this is the fruit of the transformation into the Body of Christ by the Word, Baptism and the Eucharist. At the same time the community bears the belief of the individual members in an ideologically multi-coloured culture.

Team of Elders

In these faith communities living from the Word and the Eucharist, there is one (or even more, more often voluntary) ordained Elder69 who leads the Eucharist and the celebration of the Sacraments. Many of these Elders will have a family.

In 1970 a German theologian, known today as Pope Benedict XVI, envisioned this new structure of the Church. In a radio lecture which was also published, he projected the following image of belief of the Church and the priest:

“The Church of Jesus Christ will remain; the Church which believes in God who became a human being and promises life for us beyond death. Likewise, a priest who is only a social functionary, can be replaced by psychotherapists and other specialists. But the priest who is not a specialist, who does not keep himself out of the game when he gives professional consultation, guidance, but because of God gives himself to the people, is present for them in their mourning, their joy, their hope and in their anxiety, will continue to be necessary.

Let’s take a step forward. Out of the crisis of today a Church this time as well will arise which has lost a lot. It will become small and in many aspects have to start from the beginning. It will be unable to fill many of the buildings which were constructed in the time of great prosperity.

Together with the number of members it will lose many privileges within society.

Much more than until now it will be a community of volunteers, which will be accessible by personal decision. As a small community it will call for the initiative of individual members much more.

It will know new forms of office and ordain experienced Christians who have a profession. The everyday pastoral work will be done in much smaller communities or in connected social groups.

Apart from that the fulltime priest will be indispensable as now.”70

Ordained priests without a family living as celibates, will primarily establish communities and will have a high degree of mobility. In contrast, the married priests will be stationary because of their family and their children. In this way it will become the reality what the German bishops, based on the Synod of Würzburg in 197571 and as early as 1977, wrote into the master book of their Church region:

„A priest should ‘in the person and the mission of Jesus Christ’ (cf 2 Cor 5:20) make the community and its members willing and competent, establish communities and lead them, should add new members to the community and care for the unity in Christ (Eph 4:12).”72

But what happens if there is no priest in real calling distance?73 There were such times during Church history. For example, around the year 209 in North Africa, the Church teacher Tertullian (160–220) worked there. Since 207 he was moving toward a rigorous variation of a moralistic interpretation of the Gospel (Montanism). He urged that even lay people should not be allowed to marry a second time. At that time this was the normal rule for priests (like nowadays for married deacons). To justify this he reminded his dialog partners that in the People of God all are “priestly”. This he argued referring to the following obvious and undisputed practice:

“We lay people, aren’t we priests too? It is written: ‘He has made us into kings and into priests for God our Father.’ The difference between the priesthood and the laity is fixed by the Church authorities and the ranking among the clerics sanctified by God. However, where an ecclesial order is not installed, you bring the holy sacrifice yourself and baptize (‘offerre et tinquere’) and you yourself are a priest; obviously there is a Church, where three persons are together, even when they are lay people.”74

New pastoral structures

The life of faith in local communities will be fulfilled in new pastoral structures. There will be a fructifying interrelationship between the local communities and larger areas. The local communities and their hearing the Word and celebrating the Eucharist together will be indispensable. But they will undertake some tasks in a broader area together with other communities.

Cooperation will be organized in projects Cooperative projects will be organized, planned, designed for a limited time, and evaluated at the end: for example, the preparation of young people for Confirmation, educational events, youth work, pastoral projects, cooperation with secular organisations and authorities.75

In this respect the situation is changing. That the old structure of the Church is dying is seen in multiple shortages: shortage of money, of members, priests and volunteers. These forced the Church leaders to undertake structural changes. In the Catholic Church these changes were not only financially oriented, but based much more on the availability of priests. Every pastoral area should have an appointed priest. For this reason, the pastoral areas were enlarged. Some of them were extended step by step. These “reforms” were introduced based on the old Church enterprise. This should have already become outdated, because Vatican II designed the Church starting not from the clergy but from the faithfilled people. In fact, the latest structural adjustments returned to the preconcilar teaching about the Church. They were basically centered on the priest.

