How to do that?
An internal debate on the reason for being of our Order, and of chivalric orders in general, took place recently, and may still be going on. It involved questions such as: Is our existence an anachronism? Are we just putting on an act, and are we a little comical in doing so?
Each of us had been approached by a existing member of the Order with the invitation to become a Lazarite, but certainly we also heard an internal voice calling us to fulfil a noble mission, and accepted that invitation. It is an invitation (by God) to service. It is a calling. And, once we become Lazarites, we need to be Lazarites for real. But how to do that? Georg Lauscher, a spiritual advisor for priesthood candidates in the German diocese of Aachen, suggests three incentives for such situations. I have taken the liberty of applying his article, translated by Miloš Voplakal and published in Teologické texty 4/2011, to the context of our Order:
I. Expose yourself – to external requirements and your own weakness
The mission of our Order is in charity. It has largely always been so, since the beginning. The ancient Lazarite knights in the Holy Land were lepers. For that reason they had been cast out of society, yet they found the inner strength to work for others who were worse off than themselves. Thus they provided their existence with meaning and filled the time they had left with good. This idea can be a starting point for those of us who ask what to do, and how to do it, in order to make our membership in the Order meaningful. We perceive the needs of our neighbours, yet we realize our own weakness and powerlessness, and that may evoke emotions of despondency and scepticism in us. In troubled times, the imperative is particularly strong: stand on your feet, and accept yourself and your situation as having been entrusted to you by God.
It is in difficult situations that one has to be close to oneself – for the sake of God. Courageously accept yourself and your situation. Accept yourself as given. “Son of man, stand on your feet, and I will speak with you.” In this address, Ezekiel recognizes his calling and his mission: “…the Spirit entered into me and set me on my feet” (Ezekiel 2, 2:2 ESV). Brother, sister, stand on your feet, and ask what God wants you to do in your situation.
II. Give yourself – to God and to the poor
We live in a time of forgetting God. We live in a time of a decline in values. What to do? How to live in this with faith, hope and love? Again, expose yourself. Do more than that: set out into this desert climate, this forgetting of God.
Two examples from our “desert climate”:
Karl Rahner, almost eighty, spent his last years in Vienna, in a charitable home for young people who had taken a path of crime. The nearly hopeless situation of the young people became a spiritual touchstone to him. He mused: “In this home it seems that much has been done in vain. They constantly try to put something in order civically and humanely, and it turns out to be a failure later on. However, each such attempt is a great thing in itself. Is it not true that God is more likely to reside in the misty, shapeless land of futility, and can be more easily found there? When you report great success in serving others, then it may be that you seek not your neighbours and God but rather yourself, your success and self-assertion – and you find them to your misfortune. But where others are served seemingly in vain, without thanks and without success – I should think – the God you are to seek is more easily found. For those who want to serve others in such a place, this may be the only situation in which they will find the concealed, silent, inexpressible closeness of God.”
Beside this example of exposing oneself to God in a dismal social reality, there is an example from the completely different world of financial politics. In a remarkable interview titled “From Banking to Mysticism”, banker Mario Conde, who has worked in international finance and dealt with Christian mysticism for decades, says, “Whoever does not interrupt his own thinking, speaking and doing with an adequate period of silence every day, always starts from himself, his own interests and utilities, his own desire. In the hard working world, this silent standstill is only possible early in the morning or late in the evening, and if you are vigilant, then also briefly in between. Only in the silent standstill can you again manage to view the whole and view your own interests and projections from there. A responsible financier should essentially be a mystic; he must regard the whole contemplatively from within, and let himself be actively guided by that on the outside. I would not entrust responsibility to any person who cannot remain in silence.”
Is this not also true of us who wish to serve our neighbours in the spirit of the Order’s ideology? Apparently, we have something to learn here: a daily period of silence before mysterious God to make ourselves free and willing for Him, so that He can act through us, with us, and within us.
After the first move, “Stand on your feet!”, there would be another one: “Expose yourself to God’s absolute mystery!” Expose yourself to the one who gives Himself to you even today in His words, in the Eucharist, in the poor and your own poverty, like lovers who look for one another and then give themselves to one another.
III: Rejoice – resist the depression trend
It seems to me the third thing that is required today is simple joy. Joy in your own existence, joy in others, in creation and everything, and through everything, joy in not having lost God’s mystery and power of attraction. Georg Lauscher has developed a little exercise for himself for when he feels overwhelmed with worries and unresolved problems. He writes, “I imagine nothing exists. And from that nothing, I look at what is. Then, I can slowly start rejoicing in the fact that something is, that I am, that we can see and hear each other.”
When Paul enumerates the fruit of the Spirit in his Epistle to the Galatians, he lists joy right after love (Gal 5:22). In his favourite community of Philippi, he advises strongly (out of prison), “Finally, my brothers, rejoice in the Lord. To write the same things to you is no trouble to me and is safe for you. (…) Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, rejoice. Let your reasonableness be known to everyone. The Lord is at hand.” (Philippians 3:1, 4:4-5 ESV)
We could therefore tell ourselves:
1. Stand on your feet, man! Accept yourself courageously within the limits of yourself and your task!
2. Give yourself to the seeking, suffering and poor, and to God, who became poor and silent out of His love for you!
3. Resist the depression trend: rejoice over what you have been given and assigned.
Karel Valter, ChLJ.