The new shape of the Church does not grow by merely combining the available priests with pastoral areas. The question has to be stated in a new way: which pastoral process fits best for a specific pastoral area? This provides a differentiated concept of pastoral areas. It neither supports the “Church tower thinking” prevalent in some parishes, which the Italian pastoral theology fondly names “campanilismo” – nor does it legitimized an unimaginative – clergy centered expansion of pastoral areas as a consequence of the declining number of priests. Plurality dominates, because some processes need the proximity76 of a faith filled life with families and young children, with old people, handicapped and ailing family members. In addition, people have very different expectations of the Church because of their social strata and milieu77. This affects their image of God, of the Church, the parish priest, of the community and not least of that which should happen in the pastoral dimension, and how they will gladly participate based on their lifestyle.

To cope with such a plurality overburdens the local communities as well as the newer spiritual movements, which attract only a certain milieu. In a larger pastoral realm spiritual centers for seekers can be found. It is possible (as done in the diocese of Erfurt in “atheising” Eastern Germany) to celebrate Christmas for atheists, a Valentine’s day for lovers, a commemoration of death for families whose family members are buried anonymously. Others try this with special youth churches as pray stations. In educational housing centers networks of believers are growing which are beneficial for the lifestyle of young women.

A gender just Church

Sieger Köder, Mary Magdalene at the grave

She was the first who came to the grave. Her heart drove her there early Easter morning. It was Mary Magdalene, the woman to whom many apocrypha and later voluminous novels ascribed an intensive love relationship with Jesus in the best meaning of this term.

The first meeting

Mary found the grave empty. He, whom her heart sought with deep longing in the early morning, was not there.

In the midst of this disappointment and sadness she, this loving woman, experienced perhaps the most touching encounter with the risen Lord. The Gospel according to John tells it thus:

“But Mary stood weeping outside the tomb. As she wept, she bent over to look into the tomb; and she saw two angels in white, sitting where the body of Jesus had been lying, one at the head and the other at the feet. They said to her, ‘Woman, why are you weeping?’ She said to them, ‘They have taken away my Lord, and I do not know where they have laid him.’ When she had said this, she turned around and saw Jesus standing there, but she did not know that it was Jesus. Jesus said to her, ‘Woman, why are you weeping? Whom are you looking for?’ Supposing him to be the gardener, she said to him, ‘Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have laid him, and I will take him away.’ Jesus said to her, ‘Mary!’ She turned and said to him in Hebrew, ‘Rabbouni!’ (which means Teacher). Jesus said to her, ‘Do not hold on to me, because I have not yet ascended to the Father. But go to my brothers and say to them, ‘I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.’ ‘ Mary Magdalene went and announced to the disciples, ‘I have seen the Lord’; and she told them that he had said these things to her.”

(Jn 20:11–18)

An idle tale

During the last decades, attention has been drawn to the many times the Risen One showed himself to a woman. The core of the gospel78 was at first entrusted to a woman. Even more – the Risen One asked her to bring that unbelievable message to the brothers, the other apostles. A woman is the first apostle bringing the men the message of resurrection.

Mary Magdalene announces the resurrection to the disciples. Albani-Psalter, England, 12th century

The apostles hadn’t previously trusted her that the grave was empty. Peter and “the other disciple” had to prove it for themselves running to the place where it happened. And then she came with this new message that the Risen One had appeared to her and had instructed her:

“Jesus said to her, ‘Do not hold on to me, because I have not yet ascended to the Father. But go to my brothers and say to them, ‘I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.’ Mary Magdalene went and announced to the disciples, ‘I have seen the Lord’; and she told them what he had said to her.” (Jn 20:17f.)

Fulfilling the commission of Jesus by Mary Magdalene developed into a great disappointment. The evangelist Luke noted laconically about that which the women reported: “But these words seemed to them an idle tale, and they did not believe them.” (Lk 24:11)

Is that this in the Church – I mean now above all the Catholic one to which I belong – the case until today? Women complain that there is no justice for them within the Church. For a period of time it was denied that they were full human beings; then that they could attain eternal life. Access to those positions in the Church connected with power and spiritual authority is closed to them. They are excluded from ordained offices. But even in top positions which can be held by any baptized Christian, women are widely underrepresented.

What a great vision for the Church this could be:

„There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus.” (Gal 3:29)

No discrimination against women. A change in consciousness and in the structures of power has happened. The Catholic Church is no longer male dominated. Based on the rebirth in Jesus Christ there is real equality in dignity and vocation (LG 32, CIC can 208), also and especially between women and men.

Mary with priestly stole, Cathedral in Gurk, with kind permission of Father Severin Schneider, Benedictine Monastery of Seckau

But some will say the Church has no authority to undertake such fundamental changes. And because the access of women to ordained offices until now has never occurred, therefore that could “never ever” happen. But can such a “never ever” really be maintained? Peter thought, referring to a long tradition, that no one should be christened without becoming a Jew and accepting the law with all its consequences such as circumcision and dietary laws. Therefore, he, Peter, will “never ever” eat non-kosher food. But he did. Because in a dream God ordered him to act in another way. The “never ever” of the Syllabus of Pius IX from 1864 was only valid one hundred years. The Second Vatican Council declared religious freedom as essential for true Christian belief. And the “never ever” of John Paul II from 1984 – how long will it last?

It is feared that such a development of the Catholic Church will widen the gap with the Orthodox Church. On the contrary, not to undertake this would widen the gap with the Churches of the Reformation, and even more with many modern young women. It is they who struggle so strongly with the outdated patterns from the past. Many of them have cut the umbilical cord to the Church.79

But is it worth it? Or more precisely, is it really unavoidable that women don’t have access to any ordained office – also not to the diaconate? The biblical commission of the Vatican declared that there are no compelling arguments against ordination. But which arguments are pro? That until now (in the eyes of the Catholic Church) it has never legally happened? Or are there truly archetypal images prohibiting this? Because the symbols for divinity and the giver are the sun and the male, but the symbol for the creature is the female, mother and material? It is not easy to change archetypal images and they resist theological logic. This is one of the reasons why change in the Catholic Church and even more in the Orthodox Church happens very slowly. The exodus of many Anglican Christians, of whole communities and even of bishops are sources of information for these deeply rooted resistances.

The star of the vision

The three wise men, Three-Kings-Window in Erfurt Cathedral, c. 1340

We can look back on the path we have trodden. The goal we wanted to reach can be condensed in the experience of the three wise men from the Orient who reached the goal of their desire by following a star. The star stands for the visions. These visions also show the way and motivate to follow it. This is true above at this time of profound transformation of the Church. Whoever refuses to administrate only the decline and is determined to create a transition, will not be concerned primarily with structures but rather with visions.

Following these, one can hope to reach the goal.

“In the time of King Herod, after Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea, wise men from the East came to Jerusalem, asking, ‘Where is the child who has been born king of the Jews? For we observed his star at its rising, and have come to pay him homage.’ When King Herod heard this, he was frightened, and all Jerusalem with him; and calling together all the chief priests and scribes of the people, he inquired of them where the Messiah was to be born. They told him, ‘In Bethlehem of Judea’; for so it has been written by the prophet: ‘And you, Bethlehem, in the land of Judah, are by no means least among the rulers of Judah; for from you shall come a ruler who is to shepherd my people Israel.’ Then Herod secretly called for the wise men and learned from them the exact time when the star had appeared. Then he sent them to Bethlehem, saying, ‘Go and search diligently for the child; and when you have found him, bring me word so that I may also go and pay him homage.’ When they had heard the king, they set out; and there, ahead of them, went the star that they had seen at its rising, until it stopped over the place where the child was. When they saw that the star had stopped, they were overwhelmed with joy. On entering the house, they saw the child with Mary his mother; and they knelt down and paid him homage. Then, opening their treasure chests, they offered him gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh. And having been warned in a dream not to return to Herod, they left for their own country by another road.”

(Mt 2:1–12)

The three “astrologists” from the Orient have experienced the power of a vision. They had hopes, they sensed deep within the birth of a child which will be important for world history. They decided to set out and to find the child.