Encouragement for a bold profession
“So have no fear of them, for nothing is covered that will not be revealed, or hidden that will not be known. What I tell you in the dark, say in the light, and what you hear whispered, proclaim on the housetops. And do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Rather fear him who can destroy both soul and body in hell. Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? And not one of them will fall to the ground apart from your Father. But even the hairs of your head are all numbered. Fear not, therefore; you are of more value than many sparrows.”
Gospel of Matthew 10:26-31 ESV
An attentive reader will certainly notice that in the above quote from the Gospel of Matthew, the call of the Lord Jesus Christ not to fear is seen three times in several sentences.
The first call relates to a fact that is not too easy to understand on the first reading. It is a fear that something will remain veiled. Only the sentences that come after hint at what this veiled fact is, what the Lord Jesus Christ told His disciples in private. The disciples are to cast away their fear and spread the joyful news that should not, and cannot, remain concealed. The Lord Jesus wants to say more: there will be a time when all the facts will speak for God. Even those that are now hidden. And that time has begun. It began with the resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ and the pouring out of the Holy Spirit. It will all become even more evident when the Divine Era comes in full.
It is now clear what the point of Jesus’s call is: do not fear. His disciples do not need to fear that someone might succeed in silencing what is intended for everyone. No power in the world can silence the message that the Lord Jesus brought into the world. It is like a fire, and nothing will put it out. We do not need to fear for that. The joyful message will find its way to the people. Only one thing is needed: listen carefully and allow nothing to drown out the gospel. That is why your ear has to be close to Christ’s mouth, His word, because what he wants to tell you is a highly personal thing. But then you have to spread it on so that others can also put their ear to Jesus’s mouth, to hear from Him what He wants to tell them personally. After that, they too are supposed to go out to the housetops and the streets and tell everyone.
Speaking simply, that was how the Lord Jesus Christ pictured the mission. It is just what you hear in person and then discuss in a small circle that everyone is to hear.
So we need not worry about Jesus’s message and its future.
But Jesus’s disciples often fear for themselves. These fears are not unjustified. Even the Lord Jesus Himself drew people’s hatred when he publicly communicated the Word given to Him by His heavenly Father across the land. But as He did not fear those who kill the body, we are also not to fear. People can take your life, but they cannot divest you of what is indestructible. The death of the earthly body is not the end of a life, because God will give you a new body to live in His kingdom. That is the contents of the Lord Jesus’s second call not to fear.
But how to get rid of the fear of people? The most reliable way is to be afraid of God, the Lord Jesus says. That is the fear that will produce fearlessness against people and that lives on Jesus’s sacrifice and resurrection, because then it became clear for all time that those who kill the body cannot separate one from God and from true life.
Not every disciple of Jesus will experience a situation that is a matter of life and death. There have been times like that in this country both historically and recently. Hopefully they will never return.
In conclusion, the Lord Jesus mentions a fear that we are so familiar with: the excessive worry that dries out the soul and cripples, because it focuses solely on making life secure. It makes one unfree. Not to fear also means to trust in God. We may trust in Him because we are worthy in His eyes. Even the most ordinary creature such as a sparrow is worthy in God’s eyes. Sparrows used to be sacrificed for purgation of the most destitute: the lepers. Two sparrows could be bought with the smallest coin at that time. If you paid two coins, you were given one extra sparrow, meaning one sparrow was worth nothing. However, the Lord God likes even such a small sparrow, which man’s eyes see as worthless. God is also aware of the sparrow. He is all the more aware of a man, even if he has lost his worth, repudiated it. However, God restored the man’s worth when he paid the greatest sacrifice of all for us: his Son. That is the new price for our life. We were redeemed not with silver or gold but with Christ’s precious blood. That is the worth of our life. That is the worth we have in God’s eyes. That is why we may trust in Him even if we feel that we have lost all worth in human eyes and that our service to the Gospel does not bear fruit. That drives away all fear and worry.
The Lord Jesus Christ spoke to his disciples, and today He speaks to us as the heralds of His kingdom. The kingly heralds have to be sure that God’s love is aware of them. Our time is in God’s hands. God has not abandoned us or his affairs, and will not. That is why we need not fear.
Luděk Korpa
The God-Man Jesus
Perhaps you too watched one of those artistic representations of the Passion during the Easter holidays. Perhaps you too shed a tear while watching innocent Christ being tortured and then killed. Poor thing, he had done them so much good and they repaid him so cruelly. It is just this view of the sacrifice of God’s Lamb that is so misleading. The artists will offer the death of a man only; nobody can express the death of God. I know the term “death of God” sounds provocative, but unless you are a follower of Arianism – that is, unless you refute the divinity of Jesus Christ – you must realize that Jesus died on the cross of Golgotha not only as a man, but also as God. How? We do not know that, and we will never understand it. It is a great mystery, the mystery of faith. Let us not allow these heart-rending scenes to reduce the Lord Jesus’s sacrifice to human notions, even notions presented by famous artists. It is only the other, spiritual view of Jesus’s death that will help you understand, at least in part, what is meant by the words in the Gospel: “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.” (John 3:16 ESV) Rev. Jaroslav Kratka, ECLJ