Then they chose the sensible ways of our world: they consulted the potentate Herod who called in the scribes. That confirmed their vision but did not bring them to the goal. In their search they were left alone. Only when they remembered the star were they overwhelmed with joy. They found the Child. Knelt down. Adored. The Church has no other goal. It is the goal which it shares with humanity.

Annotations

1 Kaufmann, Franz-Xaver: Church Crisis: How will Christianity survive?, Freiburg im Breisgau 2011. – Küng, Hans: Can the Church be saved?, Munich 2011.

2 Scheffczyk, Leo: Aspects of the Church in Crisis: about the decision for an authentic Council, Siegburg 1993.

3 Zerfaß, Rolf: Are the People of God becoming a Minority? Pastoral actuality of a central experience of Israel. Katechetische Blätter 1 (2000) 42–52. – Id.: The Mission of the Church Today, in: Ordenskorrespondenz 41 (2000) 375–391.

4 Saarinen, Martin F.: The Life Cycle of a congregation, Washington 1989.

5 Mostly Protestant cultures have become atheistic.

6 Quoted in Pesch, Rudolf: Between Good Friday and Easter: the Conversion of the Disciples of Jesus, Zurich 1983, 90f.

7 Zulehner, Paul M.: Colourisation: Churches in ideological pluralism, Ostfildern 2011.

8 Neuner, Peter: The Laity and the People of God, Leipzig 1990.

9 Audet, Paul: Priest and Laity in the Christian community: the Way to mutual Estrangement, in: The Priestly Service I: origin and early history, Qd 46. Freiburg 1970, 115–175. – Weß, Paul: All of you are brothers and sisters: Priest and Community, Mainz 1983. – Zulehner, Paul M.: Community Pastoral: places of faith, Düsseldorf 1991.

10 Dorothee Sölle translated a warning in Pr 29:18, where it is written literally: “Where there is no prophecy, the people cast off restraint, but happy are those who keep the law.” – Sölle, Dorothee: Love and Work: a Theology of Creation, Munich-Zurich 2001, 32.

11 This is the precise text: „A Church which centers on itself und at the same time forgets God, becomes insensible to suffering. On contrary, who immerses themselves in God, emerges next to the people. The way can also be in the other direction: They who encounter people, also find God in them (see Mt 25).” Near to God and to people: Pastoral plan of Patavia 2000, Passau 2000, 16.

12 Zulehner, Paul M.: A new Pentecost: encouragement to a Way of Hope, Ostfildern 2008.

13 Supported, according to Karl Rahner, by the famous Church Fathers. Rahner, Karl: The Small Church Year, Munich 1954, 85f.

14 Our Hope: resolution of the Common Synod of the Dioceses of Germany, Freiburg 1976, 92.

15 Rohr, Richard: Hope against darkness, Freiburg 2010. – Fox, Matthew: Vision of the Cosmic Christ: departure into the third Millenium, Stuttgart 1991.

16 From a Lecture of Carsten Bresch in the Catholic Academy of Freiburg 2009: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fTtCPHBoh8.

17 Rahner, Karl: The lasting importance of the Second Vatican Council, in: StdZ 12 (1979), 805.

18 The descent of Christ into Hades is perceived as an event of cosmic importance, which includes everyone without exception: Bishop Hilarion Alfeyev: Christ the Conqueror of Hell. The Descent of Christ into Hades in Eastern and Western Theological tradition. A lecture delivered at St Mary’s Cathedral, Minneapolis, USA, in: http://orthodoxeurope.org/print/11/1/5.aspx.

19 Orthodox Holy Saturday liturgy: a Triduum Sourcebook, 66 (translated by the author).

20 Gregor von Nyssa: Great Catechesis, BKV Munich 1927, Bd. 56, 63.

21 L.c.

22 Zulehner, Paul M.: Colourisation: Churches in ideological pluralism. Religion in the Live of the People 1970–2010, Ostfildern 2011. – Idem: “I am about to do a new thing“ (Is 43,19): Where the Churches have to change themselves, Ostfildern 2011.

23 „In former times theology used to ask anxiously how many would be saved during the world’s history out of the ‘massa damnata’. Today, one asks whether one may not hope that everybody will be saved. However, the Vatican Council teaches that even one who professes to be an atheist is in touch with the Easter mystery of Christ if he follows his conscience and that everybody who is in touch with the revelation, in a way which only God knows, can be a ‘believer’ by undertaking deeds which redeem them. It is said there that even those who are looking for the unknown God in shade and pictures are not distant either from the true God who wants that all people be saved if they only try to lead a just life. There is emphasised that Church is not only the community of the saved alone, but the sacramental sign and the nucleus of the salvation of the whole world.” Rahner, Karl: The lasting importance of the Second Vatican Council, in: StdZ 12 (1979) 795–806.

24 Balthasar, Hans Urs von: What dare we believe?, Einsiedeln 1986.

25 Balthasar, Hans Urs von: Cordula or the Emergency Case, Einsiedeln 1966.

26 Balthasar, Hans Urs von: Spiritus Creator, Einsiedeln 1967, 159.

27 Rahner, Karl: The Small Church Year, Freiburg 1948, 84–92.

28 Eastern Church Liturgy: Kontakion of the Sunday of the 5th tone.

29 Karl Rahner: The lasting importance, in: StdZt, aaO.

30 Renz, Monika: Redemption from Imprints: message and the Life of Jesus as overcoming the structures of human anxiety, desire and power, Paderborn 2008.

31 Drewermann, Eugen: Structures of Evil: The Jahvistic Primordial History from a Psychoanalytical Perspective, Munich 1977. – Drewermann draws on the works of Kierkegaard, Søren: The Concept of Anxiety, Hamburg 1984. About this Künzli, Arnold: The Anxiety of modern people: the Anxiety-Existence as a mirror of the spiritual crisis of our times, Zurich 1947. – Idem: Anxiety as accidental illness: presented with the life and thinking of Søren Kierkegaard, Zurich 1948.

32 See the pioneering work of the Franco-Canadian cultural anthropologist Girard, René: I saw Satan fall from heaven like a star: a critical apology of Christhood, Munich 2003.

33 Zulehner, Paul M./Denz, Hermann and others: Solidarity: option for the losers of modernity, Innsbruck 1996. – Denz, Hermann/Zulehner, Paul M.: The shirt is nearer to us than the foreigner: solidarity 1994–2002, in: Wirtschaftspolitische Blätter 50 (2003) 9–15.

34 Benedikt XVI.: Light of the World, Freiburg 2010, 205f.

35 Beranek, Markus: Community as healing-area: experiences of healing practice in communities within the context of the study “Gemeinde als Heil-Land” and theological-spiritual perspectives, Vienna 2002.

36 Holl, Adolf: Jesus in bad Company, Stuttgart 1971.

37 Kremer, Jacob: Gospel according to Luke, Würzburg 1988.

38 See Nouwen, Henri J.: Take his image into your heart: spiritual interpretation of a painting of Rembrandt, Freiburg 1991. – Zulehner, Paul M.: God is greater than our hearts (1 Jn 3:20): a pastoral of mercy, Ostfildern 2006.

39 Renz, Monika: Redemption from imprints: message and life of Jesus as overcoming the structures of human anxiety, desire and power, Paderborn 2009.

40 Metz, Johann B.: Compassion – world programme of Christianity: to learn social responsibility, Freiburg 2000. – Idem: Pathways within the church crisis: church of compassion, in: church of compassion, in: Zulehner, Paul M./Heller, Andreas (Hg.), church reform, Graz 1998, 123–133.

41 Babylonian Talmud: Traktat Avoda zara (About idolatry) 3b; quoted according to Goldschmidt, L.: The Babylonian Talmud, VII Berlin 1925, 801.

42 Nietzsche, Friedrich W.: Thus Spoke Zarathustra: a book for everyone and no one, part 4: The ugliest Man, translated with an introduction by R. J. Hollingdale, 278f.

43 The Orthodox Church knows as pastoral guidelines around divorce and re-marriage the two principles of the “Akribia” and “Oikonomia”. See Richter, Gerhard: Oikonomia. The use of the word Oikonomia in the New Testament, among the Church Fathers and in the theological literature up to the 20th century, Berlin 2005.

44 Nouwen, Henri J. M.: Take his image into your heart: spiritual interpretation of a painting of Rembrandt, Freiburg im Breisgau 1991.

45 Zulehner, Paul M.: Help people to live: for a new climate in the pastoral work, Freiburg 1978; 71985.

46 From Collected works in seven volumes, Volume 5: Poems, Frankfurt 1985.

47 Würzburger Synode 1975: Our hope.

48 About these „sanctuaries of life“: Schmidtchen, Gerhard: What for the Germans is holy: religious and political trends in Germany, Munich 1979. – Zulehner, Paul M.: Religion in the life of Austrians: documentation of a survey, Vienna 1981. – These primordial desires for name, power and homeland, therefore for roots and development, are the material for many myths and fairy tales, but not least for the three evangelical counsels of Jesus. Zulehner, Paul M.: Incarnate belief: lifestyle according to the gospel, Freiburg im Breisgau 1989.

49 Thus the title of the Pastoral Plan put in force for the diocese of Patavia by bishop Franz X. Eder.

50 Zulehner, Paul M.: Resurrection now: draft of a European Theology of Liberation, Meitingen 1984.

51 Zulehner, Paul M.: Church – Advocate of the people: Those without courage to dream have no power to fight, Vienna 1981.

52 Benedikt XVI.: Light of the World, 76.

53 Enzensberger, Hans Magnus: The big march: thirty-three remarks; with a footnote ‘About some specialties in man hunting’, Frankfurt am Main 1992.

54 I rely in the following on an out-of-print publication which I have made together with Josef Brandner the unforgettable priest-educator of the Archdiocese of Munich. I owe to Josef Brandner the access to some of the pictures which are meditated on in this book together with biblical texts. Zulehner, Paul M./Brandner, Live! God’s prime concern as a focus for the pastoral work of his Church, Freising 1981. – In addition, together with Josef Brandner were worked out Zulehner, Paul M.: Incarnate belief: lifestyle according to the gospel, Freiburg 1983. – Zulehner, Paul M./Brandner, Josef: God is greater than our hearts (1 Jn 3:20): a pastoral of mercy, Ostfildern 2006.

55 About the importance of skeptical questionning under modern conditions, see Berger, Peter L./Huneke, Dorte: Questions of Faith: A Skeptical Affirmation of Christianity, 2003, Berlin 2006. – Also: Berger, Peter L./Zijderveld, Anton C.: In praise of doubt. How to Have Convictions Without Becoming a Fanatic, Freiburg 2010.

56 Boff, Leonardo; Goldstein, Horst: The cry of the Earth – the cry of the Poor, Düsseldorf 2002. – Lohfink, Norbert: Option for the poor, in: That God hears the cry of His people, Freiburg 1987.

57 Zulehner, Paul M./Heller, Andreas: „Because You preempt us with Your grace“: to a theology of pastoral work today. Paul M. Zulehner in dialogue with Karl Rahner Düsseldorf 1984/expanded reprint: Ostfildern 2002.

58 Resolutions of the Diocesan Synod Rottenburg-Stuttgart: Tradition of belief to the coming generation, Ostfildern 1986.

59 Roger Frère: Fight and contemplation: searching for community with everyone, Freiburg 1974.

60 Metz, Johann Baptist: Mysticism with open eyes: when spirituality opens, Freiburg 2011.

61 Sölle, Dorothee: Mysticism and resistance: ‚you calm clamour‘, Munich 2001. – Maurer, Bernhard: Politics and mysticism according to Dorothee Sölle, in: capable of being converted or “To let God for God‘s sake”, 2008, 413–440.

62 Teresa von Avila: Interior Castle, Freiburg 2010, 314.

63 Zerfaß, Rolf: When God appears in our deeds, in: Zulehner, Paul M./Fischer, Josef: A Rumour of God: building bricks for a future Church, Düsseldorf 1987, 95-106.

64 John Paul II: Sollicitudo rei socialis, Rome 1987, 36.

65 Benedict XVI: Deus caritas est, Rome 2006, 31a.

66 Zulehner, Paul M.: The treasures of the Church are her people: parish council members enliven the Church communities; report of a survey, Ostfildern 2010. – Zulehner, Paul M./Hennersperger, Anna: That the Church will not become perlexed: parish councils for communies with future, Ostfildern 2010. – Schell, Ursula: Between lust and frustration – Women in voluntary Church leadership, Ostfildern 2012.

67 Riegger, Paul J.: Corpus Iuris Ecclesiastici, Prag 1843, Addendum, 12–15.

68 Zulehner, Paul M./Hennersperger, Anna: the Church will not become perplexed, Ostfildern 2009.

69 Lobinger, Fritz: Team of Elders, Manila 2009. – Zulehner, Paul M./Lobinger, Fritz/Neuner, Peter: “People-priests” in vital communities: pleading for presbyteries in communities, Ostfildern 2003.

70 Ratzinger, Joseph: Faith and future, Munich 1970, 122.

71 Gemeinsame Synode, Interconnected synod, the pastoral services in the community 2.5.1.

72 The German bishops: order of the pastoral services, Bonn 1977, 12.

73 Activity without fixed relation to an actual community and without a real calling-distance damages both, community and priest. The German bishops, order, 13.

74 ‚In an emergency’ the celebration of baptism is possible without an ordained official. Some ask why that can’t be possible in the case of the Eucharist as well? They remember the common practice in the time of Tertullian. – Tertullian: De exhortatione castitatis, 7.3. – Related literature: Legrand, Hervé M.: The Presidency of the Eucharist According to the Ancient Tradition, in: Worship 53 (1979) 413–438. – Faivre, Alexandre: Laymen at the orgins of the church, Paris 1984. – Beneden, Pierre van: Have laymen celebrated eucharist without priests? Remarks to ‚De Exhoratione castitatis‘ of Tertullian, in: Archiv für Liturgiewissenschaft 29 (1987) 31–46. – „De exhortatione castitatis”, differently positioned than in LThK [Freiburg 8 (1964), 1371] [Altaner/Berthold, Stuiber/Alfred: Patroloy, Freiburg 81978, 158, is originated in the premontanistic era. –The Church-Historian Theodoret von Cyrus (393 until probably 466) reports in addition to Tertullian about this also Church History 1,23,5.

75 This position is supported by a surveyed majority of Austrian‘s Parish Priests: Zulehner, Paul M.: How are you, pastor? Result of a ‚kreuz&quer‘-Survey: Priests want reforms, Graz 2010.

76 Werbick, Jürgen: Why the church must remain local, Donauwörth 2002.

77 Ebertz, Michael N.: Milieu-practice: from seeing to action in pastoral work, Würzburg 2009.

78 „Because if you confess with your lips that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.” (Rom 10:9)

79 Zulehner Paul M./Steinmair-Pösel, Petra: Typical women? How women live and believe, Linz 2011.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Paul M. Zulehner, Dr. phil., Dr. theol., is one of the best-known sociologists of religion in Europe. From 1984 until his retirement in 2008 he was Professor for Pastoral Theology in Vienna. In his numerous publications, he deals with topics of the sociology of religion, church sociology and pastoral theology.

INFORMATIONS ABOUT THE BOOK

Scepticism, disappointment, renunciation: the situation of the church seems more volatile than ever. Paul M. Zulehner, however, is convinced that it is not the church that is in crisis, but the changing times demand a reshaping. In a run through the history of the Christian Church and Culture, he shows that Christianity has often come to crossroads, at which renewal and departure were necessary.

The key to rebirth he sees in powerful visions. In the gospel and in art, in poetry and myth, he finds stimuli which encourage finding new pathways. With this book, Zulehner gives Christians incentives for a church committed to the future. Meditating, true to life and practical, his vision calls for a „resurrection“ of the church. Live!

“Today, perhaps we have so much discontent in some parts of the worldwide church, because we lack motivating visions. Structures are indispensable for the incarnation of a vision in history. But they are not a substitute for visions. The present church reorganisation concerns more structures than visions. We speak more about money than God. Of course Churches have to make structural adjustments. And, only if these are done, the Churches start thinking about visions. As Saarinen teaches – we should look at things the other way round.”

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